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“Once upon a time there was a farmer who had two sons. One of them ran off to sea. The other was elected vice president of the United States. Nothing was ever heard of either of them again.”
—Thomas Marshall, vice president under Woodrow Wilson
Here’s why it’s a rotten job:
It’s a ticket to public ridicule, powerlessness, and—for most—eventual oblivion. Of the forty-six vice presidents who have served, only fourteen have gone on to be president (and only five of those VPs got elected president; the rest moved up from the VP seat because of death or resignation and then either refused to run again or ran and lost). As VP Thomas Marshall implies above, the rest have been sent out to pasture and have never been heard from again.
Let’s face it. The job of vice president was an afterthought on the part of the Constitutional Convention, put into the works for only one reason: so that if the president died or was otherwise unable to perform his duties, there would be someone there to replace him without the need for a special election.
“At a convintion nearly all th’ dillygates lave as soon as they’ve nommyynated th’ prisidint f’r fear wan iv thim will be mommyynated f’r vice presidint.”
—A POLITICAL BOSS COMMENTING IN 1906 ON THE PROCESS OF CHOOSING A VICE PRESIDENT
The Veep isn’t part of the legislative branch of the government. Nor is he a member of the executive branch. And if you read the Constitution literally, he is neither the president’s subordinate nor someone to whom the president can, as a matter of course, give orders.
The vice president’s only expressed responsibilities are:
• To preside over the Senate (but that doesn’t mean he ever has to show up; most modern Veeps physically preside over the Senate less than 2 percent of the time it is in session).
• To vote to break a tie (but he has no vote in the Senate at any other time).
As for unexpressed duties:
• He serves on the boards of the National Security Council and the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.
• He names a total of five cadets to the three military academies, and he appoints senators to such commissions as the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission.
Anything else he does during his term is at the request of the president.
Suddenly, the glamour of it all washes away. Unlike the job of president (which is what all Veeps really want), the job of vice president begins to look like a dead end. But don’t take our word for it. Let those who have served and those who have declined tell you in their own words.
Jurassic Veeps?
* * *
Vice President Thomas Marshall once summed up his job as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution by describing it as “an opportunity [for the vice president] to compare his fossilized life with the fossils of all ages.”
“TELL HIM TO GO TO HELL”
—Truman’s initial response when he heard FDR wanted him to run as his VP
The room was crowded. Every damn political boss in the country was there, any of them you would want to name, and half a dozen governors.
And they all said, “Harry, we want you to be Vice President.” I said, “I’m not going to do it.”
Well, Bob Hannegan had put in a call to Roosevelt who was … down at San Diego. They finally got him on the phone. And with Roosevelt you didn’t need a phone. All you had to do was raise the window and you could hear him.
I was sitting on one twin bed, and Bob was on the other in this room, and Roosevelt said [Mr. Truman gave a near-perfect imitation of Roosevelt, Harvard accent and all], Roosevelt said, “Bob, have you got that guy lined up yet on that vice Presidency?”
And Bob said, “No. He’s the contrariest goddamn mule from Missouri I ever saw.”
“Well,” Roosevelt said, “you tell him if he wants to break up the Democratic Party in the middle of the war and maybe lose that war that’s up to him.”
—Harry Truman, in the book Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman
“My country, in its wisdom, contrived for me
the most insignificant office that ever the invention
of man contrived or his imagination
conceived.”
—John Adams, America’s first vice president
“Please accept my sincere sympathy.”
—Telegram from Democratic vice president
Marshall to newly nominated Republican VP
candidate Calvin Coolidge
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOT MUCH
Politics is power, and power can be summed up as the ability to spend and the ability to appoint. It should be noted, then, that in the 1880s the vice president had the power to make exactly four appointments: He could appoint his own secretary, his own private messenger, his own private telegraph operator, and—the appointment that was likely to be the most controversial—he had the power to appoint a restaurant-keeper for the Senate.
• Vice President Hannibal Hamlin understood the significance of his job. Therefore, at the beginning of each new Senate session, he would spend a few weeks presiding over that body and then request that the Senate choose a president pro tempore to stand in for him so he could go home to his farm in Maine and do something useful.
• Vice President Richard Johnson, too, understood his place in the scheme of things. For that reason he took a leave of absence from his job as Veep so he could open and then manage a hotel, tavern, resort, and spa on his property in Kentucky.
• Vice President John Nance Garner was given virtually nothing to do by FDR, so he spent most of his time at his ranch in Uvalde, Texas, sitting on his porch shooting at a spittoon. Years later, when fellow Texan LBJ asked Garner if he should accept the vice presidential nomination, Garner replied: “The vice presidency ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.”
• LBJ and his aides never dreamed that in 1960 he would be JFK’s running mate … as the vice-presidential candidate. In fact, while Senator Kennedy crisscrossed the country stumping for the Democratic nomination, Johnson stayed in Washington; he was sure he’d get the nomination, and he felt his job as Senate majority leader required him to stay on the job.
“[Once, while visiting Denver] a big burly policeman kept following me around, until I asked him what he was doing. He said he was guarding my person. I said, ‘Your labor is in vain. Nobody was ever crazy enough to shoot at a vice president. If you will go away and find somebody to shoot at me, I’ll go down in history as being the first vice president who ever attracted enough attention even to have a crank shoot at him.’”
—VICE PRESIDENT JOHN MARSHALL
One of Johnson’s aides was quoted as saying, “I can see it all now. Johnson will be standing in the hotel room after he wins the nomination, and he’ll say, ‘We want Sonny Boy for vice president. Go fetch him for me.’”
When Kennedy won the nomination, Johnson explained his own loss this way:
“Jack was out kissing babies while I was passing bills.”
Mind your manners!
* * *
Even Harry Truman’s mom knew he was a contrary mule. The first time Harry phoned his mother after being inaugurated as vice president, she gave him these instructions: “Now, you behave yourself up there, Harry!”
“As useful as a cow’s fifth teat.”
—Harry Truman on the vice presidency
“A fifth wheel to a coach.”
—Teddy Roosevelt on the vice presidency
“You die, I fly.”
—Then Vice President George H. W. Bush, making the succinct observation that the job of VP consists mostly of going to funerals when foreign dignitaries die
“How dare you call me that!!!”
* * *
When Al Gore was running for president in 1988 (four years before he accepted Bill Clinton’s invitation to run as VP), he publically and vociferously rebuffed a heckler for shouting what he considered to be the ultimate insult.
Did the heckler insult Gore’s mother? Make reference to the state of marriage of Gore’s parents at the time of his birth? Insult his wife and children?
Nope. The insult to which Gore took such offense was that he had all the traits of a really good vice president.
“Well, why don’t you take the word
Quayle and insert the word Bush
wherever it appears, and that’s the
crap I took for eight years. Wimp.
Sycophant. Lapdog. Poop.
Lightweight. Boob. Squirrel. Asshole.
George Bush.”
—President George H. W. Bush takes a
moment to console his own VP, Dan Quayle
THEY JUST SAID “NO!”
“I do not choose to be buried until I am really dead.”
—Daniel Webster, explaining why he declined the vice-presidential nomination in 1848
“I shall not, under any circumstances, consent to the employment of my name in connection with that office. Indeed should I be nominated for it by the convention, I would most assuredly decline. It is the very last office under the Government I would desire to hold.”
—James Buchanan, declining the vice-presidential nomination in 1852 (Wise move—he was later elected president in 1856)
“Ask him what he [Abraham Lincoln] thinks I have done to deserve the punishment, at forty-six years of age, of being made to sit as presiding officer over the Senate, to listen to debates, more or less stupid, in which I can take no part nor say a word.”
—Major General Benjamin F. Butler, declining the vice-presidential nomination in 1864
THE (SECOND) BEST AMERICA HAS TO OFFER!
One party boss’s perspective on why Nixon was chosen as Eisenhower’s running mate: “We took Dick Nixon not because he was right wing or left wing—but because we were tired and he came from California.”
How underappreciated was Nixon by President Eisenhower? Near the end of Ike’s last term, while Nixon was running his own presidential campaign, Ike was asked to give an example of one major idea of Nixon’s that he as president had adopted. Ike’s reply: “If you give me a week, I might think of one.”
FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME
Occasionally a vice president who is otherwise un-noteworthy from a historical perspective will commit one act or coin one phrase that will live far longer than the name of the man himself. Such is the case of Vice President Thomas Marshall, who, while sitting through a long windy speech entitled “What This Country Needs” by a senator, commented to a nearby aide so everyone in the Senate could hear: “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”
“JOE WILL BE JOE, BUT HE WILL NEVER BE A DICK”
Two Veeps who dropped the F-bomb
1. Barack Obama’s VP Joe Biden is so famous for putting his foot in his mouth, that it is usually just dismissed with a wave of the hand and the oft-used expression, “Joe is just being Joe.” Such was the case when, while introducing the President at the podium in the East Room of the White House to sign the Obamacare healthcare bill, Biden embraced Obama and whispered into his ear, “This is a big f**king deal!” while an open mic picked up his comment and broadcast it to the room.
2. In 2004, George W. Bush’s VP Dick Cheney was so angry with Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont that while on the Senate floor he told the Senator to “Go f**k yourself.”
THE ULTIMATE HUMILIATION, IN THEORY
Imagine what it’s like to be a vice president who has just lost a bid for the presidency: because the VP is also the president of the Senate, it is his job to count the votes of the electoral college before all members of Congress and to announce the name of the next president. Therefore, if you are VP and you have just lost the election, you have to suffer the ultimate humiliation of announcing the winner—your opponent—to Congress and God and everyone.
Just another way our founding fathers designed the job so as to give it to the VP in the shorts.
THE ULTIMATE HUMILIATION, IN PRACTICE
In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore appeared to have won the popular vote, but in Florida, the race came down to a few hundred votes, while there were also alleged irregularities over how the Florida votes were counted. And whoever won Florida would also have enough Electoral College votes to win the presidency.
A machine count was done, and it showed that George W. Bush was the winner by a close margin … but there were still those vote-counting irregularities hanging over the election returns.
In response, the Gore campaign insisted on a manual recount. The Bush campaign sued to prevent the recount. The Florida Supreme Court ruled that a recount should be done. And more than a month after the election, the US Supreme Court ruled on a 5-4 vote that there should be no recount.
Of course, as the president of the Senate, Al Gore then had to go before that body and humiliate himself by anointing his opponent as the new president … even though he surely believed in his heart of hearts that he was really the guy who won the election.
* The word “Veep” was coined by the ten-year-old grandson of Vice President Alben