There seems to be some frustration over John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate. Most of what I’ve read has concentrated on her inexperience and relative anonymity in the lower 48. One variation on this is the “I’m more qualified than she is” response. I think the focus on qualifications is wrong. For one thing, about 305,025,713 people in the U.S. are still more qualified than the current President, and he’s been in office for 7 years. Like most leadership positions, one’s paper qualifications vanish once the shit hits the fan, and either you learn very quickly on the job, or the rest of us learn very quickly that you’re incompetent. Really the only way to determine that someone is the right person for the job is to put them there — and then remove them if they aren’t.
But since there are so many people, and so many who might be good at the work, the electorate limits its choices to the candidates of various parties. Technically the Electors could choose any natural-born citizen over 35 who has resided within the States for 14 years, but they usually don’t.
The selection of a vice presidential candidate is no different than, for example, the selection of a CEO. The list is narrowed from the start, either to those people the searcher knows personally, or to those holding elective office, or to some other list shorter than the Manhattan telephone directory. Any of the methods of narrowing the list will of necessity eliminate those whose potential greatness awaits an opportunity. In the case of Senator McCain, it seems obvious that he considered Republican governors, Mitt Romney, and Joe Lieberman. That’s a short list.