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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jules Witcover
The political rumor mill, its message now magnified by the Internet, cable television talk shows and all manner of other unmonitored megaphones, has been having a field day on the latest musings about a major job-swap in the Obama administration.
Despite firm denials from all quarters that should know, the notion of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton switching jobs with Vice President Joe Biden in time to put her on the 2012 Democratic ticket has injected itself into the bloodstream of idle political chatter.
The idea had been floating for some weeks when author Bob Woodward, discussing his latest book, "Obama's Wars," with
The
Clinton herself, asked about the rumor, said: "I don't believe what I read. I have absolutely no interest and no reason for doing anything other than just dismissing these stories and moving on. I think the vice president is doing a wonderful job."
Political history is strewn, to be sure, with denials of rumors that later come to pass -- along with scads that never do. Woodward explained to the
What makes this particular scuttlebutt seem very unlikely is that both Biden and Clinton have been getting exceedingly high marks, inside the Obama administration and outside it, for their performances in the jobs they're now happily holding down.
Clinton has been credited with a steady role in keeping Israeli-Palestinian talks on life support, and Biden has been a key figure in coaxing reconciliation of rival Iraqi factions to form a coalition government. On the campaign trail, he has been carrying a heavy load, urging a strong turnout of middle-class Democrats for next month's congressional elections.
Beyond that, changing vice presidents in midstream can be a messy exercise. The last time it was done, for the 1976 election, President Gerald Ford buckled to conservative Republican pressure and dropped appointed veep Nelson Rockefeller in favor of Bob Dole, to no avail. They still lost that year.
In 1992, the senior President George Bush was urged by fearful
Going back to 1956, other vice presidents have been second-guessed but kept on the ticket rather than risk divisive party squabbles. In that year, an Eisenhower cabinet member tried to get his boss to dump Richard Nixon, who resisted a suggestion to take a cabinet post and was reelected.
In 1972, Nixon himself seriously talked to aides about offering Vice President Spiro Agnew a seat on the
High-level job swapping has not been unheard of in Washington, however. In 1984, just before the landslide reelection of Ronald Reagan, his
In 2008, before Obama chose Biden as his running mate, there was much speculation that Biden as chairman of the
Available at Amazon.com:
The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama
The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy
The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics
Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
AMERICAN POLITICS
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On Political Job Swapping | Politics
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