Vice President James Baker?



(image via timeinc)

Come on: You Know He Wants It. Isn't this how logically The Bush Operetta ends? The Darth Vaderish Cheney feigns a mechanical heart malfunction and James Baker swoops in like the ambitious vampire he is and takes over the Vice Presidency. Condi can rest soundly. Baker has already served as SecState. It would be anticlimatic to redo that office, especially after he presided over the dismantling of the Soviet Empire and the Apartheid regime (The Corsair pours himself a glass of Napoleonic Armagnac). The cherry-on-the-top of career as a non-elected "Statesman" is The Veep position. After Al Gore radically altered the nature of the Vice Presidency, from the guy who attends funerals of dead-heads-of-State to a real player capable of statesmanlike activity, it had James Addison Baker's name all over it. No one covets being the Platonic Eidos of The Statesman more than Baker, the Velvet Hammer.

And he's already bested the greatest Beurocratic infighter since Lucius Aelius Sejanus, namely: Rummy. After crippling Cheney by taking out his uncolorful henchman, Next, mark The Corsair's words, is Cheney.

James Addison Baker was born to be the Vice President.