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Cheney press secretary Megan Mitchell left the question open on Tuesday, saying Cheney’s schedule has not been set for September. Delegates are set to meet in St. Paul, Minn., on Sept. 1-4.
It would be highly unusual for a sitting vice president to skip his party’s nominating convention. For the last 32 years the vice president has been either renominated for that job or nominated for president.
Cheney has low approval ratings and is widely regarded as a secretive, behind-the-scenes power broker. But his approach plays well to conservatives. The White House has to calculate whether Cheney would help or hurt Sen. John McCain’s campaign for the presidency.
President Bush will deliver a speech on the first night of the convention and then leave, turning over the spotlight to McCain.
Democrats are working hard to link McCain to Cheney, mindful of his unpopularity with the general public and his villain-like status among their party’s rank and file. On Tuesday, Democratic candidate Barack Obama linked the nation’s energy problems to Cheney and contended that McCain was following “the Cheney playbook.”
The DNC rolled out a new Web site on Tuesday called “The Next Cheney.” It assails McCain’s potential vice presidential picks and links each to Cheney.
McCain is quoted on the page as saying to Cheney in 2001, “With a little more luck, I might have been able to ask you to be my vice president.”
Even vice presidents not receiving a nomination have attended their party conventions in recent political history.
In 1976 President Ford chose Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, not Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, as his running mate. Rockefeller, who had been appointed to a position he no longer wanted, still appeared at the convention, nominating Dole.
Nearly 24 years earlier, in 1952, Vice President Alben W. Barkley abandoned a bid to succeed President Truman but still addressed delegates, who gave Barkley a wild ovation.
