Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1904 — Fairbanks For Vice President. [ARTICLE]

Fairbanks For Vice President.

About the only place in the country where there seems to be any reluctance to the nomination of Fairbanks for vice president, is right here in Indiana. And that reluctance is based on the idea not that he isn’t big enough for the place, but altogether too big. The idea bein.; that he, being in every way a fit man to be the head of the ticket, it in some way seems a waste of good material to place him in the second place. This does not seem to us the proper way to look at the matter, for surely no man ought to be elected vice president who is not great enough to also be president, which any vice president may at any moment be called upon to be. As to the idea that putting a man into the vice president’s place necessarily puts him out of running for president that is a mere superstitution and deserved of no serious consideration. The fact that dur-

ing later generations no vice presidents have been afterwards elected presidents has not been due to the fact that being vice presidents has lost them their popularity, but to other causes. One of these has been the former quite too common practice of considering locality rather than fitness in nominating the vice-presidents, and thus second rate men have often been the vice-presidents. But when acknowledged presidential timber like Fairbanks, is made vice-presi-dent, especially on the ticket with a president who is on his second and last term, there is no reason on earth why being vice president should not makehim stronger instead of weaker, as a candidate for the presidency.