When Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) ran for president in 2008 and picked Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) as his running mate, Democrats tried to drive home the message that Palin was "one weak heartbeat" from the presidency, as McCain at the time was 72 years old.
Now, however, there's a real chance that the 78-year-old Donald Trump, if elected this year, would not be able to serve out his full term in office.
Washington Post contributor Matt Bai warned on Wednesday that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is likely to become the president of the United States in the future should Trump emerge victorious in this year's election.
Bai estimated that if elected, the closest comparison to Vance would be President Dwight D. Eisenhower's selection of then-first-term Sen. Richard Nixon (R-CA), who was just 39 years old at the time.
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"What you might not remember is that in 1955, Eisenhower, who at 65 was considered a notably old president, suffered a massive heart attack while on a golfing trip in Denver," Bai recalled. "That Ike survived was pretty much a flip of the coin. Had he died, America would have seen the Nixon presidency 14 years earlier than it actually did."
He then pivoted to address what a President Vance might mean for the nation.
"We should not get to Election Day without pausing to consider that Trump is 78 and, statistically speaking, far more likely to die in office than the vast majority of our presidents were. Which means we have to evaluate Vance not just as a No. 2, but as a man who stands a significant chance of running the country," Bai encouraged.
That means an official with virtually no political experience who went from an online influencer to a U.S. Senator in the blink of an eye. In his column, Bai cited the many others who have delivered warnings about the vacillating moral flexibility of the Ohio senator.
But there is one glaring difference between Nixon and Vance, he wrote: "Nixon had an abiding faith and seriousness of purpose when it came to governance."
In contrast, Bai fears, Vance "attaches no real meaning to governance, beyond the opportunity to be an influencer."
