Note—As World War II wound down ailing Franklin D. Roosevelt dumped his liberal Vice President for a relatively little known Missourian
When the ailing Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a fourth and final time he replaced Henry Wallace with Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman who had made a name for himself—as well as becoming something of a nuisance to the administration, as the tough minded Chair of the Senate Special Committee on Waste and Abuse in military contracts. Bringing him on board made things quieter in the Senate while boldly staking out credentials for the administration as its own watch dog. After taking office in January 1942 Truman, despite Roosevelt’s alarming physical deterioration, was not brought into the inner circle at the White House and was kept in the dark about many military matters and about increasing tensions over post war arrangements with Russia. Famously, he did not know anything about the Atomic bomb program until he was briefed shortly after Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1942. No wonder he felt like “the moon and the stars have fallen on me.”
Many people, not the least of which was Eleanor Roosevelt, thought that Truman was a light weight and unfit for the Presidency. Instead, he would quickly prove to be both tough minded and sharp in the way that many widely read self-educated men are. Anyone who took Truman for a fool or pushover was in for a rude awakening. In 1948 with Congress in Republican hands, the Cold War getting under way in earnest, and his own party shattered left and right with the defection of the Dixiecrats over his civil rights policies and his VP predecessor Henry Wallace leading a challenge from the left calling for accommodation with war-time ally the USSR, Truman fought back with his famous whistle stop Give ‘em Hell Harry tour and upset Republican Thomas Dewy to win a term on his own.
Perhaps it was the unexpected success of Truman, but in his wake the Vice Presidency began to be seen differently. Instead of a throw away office to be filled with any politically useful hack it became the grooming ground for future Presidential candidates. Almost every subsequent VP starting with Dwight Eisenhower’s uneasy relationship with anti-Communist star Richard Nixon, came to be viewed as the natural successor.
During the 1952 campaign Eisenhower had to come to the defense of Nixon amid charges that he used a political slush fund as personal income. Eisenhower came close to dumping him until his famous televised self-defense, the Checkers Speech. Especially in his second term Eisenhower used Nixon to represent the country abroad. He faced Yankee Go Home rioters in Latin America and engaged Nikita Khrushchev in a kitchen debate in an exposition in Moscow. After the President’s heart attack, Nixon was included more regularly in high level security briefings. Nixon ran in 1960 and narrowly lost to John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy picked powerful Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate and then assigned him high level administration duties—a break from the past—including overseeing the nation’s space program. Other presidents would follow suit giving their VPs more to do, including them in Cabinet and high level policy discussions while they spent less and less time presiding over the Senate except for ceremonial occasions and for a dramatic tie vote breaker if an important issue came up. The Vice Presidency for the first time was becoming fully integrated in the Executive Branch.
Johnson, of course, became President when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. He would surprise many as a first Southerner in the White House excepting border state Truman and Woodrow Wilson whose mother was a Virginian, since before the Civil War when he completed Kennedy’s legacy and twisted arms to get two landmark Civil Right Acts passed. He also launched his War on Poverty, an echo of the New Deal.
On the other hand, he let himself be talked into ever deeper involvement in the Vietnam War that he had inherited from Kennedy. By 1968 he found himself abandoned by White Southerners who flocked to Alabama segregationist Governor George Wallace on one hand and rising anti-war protests on the other. After a disappointing showing against Senator Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary Johnson went on television to proclaim, “I will not seek, nor will I accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for President.”
His VP, liberal icon Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, was able to win nomination only after a Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 which was marked by demonstrations and a police riot in the streets and chaos on the floor. Humphrey lost that fall to Richard Nixon on the comeback trail. Nixon ran as a law and order candidate with a secret plan to end the war. He won in an Electoral College landslide.
He balanced the ticket with Maryland Governor Sprio T. Agnew who had a reputation as a relative party liberal and as a Greek-American was the first Vice President not of British Isles or Northern Europe decent. Agnew became the administration’s designated attack dog going after liberals and the critical press with famous alliterative sound bites—i.e. “nattering nabobs of negativism.” But while Nixon was slowly being dragged down by the Watergate scandal, Agnew was indicted for amazingly cheap and penny ante corruption as Baltimore County Executive and Governor even continuing to take cash as Vice President. He was forced to resign on October 10, 1973 and became the first and only Vice President convicted of felony charges when he accepted a deal to plead guilty to a single count of tax evasion and money laundering on $29,000 in bribes as Governor.
Nixon then chose House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford of Michigan—the first Vice President chosen under the terms of the 25th Amendment which allowed vacancies to be filled by appointment with the advice and consent of the Senate. By this time Nixon himself was in deep trouble and facing possible impeachment. Legend had it that he chose the affable but supposedly low wattage Ford because he believed that no one would drive him from office if the Congressman was in line to take the job. In fact, Democratic Speaker of the House Carl Albert recalled that Congressional leaders from both houses and both parties, “gave him no choice” but to pick Ford. When Nixon resigned seven months later in August of 1972 Ford became the first President to ascend to office without ever having run on a national ticket.
The Accidental President got to appoint his own Vice President and shocked conservatives by naming liberal Republican icon former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Rocky became the first VP to occupy the new official residence in Washington’s in the former Naval Observatory building. In January 1979, two years after leaving office, Rockefeller died during a tryst with a 27 year old aide.
Although the pleasant Ford was a welcome change from the scowling and brooding Nixon, the weight of Watergate was too great to overcome. He was defeated by Democratic Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter and his running mate, Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota. The Carter administration was burned with the OPEC oil Boycott, stagflation, crumbling rustbelt cities, that famous malaise, and finally the disastrous attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran.
Ex-movie star and conservative Governor of California Ronald Reagan swept the Carter Mondale team aside in 1980. Transplanted New Englander cum Texas oilman George H.W. Bush, a former Congressman and CIA Director, was Regan’s pick for Vice President. When Reagan was wounded by would-be assassin John Hinckley, Jr. Bush rushed back to Washington from Texas but never assumed official duties. Subsequently he and Regan began an unusually close relationship having weekly lunches together he also accepted a number of high profile assignments from the President in the national security area as well as heading a waste in government taskforce that began to shore up his shaky relationship with party conservatives.
In 1984 Reagan and Bush faced former Vice President Walter Mondale and his running mate New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman and first Italian candidate. Although the earthy Ferraro bested the patrician Bush in their sole Vice Presidential debate, Reagan’s popularity coasted the ticket to an easy victory.
On July 13, 1985, Reagan underwent surgery to remove polyps from his colon which required him to undergo general anesthesia. Bush became the first Vice President to temporarily assume the duties of President. He was acting President for about eight hours during which time nothing much important happened.
Almost as soon as the second Reagan term began, Bush started planning his own run for the presidency. He raised money and courted party leaders. He spent a lot of time trying to placate conservatives who were convinced he was a liberal in Texas clothing. In his convention acceptance speech in addition to his famous 1000 Points of Light, he touched on and endorsed most conservative hot button issues and uttered his equally famous “read my lips, no new taxes!” pledge.
For his running mate he chose youthful and obscure Indiana Senator Dan Quayle, who quickly turned out to be a pretty boy light weight. Many thought that Bush was nervous about being overshadowed by a better known or more accomplished choice. He said he thought Quayle’s good looks would help him with women. No matter, the pair had no trouble trouncing the inept campaign of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis and Texas Senator Lloyd Bensten. Bush thus became the first Vice President elevated directly to the Presidency by election since Martin Van Buren.
Unfortunately for him, like Van Buren, he was destined to be a one termer.
Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton burst onto the national scene with high energy enthusiasm, boyish charm, a reputation as a policy wonk, and a wife so politically talented herself that they were advertised as getting “two for the price of one.” Despite bimbo eruptions and Hillary’s seeming derision of moms who stayed home and baked cookies, Clinton bested rivals including California Governor Jerry Brown to win the nomination.
He defied conventional wisdom in picking a running mate. He did not balance the ticket but opted for another young moderate liberal Southerner, Senator Al Gore of Tennessee. Clinton said that he resonated with Gore and felt comfortable. Even their high power wives, Hillary and Tipper Gore seemed bonded. Instead of sending his VP candidate separately out on the road as an attack dog saying things it was not polite for the Presidential nominee say, both couples hit the road together in a campaign coach road tour.
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The close relationship continued in office which was cemented by an unusual two page written agreement outlining Gore’s role as a chief advisor to the president with weekly scheduled meetings and daily access as needed. Gore was given several important assignments including work on streamlining government and cutting waste, encouraging technological innovation including the use of robotics in industry, and fostering the new information superhighway—the emerging internet. He also became an expert on the environment and the administration’s point man on that internationally including being chief U.S. negotiator and then promoter of the Kyoto Accords. He also loyally stood by Clinton through the Monica Lewinski scandal.
It was always clear that Gore was the anointed successor to Clinton. In 2000 he easily swept aside a challenge from New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley and sailed to the nomination after winning every primary. His Vice Presidential choice was Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, the first Jew on the national ticket of a major party, an ardent supporter of Israel, and a bridge to more conservative business and finance oriented Democrats.
He faced the Governor of Texas George W. Bush, the feckless and lazy son of the former president. The younger Bush had a hard time convincing red meat conservatives that he was not a secret liberal one-worlder like his father but eventually won over the religious right as a born again believer. He wooed foreign policy hard liners by relying on former Wyoming Congressman and his father’s Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney as his top advisor. When he had the nomination sewed up he appointed Cheney to lead a search for a running mate. Cheney reported back that after looking under every rock in America the very most excellent and only choice was….Dick Cheney! But first Cheney had to scramble to move back to Wyoming from Texas where he was a registered voter while serving as the CEO of the oil industry conglomerate Halliburton to comply with the Constitutional prohibition on the President and Vice President coming from the same state.
It was a notoriously hard fought election and polled dead even in Electoral College projections down to the wire. On a long election night it all came down to slow reporting Florida where numerous problems and irregularities were reported. Early in the morning the networks and wire services called Florida for Gore, only to walk that back. Next, Bush was reported to have a narrow lead. Problems with mysterious hanging chads on the ballot punch cards were reported in heavily Democratic areas. There were days and weeks of drama before the Supreme Court stopped an ongoing Florida recount and effectively anointed Bush president. Bush lost the popular vote to Gore but took the Electoral College 271 to 266.
Far from being cautious due to the narrow and questionable circumstances of his election, from day one Bush behaved like a President with an enormous popular mandate. He was all public swagger. He relied heavily on Cheney with whom he conferred daily and to whom he left many of the details of running the government while he reserved himself for “the big picture” and worked 4 hour days with afternoon naps. Cheney viewed himself as a kind of Grand Vizier to an indolent Sultan. After 9/11 Cheney, the hero of the neo-con movement, boldly pushed for and attack on Iraq and helped manufacture evidence of and hysteria over weapons of mass destruction.
Cheney’s seeming domination over the President continued well into the second term until Bush began to assert himself and ignored some of the Vice President’s advice. Their relationship began to cool and became more strained when Cheney didn’t think the President was being aggressive enough in the ongoing war. As President of the Senate, he even signed on to a lawsuit against the Department of Justice over gun regulation in the District of Columbia. Still, he retained influence on the President to the end.
His reputation as the Darth Vader of American politics however, made it politically impossible for him to seek the Presidency himself. Even his attempts to influence the 2008 Republican selection process against Arizona Senator John McCain were unsuccessful. He spent much of his time after leaving office being a go-to voice for discredited aggressive neo-con policies and a reflexive critic of the Obama administration.
Tomorrow—Bringing the Vice Presidency up to date.
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