Can Adam Schiff Have a Spot on the Democratic Ticket?

I’d like to preface these thoughts with this: It seems to me necessary that one of the people on the Democratic presidential ticket must be a woman. From which it would follow that if Adam Schiff were to be the Democratic nominee for Vice President — as I’m here to recommend for consideration — the Democratic nominee for President would have to be a woman.

(But then, I continue to be hopeful that the Presidential nominee will be Elizabeth Warren, so that requirement doesn’t trouble me. Nonetheless, if one of the men in the chase — Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg — wins the nomination, the following thoughts probably should be irrelevant to the Veep nomination.)

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Adam Schiff has impressed me for a couple of years now, ever since he became one of the Democratic voices being heard on the crisis created by the Trump presidency. But it is only during this impeachment process — beginning with his chairing the hearings in the House Intelligence Committee, and culminating in his powerful performance as the head-man and clean-up hitter among the House Managers of the impeachment trial  — that my impression of him deepened and grown to a whole new level.

Previously, I had thought Schiff too cerebral, too lawyerly, to speak to the nation with the resonance that our crisis requires. That impression had led me to think of Schiff as an excellent man for a future Democratic President to appoint as Attorney General.

But now he’s shown us a dynamite combination — rhetorical ability, moral passion, and intellectual clarity — that I think is precisely what is required of the Democrats in this time of Trumpian and Republican corruption, criminality, and consistent dishonesty.

If I were running for President against Donald Trump, I would think that the voice of Adam Schiff would be a great asset: telling the American people what they should keep in mind about the dangers Donald Trump has posed to the nation, and would pose even more seriously if he were to win — or cheat his way to — a second term.

Schiff would in that respect be both like and unlike what many Presidents have used their VPs for. For the role of his “attack dog,” or “hatchet man.” Nixon had his Agnew (“nattering nabobs of negativism”). (And Nixon had played such a role for Eisenhower.) 

Schiff could be like that in being the guy who leads the charge against Trump, leaving the nominee free to focus more on the positive vision for the nation. But he’d be unlike that in that he would be a voice of truth-telling, of righteousness, not of distortion and viciousness. 

And Schiff, at 59 years old, is of a good age to be in the on-deck circle for a future run at the Presidency. For years, the Democrats have badly needed that kind of strong presidential bench that Schiff could provide in four or eight years (age 63 or 67, depending on a loss or a victory in 2020).

So if Elizabeth Warren (or Amy Klobuchar) heads the ticket, I believe she should give most serious thought to choosing Rep. Adam Schiff for VP.

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Some offerings:

Having spent the previous forty years investigating the forces that have shaped the human world over the millennia, I have felt compelled since 2004 to turn my full-time attention to understanding and calling out the destructive force that has taken over the political right in America over the past generation.

Here are a few articles, written in the past several years, that expressed something important to me about how our situation is to be understood and about the experience of living in times of such darkness and danger as the downward slide of American democracy and the rising power of a political force that consistently works to make our world more broken.

“Cry the Benighted Country” – on the way the balance of power between the forces of “good” and “evil” (or life-serving vs. life-degrading, or constructive vs. destructive, or wholeness vs. brokenness) can shift in a society, and how over the past generation we have witnessed an adverse shift in America.

“When Evil Rises Among a People” – on the painful and frightening experience of watching people who had seemed good and decent get transformed into something that serves “Evil.” (It starts with a stunning scene from Cabaret.)

(And one piece to which I’m quite attached, representing a much-needed break from dealing with all the darkness of these times, is “The Sacred Space of Lovers.”)

A compendium of op/eds that I’ve written weekly to challenge the conservatives, among whom I live, can be found here. And a compendium of op/eds I’ve written to challenge Liberal America to see this battle for what it is -- and to fight it as it needs to be fought -- can be found here.

In 2019, in an effort to convey the Big Picture of the dynamics driving the story of our species -- generally, and that also illuminates specifically the meaning of the current American “Trump Crisis” -- I published a series of three op/eds under the banner “WHAT SHAPES OUR WORLD.”   The three pieces – each dedicated to one big idea – were: