Alarm Veeps

Vice Presidents were not always the loyal attack dogs of their presidents.  We take a look at some of the more alarming Veeps in history, and compare them with today.  

Transcript

Alarm Veeps

August 2023

“I do not propose to be buried until I am dead.” — Daniel Webster, turning down the vice presidency in 1839.

“Being vice president is comparable to “a man in a cataleptic fit; he cannot speak; he cannot move; he suffers no pain; he is perfectly conscious of all that goes on, but has no part in it.” — Thomas R. Marshall, vice president under Woodrow Wilson.

“I am vice president. In this I am nothing, but I may be everything.” — John Adams, elected vice president 1788 and 1792.

“The vice president has two duties. One is to inquire daily as to the health of the President, and the other is to attend the funerals of Third World dictators. And neither of those do I find an enjoyable exercise.” Presidential candidate John McCain, in 2000,

“I’ll tell you, Lyndon, the vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.”

John Nance Gardner talking to future Vice President and President, Lyndon Johnson 

“I’m the Vice President of the United States, you stupid little f—ers! These people should be begging me! That door should be half its height so that people can only approach me in my Office on their goddamn, motherf—ing knees!”

The fictional (thank god) Selena Meyer from the TV program VEEP

One would think the list of Vice Presidents elected to the presidency after their predecessor completed two terms would be more common. In reality, it has only happened twice. Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan each served two terms, then supported and saw their Veeps get the nod. Interestingly neither Martin Van Buren nor George HW Bush were reelected. I remember Dana Carvey’s masterful depiction of Bush lamenting, “I’m a one termer, I’m a one termer,” only to be mollified by Phil Hartman’s Bill Clinton, of all figures.  

Several circumstances explain why these one termers, unlike their predecessors, could not complete two terms. In Van Buren’s case, the panic of 1837 hung over his time in the White House like a dark cloud. The recession of 1991, combined with a 3rd party bid that garnered nearly 20% of the popular vote, sunk the HW Bush presidency enabling Bill Clinton to win with a plurality. Yet it is challenging to imagine Andrew Jackson being hindered by such picayune matter as an economic disaster. That guy took down the 2nd Bank of America, stopped an impending Civil War with the force of his personality, conquered Florida, and made the lives of tens of thousands of Native Americans a living hell. To paraphrase Frank Sinatra, he would have taken 1837 Panic doubts, chewed them up, and spit them out. Likewise, the H. Ross Perot’s bid had the potential to siphon votes from either party. 

Bill Clinton, with all his foibles, it’s hard to imagine beating 80s vintage Reagan.  

That brings us to 2016 and the standard bearer, after two consecutive terms, of the Democratic Party. Writing for the New York Times, Peter Baker noted, “Barack Obama did not think Joseph R. Biden Jr. should run for President — he hardly needed to say it out loud for aides to understand that. The trick that summer of 2015 was finding a way to nudge Mr. Biden to stay out of the race without looking as if he was nudging Mr. Biden to stay out of the race. The President had long since concluded that Hillary Clinton had the best chance of winning in 2016. Beyond that, Mr. Biden was awash in grief over the death of his son, hardly the state of mind for a grueling presidential marathon.” 

That last part was typical of Obama. On the surface, all concern and cool, and underneath, feral calculation. Two mistakes about the Obama character are the overestimation of his intellect and underestimating of his cunning. After three failed presidential bids and a thorough knowledge of Biden, Obama’s real calculus was that Hillary was the better candidate, Joe’s personal life notwithstanding.  

And if Obama had supported him, would Biden have foregone the campaign? After the death of his wife and daughter in 1972, Biden remained in the Senate despite having two motherless boys at home. The official story is that Senate Majority Mike Mansfield talked him out of resigning his seat but with Biden, what is reality and fable is always a blur. Biden got the last laugh in 2020, accomplishing what Hillary Clinton could not, besting Donald Trump. You know somewhere in his heart Joe, being Joe, wanted to say F you Barack, who’s the man now?”

Like Biden, and for some Veeps, it was all’s well that ends well, sort of. Richard Nixon lost a narrow election in 1960 (The Daley machine, now those guys knew how to steal an election!) but came back in 1968 and won a landslide in 1972, only to resign from the Office in disgrace. And, of course, Biden came back in 2020 to Office and, like his former boss, Obama, has a very real chance at a second term, assuming he is still physically able to mount the dais to take the oath of Office. That is a big if as of this writing.  

But this is not just a story about presidents helping their number twos, but also what happens when that person attacks the President who gave them the Office. Here is a little constitutional history. In the first five presidential elections, the Vice President was the person who garnered the second most electoral votes setting up some awkward cabinet meetings. President John Adams, “I am thinking of supporting an Alien and Sedition Act, Jefferson can you pass the wine, please?” Vice President Thomas Jefferson, “I think this act will create a tyranny with you as a reckless tyrant, I despise this act, and you and I will oppose with every fiber of my being, now, do you want the red or the white?”   

The weirdness of that election process changed in 1804. Amendment Twelve to the Constitution revises and outlines the procedure of how Presidents and Vice Presidents are elected, specifically so that they are running for separate offices and are elected together. What a concept. One of the impetuses for this was the elections of 1796 and 1800. In the first case, Adams edged out Jefferson so that the person slated to succeed him was also his most obdurate political enemy. Then in 1800, Aaron Burr had more electoral votes than Adams, thus saving Adams the odium of going back to an office (doubt he would have served) that he himself described as “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” 

Regardless of whatever Lin-Manual Miranda and HW Brands does to resuscitate Aaron Burr’s reputation, he was not exactly a stellar man. And though he had more electoral votes than Adams, he had the same amount as Jefferson. Before the 12th Amendment, the electoral college procedures then prevailing, the electors had cast their votes for both Thomas Jefferson and Burr without indicating which should be President and which vice president. Both men had an equal number of electoral votes, and the Federalist-controlled House of Representatives had to break the tie. Although Burr maintained that he would not challenge Jefferson—an assertion that Jefferson did not wholly accept—Hamilton’s determined opposition to Burr was a decisive factor in Jefferson’s election after 36 ballots. Burr took Office as Veep, but he was marginalized by Jefferson, who had come to believe that Burr had been engaged in secret dealings to secure the presidency for himself.

That and other incidents left Burr deeply unpopular with party leaders, and his renomination as vice president seemed doubtful. So four years after his bitter loss to Jefferson and his political future in complete turmoil, the sitting Vice President of the United States killed the former Treasury Secretary in a duel. In February 1804, Burr’s friends in the New York legislature nominated him for the governorship. Hamilton contributed to Burr’s defeat by disseminating letters containing derogatory comments about Burr. Shortly thereafter, Governor Clinton replaced Burr as the Republican vice presidential candidate. Once again, Burr felt himself the political victim of Hamilton’s animosity and challenged him to a duel at Weehawken, New Jersey. (Although duels were illegal in New York and New Jersey, the penalties were less severe in the latter state.) Hamilton was fatally wounded and died the next day. Burr’s fortunes, not precisely in the ascendant prior to the duel, plummeted further. He was to live another 32 years but never again got near the levers of power. Had one elector shifted, our third chief executive could have been President Aaron Burr and not the writer of the Declaration.  

In the antebellum era between James Monroe and Abraham Lincoln, with the notable exception of Andrew Jackson, politics was not dominated by the presidents as it is today. Rather three members of Congress stand out over the 40 years from 1820 to 1860. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun. The last of these three hailed from South Carolina and had the distinction of serving as Vice President for two very different Presidents; John Quincy Adams and the aforementioned Jackson.  

Quincy Adams, the Massachusetts son of a former President, and Calhoun, the slave owner from the South, got along well at first. They shared a common antagonism towards the British and belief in Henry Clay’s American system, a sort of infrastructure plan for the early 1800s. While in Monroe’s Cabinet, Calhoun grew apart from Adams, and the debate surrounding Missouri in 1820 was aggravated by hardening their contrasting opinions on slavery. Former friends Adams and Calhoun were rivals in the 1824 presidential election until Calhoun dropped out of the presidential contest and ran successfully for Vice President. Though the 12th Amendment meant that a candidate was no longer running for both offices simultaneously, it did not mean a package deal. So like his father, Quincy Adams could look across the table, assuming he invited Calhoun to cabinet meetings with a political opponent.  

Whatever friendship might have endured from the past was wiped away by the result of 1824, an election Andrew Jackson, who won the popular vote, called a corrupt bargain. The electoral vote was decided in the House of Representatives, where Clay, wielding power and influence, helped give the election to Adams. The new President then offered the choice post of Secretary of State to Clay. Hence Jackson’s and Calhoun’s antipathy toward what both believed was an unrighteous act.  

Formerly a staunch nationalist, the deal put Calhoun on the path to becoming the South’s most ardent defender of states’ rights and becoming Jackson’s VP. As Vice President and, therefore, President of the Senate, Calhoun undermined Adams throughout his entire presidency. One crucial example is that Calhoun appointed Adams’s political foes to the head of key Senate committees, including the Foreign Relations Committee, the Finance Committee, and the Committee for Military Affairs, which pushed Jacksonian politics in the Senate. Additionally, Calhoun worked with Martin van Buren to garner support for a Jackson presidency, which they achieved in 1828, and his prize was his second term as VP, albeit with a different man and a different party.

The equivalent of today would be for Harris to undermine Joe Biden and work with Former President Donald Trump or Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis for their election and then assume the vice presidency with one of them. The absurdity of this in 2023 shows how much the role has evolved. 

But love was not last. Calhoun being Calhoun, he made two mistakes that brought him the formidable rancor of Jackson. The first of these was relatively silly. The second was of the utmost seriousness. Jackson’s Secretary of War and close personal friend John Eaton had newly married recent widow Peggy Timberlake. We will say her reputation was not the highest order, and the leading women of Washington society shunned the new Mrs. Eaton. The ringleader of these women was none other than Floride Calhoun. Jackson became consumed with protecting Mrs. Eaton’s reputation, mainly because these attacks reminded Jackson of the attacks on his beloved wife Rachel, which he attributed to her early death. Calhoun supported his wife’s actions which caused a wedge between Jackson and Calhoun. Jackson had fought and been shot in at least one duel over his wife’s honor questions. Admire him, or despise Jackson, but he was not a man to be trifled with.  

The other fissure was of greater import to history than just Jackson’s omnipresent sense of honor. In 1830 a debate in the Senate, South Carolina Senator Robert Hayne argued that states had the right to nullify federal laws when they infringed on their rights. Since a proposed tariff infringed on South Carolinian’s rights, they did not have to submit to this unjust federal authority. Jackson commonly supported states’ rights, but not at the expense of the Union, and especially not when he was in charge of that Union. Jackson once said he “would rather die in the last ditch than see the union dismantled.” During this Nullification Crisis, Calhoun refused to waver in his support for South Carolina. Jackson’s success in preventing South Carolina and presumably other states from leaving the Union was pivotal in American History. When the rupture happened 30 years later, the North had industrialized and grown to a point where they had the resources to conquer the South, which would have been immeasurably more difficult in the 1830s.  

Because of these actions, Jackson had his staunch ally Martin Van Buren run with him as a ticket (one of the precedents for future elections). Due to the President’s popularity, Calhoun did not stand a chance to reclaim the Vice Presidency. He returned to the Senate.  

Is it fair to include John Tyler on this list as he was Vice President for a very short time before President William Henry Harrison died in his first month of Office? Tyler thus became the first Veep to succeed to the presidency through the death or resignation of a president. Why alarming? When the first southern states seceded in 1861, Tyler led a compromise movement; failing, he worked to create the Southern Confederacy. He died in 1862 as a member of the Confederate House of Representatives. Thus a former president became a traitor to the nation he once served.  

Andrew Johnson, selected by Lincoln to balance the ticket of 1864 with a pro-Union, Democratic Party southerner, became President upon Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. After becoming President, Johnson fought with his own Cabinet and party members over the scope of readmitting secessionist states and the voting rights of blacks. Johnson favored a very lenient version of Reconstruction and state control over who could vote, according to their race. He also openly opposed the 14th Amendment.

Although Johnson supported ending slavery in the 1860s, he was a white supremacist. “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men,” he wrote in 1866.

Victor Hugo asked, “What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.” If there is an echo of the Biden Administration, it is Woodrow Wilson’s and a massive 1919 stroke. Okay, Biden is not as debilitated by old age as Wilson was by his malady. Wilson’s wife Edith and his advisors didn’t want to tell Thomas Marshall, Wilson’s VP, the full extent of Wilson’s incapacitation and kept him in the dark as long as possible. We can see Biden, albeit in a significantly diminished form, but the public did not see much of his Wilson as his administration petered out. Edith would bring his “decisions” to the Cabinet, but were they Wilson’s, or was the first lady carrying out the President’s constitutional duties and making the decisions herself?

Marshall famously said, “I was the Wilson administration’s spare tire - to be used only in case of emergency.” Well, there was an emergency, and whereas the likes of Burr and Calhoun would have been all over the situation, Marshall demurred. He steadfastly refused to assume the presidency's powers without written requests from first lady Edith Wilson, the President’s doctor, and a congressional resolution, fearing that he would be accused of “longing for [Wilson’s] place.” It did not help that Wilson and Edith did not like the VP. Marshall and Wilson’s relationship was one of functioning animosity. While Wilson was stoic and businesslike, Marshall was full of handshakes and one-liners. He once gifted the President with a book inscribed, “From your only vice.” Thinking I knew which of the two men I would rather have a beer with.

While Wilson was incapacitated, Marshall presided over cabinet meetings but made no major decisions. We can only imagine if Vice President Kamala Harris would be so hesitant. We need not debate that; she would have a notary public in the Office with a bible faster than Usain Bolt can run 100 yards. 

Henry Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt’s 2nd VP, was one of those moments when Roosevelt and his advisors heard the alarm bells. Wallace declared his greatest aspiration was “to make the world safe for corn breeders.” Picked to run with FDR in 1940, against the advice of many, Wallace was, well, odd. Among his many interests was a mystical approach toward religion — he dabbled in ideologies ranging from Catholicism to Zoroastrianism. Because I am reading a book on the Sassanid Persians, this latter is startling given Roosevelt’s health. Due to his strange proclivities, too much fascination with the Soviet Union, and suspecting Roosevelt was not forthcoming on his health, Democratic leaders rejected Wallace in 1944 for Missouri Senator Harry S Truman, who had made a name overseeing war production. Truman then succeeded to the presidency in April 1945 after FDR’s death.

Given the Commerce Department as a sop, Wallace opposed Truman over the nation’s aggressive posturing with the Soviet Union, which the agricultural expert deemed dangerously hawkish. The clash earned Wallace a reputation among his detractors as a “Stalinist stooge.” The thought of Wallace sitting across from Stalin, enacting the Marshall Plan, integrating the army, managing the coal strike, or dealing with the Korean War instead of the stolid Truman, is unsettling.  

On October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew resigned as Vice President. A law and order guy when Governor of Maryland, and campaigning as such as Richard Nixon’s VP candidate in 1968 and 1972, pleaded no contest to a federal income tax evasion charge in exchange for dropping political corruption charges. He was subsequently fined $10,000, sentenced to three years probation, and disbarred by the Maryland Court of Appeals. In many regards, Agnew personified the attack dog VP. Hated by the Democrats, many of whom he accused as un-American for lack of support for the Vietnam War, he would serve as the unofficial archetype for Obama’s own VP choice.  

The nature of the Office has changed since the days in 1860 when Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was added to the Lincoln ticket. The thought was to provide a Northeastern presence to balance Lincoln’s Midwestern representation. When Hamlin was added, the two men had never met.  

And times have changed since John Nance Garner (Mr. warm bucket of Spit) decided after two terms in the VP slot to run against his former boss. Garner’s previously friendly relationship with the President had soured. Garner disagreed sharply with him on a wide range of essential issues, including federal intervention to break up the Flint sit-down strike, support for a balanced federal budget, opposition to the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937 to “pack” the Supreme Court, and executive interference with the internal business of the Congress. From my perspective, Garner sounded like a guy I would have backed. But it was not to be. Roosevelt dispensed with the two-term precedent and ran again, assuring Garner’s retirement.   

Even Ronald Reagan was initially reluctant to put George HW Bush on his ticket as the latter had stayed in the primary even though it was apparent he would lose. 

But Reagan was an outsider, and he knew he needed the moderate insider Bush as his partner. Though they were best buddies, Bush served loyally during Reagan’s term and received his prize with the nomination in 1988.  

The time of the VP feuds is largely gone, at least publicly. Bush faithfully served Reagan as Dan Quayle did Bush. We have not heard of Clinton vs. Gore or even Obama vs. Biden. Obama may not have had a high opinion of Biden’s intellect, but he never questioned his loyalty. And even after Office, there is very little public antagonisms. And that brings us to the first President vs. Veep imbroligo in decades.  

Mike Pence made some pointed remarks on Trump’s recent indictment, well, his third indictment (hard to keep count) this year. “Let’s be clear on this point; it wasn’t just that they asked for a pause. The President specifically asked me -- his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me -- to reject votes which would have resulted in the issue being turned over to the House of Representatives. Literally chaos would have ensued,” Pence responded. They asked me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election, and to keep faith with the oath that I made and the American people and to Almighty God, I rejected that out of hand,” 

Trump’s actions and antics are rare in this era of the sycophantic Veep. There were two of his responses: 

“Like Mike Pence, who I took from a flawed and failing gubernatorial re-elect campaign in the Great State of Indiana to make my V.P., Ron (DeSantis) is a very disloyal guy who has taken bad advice!” 

In a second Truth Social post, Trump wrote: “I feel badly for Mike Pence, who is attracting no crowds, enthusiasm, or loyalty from people who, as a member of the Trump Administration, should be loving him.”

Before these remarks, back in 2022, Trump said, “Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be frankly historic. But just like [former Attorney General] Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people, Mike, and I say it sadly ’cause I like him, but Mike did not have the courage to act,” Trump said.  

I have been clear about my not voting for Trump in 2024. One of the many reasons is he has failed in arguably the one key area of any leader of a large organization. A CEO of a $25 million company can only be everywhere at a time, so the selection of talent to assist is crucial. So how does that work with a $4 trillion leviathan? The purview of a president is the ability to choose a chief of staff, a budget director, a national security team, and 15 formal cabinet posts. It is the only job I have ever heard of with at least 23 direct reports. 

And Trump, by his admission, sucks at the role. Of the four chiefs of staff he selected, he dumped one in seven months (Reince Priebus), John Kelly was “weak and ineffective and had a very small brain,” and Mark Mulvaney was a “born loser.” He trashed not one but all his attorney generals, defense secretaries, and Secretaries of State until Pompeo took the job. And the veep role, which could be “everything” in Adams’s words, was staffed by a man so weak that he was again, in Trump’s quotes, “flawed, failing, disloyal, and takes bad advice.” Thanks, Don, for putting someone so pathetic into the VP role.  

All of this would be great if this were a Netflix special or the WWE, but this is the world’s only superpower, and the GOP base wants to give it to a guy who either picks people with small brains or is fooled by them into giving them the positions. 

As if stopping the steal, January 6 and Mar A Lago classified files next to the gilded toilet were insufficient; this alone is disqualifying. I want my leader to find people with large brains thank you.  

If there was a pivotal year for the vice presidency, it was not 1804, the year of the 12th Amendment, but rather 1836. As we have noted, it was that year that Jackson decided (Jackson usually decided on … well, anything) who his running mate was going to be. Then followed a 150-year period where the party bosses would choose the 2nd slot, but the person running in the first tier still had the final say. And after 1980, the party bosses lost that power. 

There is little doubt that Clinton added Gore, Obama who decided on Biden and that Biden, trapping himself into a declaration of a woman of color, added the onerous Kamala Harris.  

In Harris, we are witnessing a politician who is weak on policy, cannot do retail politics, is a lousy communicator, and has earned the enmity of her and Biden’s staff. Other than that a stellar choice. But an attribute, her singular one, aside from her identities, is that she has not publicly questioned Biden, well at least since she became VP. She sets off alarm veeps for a host of reasons. Seeing her in place of her doddering near, senile boss presiding over a State of the Union address is the stuff of waking nightmares but, again, loyalty. 

Something a great many Veeps did not provide.