Tim kaine was the worst vp nominee of the last 200 years.
At least Palin was interesting
Let’s be honest, there hasn’t been a strong VP pick by either side in over 20 years. Biden included
I actually read an article last week regarding VPs analyzed as against their actual job since the founding and the author considered that only recently have we truly had "good VPs" and while I might quibble he named Bush, Gore, Cheney and Biden.
Until Jimmy Carter it was actually not considered custom to even brief the Vice President on
anything. The VP would often leave town with Congress. (Which used to be in DC only a couple months out of the year.) Truman was rather infamously informed of the Manhattan Project
after FDR died, along with all war planning and everything else.
Calvin Coolidge, under Warren G. Harding, was the first and until Carter had Mondale invited (and Reagan continued with Bush) only VP to ever sit in cabinet meetings.
VP picks weren't even chosen (and arguably still aren't really) with much focus on how they might ascend to the Presidency. When John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur and Theodore Roosevelt all rose to the presidency they came from different wings of the party (or even different parties!) and held policies and agendas completely against that of the President they were replacing. That's one reason that of them only Roosevelt was ever re-nominated (and he essentially had an entire term as McKinley died in 1901) let alone re-elected.
Even worse, nobody even considered replacing the VP until FDR died because the position was seen as so useless and unnecessary that the succession wasn't even thought of. That was why Andrew Johnson's impeachment was an attempt by the then next-in-line Benjamin Wade to take control of the Presidency. Something that wouldn't have happened with Nixon, Clinton and wouldn't with Trump as they all had VPs who could then add their own VPs. (As Ford did.)
Heck, even when Taylor, Garfield and McKinley were dying (and Wilson was incapacitated and FDR was borderline so) there was nothing to temporarily hand the powers to the VP like now is done when Presidents get a colonoscopy. It took until Reagan even after the empowerment of the President for one to finally set the precedent of handing over the powers temporarily. And that wasn't even when he was shot! (Since he couldn't, and which led to Alexander Haig's coup attempt.)
I've wandered off track but you totally expect this at this point. But anyway, VPs have never been all that important really, even as ticket balancers, especially after conventions stopped being relevant. And even these "strong VPs" that we have now might in some ways be worse than non-entities at times, for all the good things that an empowered one could do by taking on some of the executive load, you have had Bush with his hands in Iran-Contra, Gore with those fundraising crimes, Cheney with all his shit,
that time Biden sneezed and embarrassed the country, etc.
In the context of pure politics, I think Palin is arguably one of the better picks in that McCain was doomed anyway and needed to fire up the GOP base to even have a chance. Had she managed to be simply normal in gaffes it would have been an excellent pick in political terms. I know that most everyone else on the planet disagrees with me.
edit: One other goofy thing I just randomly remembered. From 1828-1908, no Vice President was re-nominated, even when the President was. (The Democrats did twice pick the same VP candidate an election apart but he lost one of the two times.)
