A Warm Bucket of Spit—The Tale of the American Vice Presidency— Part IV How We Got Here

2008 Democratic Presidential hopefuls at a debate early in the primary season.  They fell one after another until it was down to two.  Losers go on VP short lists.  Left to right--Senator Joe Biden, Sen. Christopher Todd, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Sen. Barack Obama, former Sen. John Edwards, Representative Dennis Kucinich, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and former Sen. Mike Gravel.

Note—Bringing the story up to date.

The election of 2008 shaped up as a referendum on unceasingly unpopular George W. Bush presidency, Democrats were favored to take back the White House after already reclaiming majorities in the House and Senate two years earlier.  After Al Gore a gaggle of candidates entered the race, but conventional wisdom declared that the nomination was Hilary Clinton’s to lose.  Minor candidates quickly went by the wayside or remained in the race only symbolically.   Pretty boy Senator John Edwards of North Carolina and running mate of John Kerry in 2004 showed early strength running as a progressive populist but quickly faded. 

The race narrowed down to a contest between Clinton and the very junior Senator from Illinois, Barak Obama who had rocketed to the national spotlight on the basis of his memorable Keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention.  A long and sometimes bitter primary season see-sawed between the two leading candidates.  But by early summer the charismatic Obama, buoyed by heavy registration of young and minority voters surged ahead to what looked like an insurmountable lead.   But Clinton vowed to stay in the race to the convention and her supporters mocked calls for party unity. After Obama became inevitable there was a noisy flurry of Clintonistas—mostly women—vowing never to support Obama in November no matter the consequences.  But it turned out many of those stirring that pot were Republican plants and shills in a classic dirty tricks operation re-tooled for an era of bloggers.  Most resentful Democratic women quickly got over it and showed up in droves to support Obama in November.   

Joe Biden and Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Obama’s Vice Presidential choice surprised many.   Delaware Senator Joe Biden was a longtime Democratic fixture who had made an abortive run for the nomination way back in 1988 and was one of the tribe of contenders quickly eliminated twenty years later.  Avuncular and folksy he strongly connected to White ethnic working class voters whose security even then was being threatened by an out-migration of jobs from older industrial communities.  He had endured unimaginable loss when between his upset victory in his first Senate race and his swearing into office when his young wife Neilia and one year old daughter Naomi were killed and young sons Beau and Hunter were injured in an automobile accident in 1972.  A shaken Biden turned to his Catholic faith for support and became a dedicated single parent.    To maintain a stable life for his sons with a network of family support, he kept his full time residence in the Wilmington suburbs and commuted each day to Washington via a 1 ½ hour Amtrak ride.  

In 1977 Biden married teacher Jill Jacobs and began to build a new strong family as both pursued their careers.  Jill went on to get a Ph.D. in education while teaching in high schools, a psychiatric hospital, and at the college level.  In 1981 the Biden welcomed daughter Ashley.  The unusual attention given here to the Vice Presidential candidates wife is because she quickly became the fourth member of a tightly bonded team with her husband, Barack and Michelle Obama.  Their relationship on the campaign trail and continuing into office were even closer than that of the Clintons and Gore.  Michelle and Dr.  Jill, who became the first spouse of a President or Vice President to hold a paying job as an  adjunct professor at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA),  worked closely together in high profile support of children’s literacy and in support of veterans.  

Sarah Palin was more than outmatched by Joe Biden in the Vice Presidential debat

On the other side, Arizona Senator John McCain, the former Navy pilot and prisoner of war in North Vietnam, finally secured the Republican nomination despite the opposition of the parties growing ultra-right who regarded his occasional departures from conservative orthodoxy as a self-described maverick made him a traitor.   To shore up his shaky right wing and to appeal to those largely fictional feminists who would not support Obama shortly before the convention he made what looked like an impulsive, but dramatic choice of a running mate—Alaska Governor Sara Palin.  She certainly roused the red-meat right, but her bizarre   pronouncements, fractured syntax, and seemingly willful ignorance quickly made her a national laughing stock.   In the end McCain’s choice called into question the basic soundness of his judgement.   The rock-steady Biden, by contrast, did much to boost his Black running mate with the white working class.

Biden was an exceptional engaged and involved partner with President Obama especially on foreign policy.  In the Oval Office in 2013 meeting with Palestinian and Israeli negotiators.

In office, Biden maintained the close relationship.  As an experienced foreign policy expert he was included in all of the highest level national security discussions and was a close collaborator with the President and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Obama and Biden continued the recent tradition of regular meeting and easy access to the Oval Office.  The President entrusted him with numerous special projects and commissions, including as coordinator for a national push to cure cancer.   

In 2012 Biden was once again an energetic and effective campaigner in the successful re-election campaign against Mitt Romney and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, an architect of an unpopular government shutdown in a refusal to raise the debt limit.  Despite predictions of a close race the Obama/Biden ticket won 332 Electoral College votes to Romney/Ryan’s 206 and had a 51–47 percent edge in the nationwide popular vote.

Biden was often mentioned as a potential 2016 presidential candidate, especially if Hillary Clinton, who delayed tipping her hand well into 2015, decided not to run.  When his son Beau, then serving as Delaware Attorney General, was on his deathbed with cancer, he appealed to his father to run, and emotional Biden would later reveal.  In the end he declined to run and spoke kindly of both Clinton and Bernie Sanders.  But some Party leaders who became nervous that Clinton would falter or even be indicted in a minor but persistent e-mail server scandal, considered Biden a possible fall back to keep the nomination falling to left socialist/populist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.  He apparently did nothing to encourage the idea.

Clinton secured the nomination but faced an irreconcilable Sanders base.  Burdened by a bitterly divided party, Clinton lost, to everyone’s amazement, to a slimy real estate mogul and TV celebrity.  She won the popular vote but once again narrowly lost the Electoral College.

Before it all fell apart--Donald Trump and Mike Pence, the Whitest man in America.

Donald Trump tapped colorless in more ways than one Indian Governor Mike Pence as running mate to shore up his credentials with evangelical right and Christians not convinced that the twice divorced and sexually scandalous candidate was truly righteous.  Mission accomplished.  In office Pence became a point man against abortion rights, marriage equality, and the transgender.  He also was an effective Trump surrogate loyally supporting his boss through every new scandal or word hash eruption.  Although he preferred the guidance and confidence of his personal circle including daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner and his press secretary Hope Hicks over that of his official Cabinet, many of whom he distrusted, he did regularly meet with Pence and was happy enough to keep him on the ticket for his re-election campaign in 2020.

Former Veep Joe Biden finally eliminated his rivals and secured the Democratic nomination.  He  picked former California Attorney General and Senator Kamala Harris because he had promised to choose a woman, to shore up Black support, and because of her vigorous, prosecutorial examination of Trump officials and insiders in Congressional testimony. 

Despite an unwavering base, most voters were tired of his serial outrages and antics, and swept Trump out of office on narrow wins in a handful of contested states for a comfortable Electoral College majority.  Trump went into an unprecedented fit and began charging the election had been stolen and that he had been cheated.  He not only refused to concede defeat he had his associates, minions, and loyal dupes launch attempt after attempt to overturn the results in swing states and made increasingly desperate suggestions that his supporters might need to rise up, possibly violently, to prevent Biden from taking office.  Republicans in some states tried to avoid certifying their Electors and to substitute slates of hand-picked loyalists.  One by one state and Federal courts dismissed wild law suits.  Through it all Pence loyally stood by his boss until the game was almost up.

Congress was set to officially accept the December vote of lawful Electors on January 6, 2021.  Trump pressured Pence for days to refuse to sign-off on the certification vote.  Famously, that was a line the Vice President would not cross.  He announced that he would follow the law.  Trump went on the attack immediately.  At a Washington street rally that day, Trump excoriated Pence and the crowd took up the chant “Hang Mike Pence!”  They marched on the Capitol and laid siege to it, eventually breaking in sending Senators and Congressmen scattering to safety.  The mob had brought their own gallows outside the building supposedly to hang him.  Pence barely escaped to a “secure location.”

 

On January 6, 2021 supposedly spontaneous marchers besieging the Captiol brought a scaffold with them to hang Mike Pence.  Inside the Vice President had to be whisked to a "safe location" as mobs surged through the building.

The official certification was conducted that night.  Biden and Harris were inaugurated under tight security on January 20.

In office Harris did not enjoy the same close relationship that Biden had with Obama.  Although always in the loop, the President did not seem to rely on her for critical decisions.  She was given a more limited portfolio including the hot potato issues of border security and refugee rights.  She was used as a mostly ceremonial stand in for the President internationally.  She carved out her own space as the administration’s most fierce defender of reproductive rights and women’s equality.

Despite reservations by some in the Party, Harris remained on the ticket with Biden for his apparent rematch against Trump, a political vampire who wouldn’t stay dead.  Outside of a loyal, but perhaps unenthusiastic base  many voters were unhappy with the choices at the top of both tickets, especially as Biden’s health and fitness came increasingly into question.  After a disastrous debate, the pressure built ever stronger among powerful Democrats and the public for Biden to withdraw from the race.  Which he reluctantly did endorsing Harris.  

Kamala Harris--Veep one day, presumptive Democratic Presidential  nominee the next already on the stump re-energizing voters.

Her emergence as the candidate has been met with great enthusiasm especially among women and African-Americans.  Record donations poured into the campaign from megadonors and in small individual gifts.  Voter registration has soared, and polls show a narrowing race with Harris showing momentum in critical swing states.

Now Harris turns to selecting her own running mate before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

 

 

A Warm Bucket of Spit—The Tale of the American Vice Presidency— Part III Since World War II

 

Harry S. Truman did not get many moments with FDR before he died and was completely out of the policy loop.

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.  

1952 GOP nominee Dwight D, Eisenhower, nearly dumped his anti-communist running mate Richard Nixon over a campaign fund scamming scandal until Nixon's televised Checkers Speech.

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.

On November 22, 1963 Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office on Air Force One on the tarmac in Dallas with a stunned Jacqueline Kennedy still in her blood soaked suit next to him.

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.”

Hubert Humphrey accepted the nomination for Vice President before a bitterly divided Democratic  convention while police still rioted in the streets.

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 and Ford.  As Nixon's presidency unraveled Ford became careful to not be photographed with the president.  Later he would pardon Nixon for any crimes he might have committed and deflected criticism for that by also extending amnesty to Vietnam Draft offenders. 

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.  

Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush at the 1984 Republican National Convention.  Bush was considered the most widely experienced Vice Presidential candidate since John Quincy Adams. 

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.  

New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro made a big splash as the first woman and the first ethnic major party nominee for Vice President but it was not enough to overcome Ronald Reagan's astonishing popularity.

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.

When Dan Quayle misspelled potato on a classroom visit he was widely and probably unfairly mocked as stupid.

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.   

Happy warriors, the Clintons and Gores on their campaign bus.

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.

                            Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of American politics. 

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.