Bizarre Vice Presidential Facts
Let’s face it . . . serving as vice president
can invite unwanted notoriety as somebody’s punch line or become a one-way ticket to historical anonymity. “Once
there were two brothers,” commented Thomas R. Marshall, who served two terms in the job under Woodrow Wilson.
“One ran away to sea, the other was elected vice president, and nothing was ever heard of either of them again.”
John Nance Garner, FDR’s first vice president, signaled a similarly low opinion of the job when he grumbled that it
wasn’t worth a “warm bucket of spit.” Nance’s fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson offered the same
lament during his time as JFK’s vice president – although, intentionally or not, he replaced “spit”
with a more vivid word that rhymed with it.
That’s not to say that the role of
vice president has automatically rendered obsolete everybody who assumed it. Some vice presidents like Thomas Jefferson
and Teddy Roosevelt have gone up to the next level and even achieved Mount Rushmore-like immortality, a few like Nelson Rockefeller
would have earned a place in the history books anyway without taking the job, and a couple – definitely Aaron Burr,
probably Dick Cheney – left a lasting impression thanks to a little extracurricular gun slinging while in office.
They’re the exceptions to the rule, however, and most vice presidents
have fallen and remained below the radar. Take Daniel Tompkins, for example. The guy was in the number two job
for eight years– only one of seven with that distinction, as a matter of fact – and served under the very popular
James Monroe during a high-water point in our history known as the Era of Good Feeling. And in a country where outlandish
behavior is usually a calling-card for perpetual fame, Tompkins sometimes spent his vice presidency drunk while presiding
over the U.S. Senate. And yet . . . the only noteworthy cultural reference to Tompkins can be found in the perennial
1947 holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street when Kris Kringle mentions his name during a psychological
evaluation. Unfortunately, that movie’s screenplay was in error because Kringle says that Tompkins served under Monroe’s
successor John Quincy Adams. So much for notoriety.
Perhaps the only public figures collectively
deserving even more of a sad-sack, easy-to-forget reputation are those vice presidential running-mates who didn’t even
win their elections. A lot of those guys – Theodore Frelinghuysen, John A. Logan, Arthur Sewall, Joseph T. Robinson,
to name just a few – were long ago buried both physically and figuratively. Others became noteworthy historical
figures after and despite (not because of) their supporting roles in losing national-party tickets. FDR, who went crashing
down to a landslide defeat as Democratic presidential nominee James M. Cox’s running mate in 1920, would later erase
that setback by winning elections to the highest office in the land a record four times. And Earl Warren, who was the
Republican vice presidential candidate when his party’s standard-bearer Thomas E. Dewey lost to Harry S Truman in 1948,
would have likely become just a tough-to-answer Trivial Pursuit answer had he not gone on to become one of our most activist
(and controversial) Supreme Court chief justices.
At other times, vice presidential also-rans
are dimly recalled not because they rose from the ashes of defeat but because their candidacies illustrate why their parties
were on the losing side in the first place. Henry G. Davis is one clear example of this. In 1904, the Democrats
found themselves in the unenviable position of trying to unseat the tremendously popular Republican incumbent Teddy Roosevelt
from the White House. The colorless Judge Alton B. Parker, who wouldn’t even work actively for the Democratic
nomination, was selected to run against Roosevelt for the presidency. Davis, an 81-year-old former U.S. senator from
West Virginia, was nominated for vice president. He remains the oldest major-party candidate ever nominated for national
office (not even John McCain is in danger of threatening that record). It is abundantly obvious that, in picking an
octogenarian like Davis to run for a job that would place him so close to the seat of presidential power, the Democrats were
already acknowledging that the game was up and they had a snowball’s chance in you-know-where of beating Roosevelt.
They were right too; Roosevelt resoundingly coasted to election that fall.
A
more modern example took place in 1972, when beleaguered Democratic nominee George McGovern struggled mightily to find someone,
anyone, to run with him against Republican incumbents Richard M. Nixon and Spiro Agnew. McGovern just couldn’t
readily find himself a date for the presidential sweepstakes prom. His top three choices for running mate -- Ted Kennedy,
Abraham Ribicoff, and Reubin Askew – all spurned him. Then McGovern turned to a Missouri senator named Thomas
F. Eagleton, who accepted and was officially nominated. That’s when the real fun began. Not too long after
the Democratic convention, it was revealed that Eagleton had been hospitalized for mental depression and undergone shock therapy.
McGovern, after initially insisting that he stood behind his running mate “1,000 percent,” wound up dumping him
from the ticket and scurrying around for a replacement. The Democratic National Committee ended up giving the nod to
Maryland’s Sargent Shriver, a former Peace Corps director and Kennedy brother-in-law. The Kennedy connection might
have been enough to help McGovern win that family’s home base of Massachusetts, but none of the other states.
The one bright spot for the Democrats from that year, however, is that those briefly used McGovern-Eagleton campaign buttons
must fetch a fortune on e-Bay these days.
A New York politician named William E.
Miller, in the spirit of Marshall’s humorous remark about vice presidents, became perhaps the most effective spokesman
on behalf of those who couldn’t even land the job. In 1964, Miller had been Barry Goldwater’s running mate
in what turned out to be a huge electoral loss for Republicans; about a decade later, he good-naturedly parlayed his relative
anonymity in one of the first “Do you know me?” American Express TV commercials, quipping how nobody knew who
he was anymore without that credit card. Another losing vice presidential candidate, 1984 Democratic nominee Geraldine
Ferraro, would use her also-ran status to hawk Diet Pepsi in commercials (albeit not as successfully or endearingly).
If there’s anybody who has earned the all-time prize
for most hapless vice presidential running mate, however, it has to be Richard M. Johnson. He actually did serve as
vice president, but his entry into that role and exit out of it qualifies him as at least an honorary also-ran.
Johnson aggressively sought the number-two spot on the Democratic national ticket in 1836.
To his supporters, he was a rugged hero during the War of 1812 who had (allegedly) shot and killed the greatly feared Shawnee
leader Tecumseh; to his detractors, however, he was somebody unworthy of national office. Many people loathed Johnson
due to that Kentucky politician’s relationship with Julia Chinn, a slave bequeathed to him by his father. Johnson
was very open about that relationship, regarding Chinn as his common-law wife and making it no secret that her two daughters
were also his. While today Johnson appears to have been way ahead of his time when it comes to interracial relationships
and even comparatively enlightened, it was definitely a hot-button source of contention with many of his contemporaries.
Those critics, however, arguably had other reasons to likewise be against him. Johnson’s congressional career
included its share of questionable causes, like when he made a proposal in the Senate for a government-funded expedition to
the center of the Earth to see if it was hollow (that proposal was decisively voted down). Even Johnson’s biggest
plus among his supporters didn’t sway his opponents. One detractor questioned whether “a lucky random shot,
even if it did hit Tecumseh, qualifies a man for the vice presidency.”
Johnson’s
opponents almost won the day at the Democratic convention. While Martin Van Buren was unanimously nominated for president,
Johnson received the nod to be his running mate only after a great deal of nail-biting and behind-the-scenes deal making.
That fall’s general election would play out in a similar fashion; Van Buren handily won in both popular and electoral
votes, but Johnson fell significantly short in the latter, more essential category. As a result, the Senate for the
first and to date only time had to elect a vice president under the provisions of the 12th Amendment. That
divided chamber ended up giving the job to Johnson.
His subsequent stint in the second-highest
office in the land did little if anything to win over critics. An especially glaring episode was the nine-month leave
of absence Johnson took so that he took on the heels of the Panic of 1837 to open a tavern and spa on his Kentucky farm.
One person who visited Johnson there during that time subsequently wrote Van Buren that he found the vice president “happy
in the inglorious pursuit of tavern keeping – even giving his personal superintendence to the chicken and egg purchasing
and water-melon selling department.”
By the time the 1840 presidential election
year rolled around, Johnson was seen by many of his Democrats as a huge obstacle to Van Buren’s chances of winning again.
Van Buren, however, balked at disowning Johnson. Whig presidential nominee William Henry Harrison, the hero of the Battle
of Tippecanoe, was mounting a strong bid for the White House and Van Buren – a noncombatant himself during the War of
1812 – therefore couldn’t formally jettison the one military veteran on the Democratic side. That resulted
in an unusual compromise whereby the Democratic convention didn’t pick Johnson or anyone else for vice president; Van
Buren, renominated unanimously, officially ran by himself. Johnson, perhaps hoping that the Senate would help him once
again with the vice presidency, hit the campaign trail hard. The results of that effort weren’t always attractive.
He raised his shirt in front of one audience to show his wartime wounds, and in Cleveland nearly caused a riot by castigating
Ohio resident and favorite son Harrison. Once again, however, Johnson didn’t get as many electoral votes as Van
Buren; this time, however, that didn’t really matter because Van Buren lost the election anyway.
Johnson’s running-mate follies in both 1836 and 1840 may have left something of a lingering bad impression.
When the Democrats nominated James K. Polk for president in 1844, they initially chose a New York senator named Silas Wright
for the second-place slot. Wright, perhaps mindful of Johnson’s political fate or maybe just having better things
to do, then made history as the first major-party national nominee to decline the chance to run. It was a squandered
opportunity in one respect, because Polk did win that year. On the other hand, Wright could have been looking ahead
to the ignominy that traditionally befalls not just vice presidential candidates but those who actually win on Election Day.
