I've been rewatching Raws from 1997 on. Well I'm in Arpil of 1999. The pilot episode of Smackdown. I know their plans fell apart as they had someone else in mind to be the "higher power" but it fell through so they went with Vince. My question is: Why didn't they just go with Shane McMahon as the higher power? It made a whole lot more sense than Vince did. Shane had motive, he had means, and he had opportunity. His rise to power coincided with Undertaker's continued attacks on the McMahon family, yet Shane went practically untested. With Vince tied up with Taker, Shane gained nearly full power, slapped his father and pretty much bitched him out. Even on the pilot episode of Smackdown, Shane comes out and unites with the Undertaker, thus forming the "Corporate Ministry" Wouldn't that have been the perfect time to unveil Shane as the "Higher Power" I actually liked the whole Ministry angle and Undertaker's attempts to take over the WWF, but it all jumped the shark with the illogical reveal of Vince as the Higher Power.
So to end this unexpectedly long post, my question is: Why not have Shane be the higher power instead of Vince?
Well, Meltzer has said recently that there was no other plan, it was always Vince as the Higher Power.
But I mean really, Shane was already in charge of the operation, so revealing him as the mastermind would have been pretty disappointing from a SWERVE standpoint. And don't even get me started on how stupid the CORPORATE MINISTRY idea was. "First I'm going to literally attempt to murder you on the biggest PPV of the year, then reveal we've been working together all along." Boy, an attempted hanging really throws people off the scent, doesn't it?