Glenn Beck And Sarah Palin

Glenn Beck is unquestionably one of big guns on conservative talk radio, television, you name it. No question about that. What I do question is the sanity of people who've recently "heard" that Sarah Palin might consider a Palin/Beck ticket when she makes her run for the Presidency of the United States in 2012.

She first has to gain the Republican nomination, of course. I get that.

What I don't get is how anyone other than a tabloid could even speculate about Mrs. Palin possibly choosing Mr. Beck as a running mate. Not that the author of Arguing With Idiots doesn't have a definite flair. I like his work a lot and, should we happen to actually get to know one another, I strongly suspect I'd like him a lot, as well.

But he's not a viable candidate for the office of Vice President of the United States.

Sarah Palin knows that. Her people know that. Perhaps most importantly, Glenn Beck knows that. Now, I could cut to the chase and tell you exactly why not. It would only take a few words. No, it's not because of his politics. Hold on; let me tell you a story in case you're too young to remember. News accounts may recall things differently, but here's how things looked to me:

When Senator George McGovern from South Dakota secured the Democratic nomination in the Presidential campaign of 1972, I was jacked. Nixon might have been unbeatable. In fact, it was widely assumed that was just that. Regardless of what the polls and the media were saying, though, I wasn't so sure. It's been many years since I've voted Democratic in a Presidential election, but that year, at the age of 29, I intended to do so. I'd long admired McGovern, once telling a politically minded family member, however, that the South Dakotan was, "...way too intelligent to ever be elected President.". Things suddently felt otherwise. From what I was reading and seeing on TV, he looked poised to get a huge "convention bounce" of momentum and maybe even make a race out of it. His selection of Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton as his running mate seemed like an inspired choice. President Nixon, watch it! The Democrats are coming!

Not for long, they weren't. Senator Eagleton had sort of forgotten to mention that he was mentally ill and had been hospitalized because of mental health concerns a number of time. Oh, he was brilliant. That came right through the TV screen into your living room. But he was also on Thorazine.

It took about half a nanosecond for McGovern's campaign to nosedive, power gunning from the clouds to a truly messy splat on a hardrock portion of Mother Earth. That Eagleton eventually backed out and a replacement found...well, that didn't make the difference of a single Kleenex when Old Yeller died.

If memory serves, Election Day found McGovern getting just 19% of the popular vote and winning only two states. Landslide? The whole mountain collapsed!

Okay. I "done said all that to say all this": Yes, Glenn Beck is a big gun...but he can't handle the pressure of a Magnum charge like a Vice Presidential bid produces.

When it comes to a race for the highest office in the land, every candidate's "people" are looking for a way to hang the opposition. Remember all those Trig Truthers out there, those high minded "fact finders" Hell bent for leather, determined to prove that Sarah Palin's special needs son wasn't even hers? Scandal scandal scandal, that's all that counted, and having to make up stuff on the fly didn't bother these lowlife types one eensy teensy bit. After her memoir, Going Rogue, was published and included details of Sarah's pregnancy with Trig, there was actually a forum post online that stated,

"Looks like we have to give up on the Trig issue. *Bleep* it!!"

Opponents able to go that far in pursuit of an entirely imaginary "issue" will absolutely salivate over something that might actually be a problem for the person they're trying to beat. As illustrated so graphically (and to me at the time, painfully) in the McGovern/Eagleton debacle, it only takes one rope to hang an enemy's campaign by the neck until dead. Celebrate, o' ye vultures! The feast is at hand!

For Glenn Beck, the rope he'd be handing Sarah Palin's ill wishers is both simple and devastating: He's a (choke! gasp!) recovering alcoholic.

Not that Glenn makes any attempt to hide it. He discusses it openly in his latest book; you can't get any more aboveboard than that. But if Mr. Beck were on the ticket in 2012, can't you just see the liberals drooling with glee as they penned their headlines?

Do you want an alcoholic one heartbeat away from the red telephone?

Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic!

Only an unstable candidate would pick such an unstable running mate!

Okay, so I didn't get that right. The headlines would actually be a lot worse than those. Those are mild. Nonetheless, mild or harsh, the effect would be the same: Sarah selecting Glenn as her V.P. pick would be pretty much the same as picking up the big gun and shooting her own campaign right in the head. She'd never make that mistake. There have to be plenty of people around her to raise a red flag if she even mentioned the possibility. And as a final bastion of defense, Glenn wouldn't ever let that happen.

Which all leads up to the real question: Who is actually floating that idea out there? Are they people from the conservative side who have somehow missed the obvious? Liberals who see a way to muddy the waters, always a favorite activity? Tabloid folks on a slow rumor day?

Got me.

So...who will Sarah pick when the time comes? She's not about to say, not this early in the game, but I'm pretty certain she'd be a fool to even narrow the possibilities down to a short list for serious consideration for a couple of years yet.

And Sarah Palin is no fool.