Bush-Powell 04? Run screaming into the woods!

In the car this morn­ing, Tiffany and I were dis­cussing the sug­ges­tions that Cheney may be bow­ing out of this elec­tion. The specter of another, more mod­er­ate, vice-presidential can­di­date scared us silly. Bush-Powell 04? Bush-McCain 04? A ticket like that would crush Kerry-Edwards 04.

Some­one I read or heard yes­ter­day (I know, car­di­nal sin of blog­ging, not remm­ber and link­ing your ref­er­ences, sorry) was point­ing out that George W. Bush is a very loyal man. It is not in his DNA, this per­son said, to push Cheney off the ticket. But then he added that it is also not in his DNA to lose. If it came down to los­ing the elec­tion or dump­ing Cheney, I think he’d take the lat­ter option. Though it will, of course, be couched as Cheney’s doc­tor sug­gest­ing that he might not be healthy enough to run again.

Because we don’t want to apol­o­gize to our con­stituents for select­ing an ultra-conservative, cor­rupt, power-mad, (potty-mouthed), bel­liger­ent career oli­garch as our Vice-President, do we? That would look un-Presidential.

Who then, to replace him? Hell, he could pick Howard Dean as his run­ning mate, and Bush’s ultra-right con­ser­v­a­tive base would still vote for him (who else is going to give them chest-beating and tax breaks?). And he’d get a lot of mod­er­ates and fence-sitters to vote for him.

If Kerry-McCain 04 was a dream ticket, how much moreso Bush-McCain 04? Though reporters were quick to point out last week that while McCain did turn Kerry down recently, he turned Bush down back in 2000 (and we were left with Cheney…)

I’m so depressed.