It’s all about balance... balancing out a presidential ticket, that is, with a VEEP candidate who offsets some of the top candidate’s perceived political weaknesses.
In 2004, for instance, Northerner John Kerry chose Southerner John Edwards (so what if both were white liberal lawyers?). In the 1992 race, the grandfatherly George H. Bush picked the boyishly good-looking Dan Quayle in large part due to his purported "hotness appeal" with female voters -- Murphy Brown being the most notable exception.
Flash forward to the present and one Mike Huckabee, the current Great White Hope of much of the Christian / Evangelical Right. The Republican Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister who indirectly succeeded "Slick Willie" as Governor of Arkansas, is unabashedly running as the Christian candidate (he’s apparently never read Article VI of the Constitution – you know the one: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”). And not surprisingly, just like about every other GOP presidential hopeful, Huckabee says he rejects evolution in favor of creationism, among other curious positions. Considering U.S. science scores have been steadily going into the toilet in recent years, Huckabee’s views are worrisome to those of us who like to think that the Dark Ages were like, you know, dark, and the Enlightenment, well, enlightened?
So in that concerned spirit, we’d like to suggest to the Huckabee campaign a short list of potential running mates to balance out their ticket, should the Huckster actually get the GOP nod:
Calif. Congressman Pete Stark: the first representative in the history of the country to boldly come out of the secular humanism closet and openly declare his atheism. So what if he's a Dem? Stark’s obviously a very principled guy and we’re sure he’d switch parties for the SH cause.
Sam Harris: the New York Times best-selling author (The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation), who has helped to, excuse the pun, resurrect a previously anemic secular humanist movement here in the West. Harris could council Huckabee, as he does readers in The End of Faith that, “Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 72 percent believe in angels. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and the belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.” Are you listening, Huck?
Finally, as long as we’re day dreaming, Founding Father Thomas Paine, a Deist who was openly hostile to organized religion and who pointedly wrote in The Age of Reason, “All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” Say amen, Tom.
Of course, considering that polls consistently show that Americans would, if they absolutely had to, elect an openly gay person President before they’d elect an Atheist, we have one last suggestion for a Huckabee running mate: Barney Frank. If nothing else, it would certainly give a spike to Mike’s poll numbers in Massachusetts, that’s for sure.
