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By Joel Goldstein
1. "[M]y country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived .... I can do neither good nor evil ..." With these words, John Adams, our first vice president (1789-97), began the practice of vice presidential lamentations. He still probably did not appreciate it when one senator suggested he be addressed as "his superfluous excellency." He thought it an appropriate place for his rival, Thomas Jefferson, "for there, if he could do no good, he could do no harm." That's why President William McKinley's advisers thought the vice presidency would be a good place to dump New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt in 1900. They didn't count on McKinley being assassinated and Roosevelt becoming president.
2. "...a more tranquil and unoffending station could not have been found for me ... It will give me philosophical evenings in the winter, and rural days in the summer." That's how Thomas Jefferson, our second VP (1797-1801), sized up his new office roughly six weeks before assuming it, sort of a politician's sabbatical. Later vice presidents also viewed their tenure as time for other pursuits. Theodore Roosevelt thought about studying law; Henry Wilson (1873-75) wrote history books; Alben Barkley (1949-53) courted his wife. Jefferson managed to write his Manual of Parliamentary Practice, a work of continuing influence.
3. The vice presidency is "not a crime exactly. You can't be sent to jail for it, but it's kind of a disgrace. It's like writing anonymous letters." Humorist Finley Peter Dunne, through his character, Martin J. Dooley, offered this assessment of the office. When Theodore Roosevelt considered taking a submarine ride, Dunne advised, "You really shouldn't do it -- unless you take [Vice President Charles W.] Fairbanks with you." In the 1930s musical Of Thee I Sing , Vice President Alexander Throttlebottom searched for two references so he could obtain a library card. The Art Buchwalds and Tom Lehrers ("Whatever became of Hubert?") and Jay Lenos of each generation have found the office a ready target.
4. "I do not propose to be buried until I am dead," declared Daniel Webster, explaining why he declined the vice presidential nomination in 1848. An immortal line by Webster, one of our great men who never became president. Millard Fillmore did accept the second spot on Zachary Taylor's ticket in 1848, and, when Taylor died, Fillmore achieved the job of Webster's ambitions.
5. "I am ashamed to say, 'Who is Wheeler?'" wrote Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes to his wife in 1876. Not a ridiculous question except for the fact that later that year William A. Wheeler, a five-term congressman, was chosen to run in the second spot on Hayes' ticket. Others haven't known much about, or thought much of, their running mates. "[H]e is a small-calibre man," said Woodrow Wilson of his vice president, Thomas Marshall (1913-21).
6. The vice president is like "a man in a cataleptic state; he cannot speak; he cannot move; he suffers no pain; and yet he is perfectly conscious of everything that is going on about him." Whatever Marshall's calibre, he was probably our funniest vice president and could merit his own list of 10. The "cataleptic state" quote is my favorite Thomas Marshallism. "The only business of the vice president is to ring the White House bell every morning and ask what is the state of health of the president, " he said. One reason the vice president was a regent of the Smithsonian was so he could "compare his fossilized life with the fossils of all ages." His most memorable line -- "What this country needs is a good five cent cigar."
7. "I should hate to think that the Senate was as tired of me at the beginning of my service as I am of the Senate at the end," said Charles G. Dawes (1925-29) who had committed the faux pas of excoriating the senate for its procedures the first day he presided. The Senate got its revenge on Dawes' second day when, after he left the chair to take a nap, the Senate deadlocked on a vote to confirm President Calvin Coolidge's nominee for attorney general. By the time Dawes rushed into the chamber, the deadlock was broken against the nominee. Sleeping on the job became a recurring joke of the Dawes' vice presidency.
8. The vice presidency is "not worth a bucket of warm spit." That is how John Nance Garner (1933-41) was supposed to have characterized his office. In fact, the final word of Garner's celebrated putdown may have been changed, by censors of the day, from another four-letter word.
9. "If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don't remember." That is the correct answer to the question, "What did President Dwight D. Eisenhower reply when asked at an August 1960 press conference for 'an example of a major idea' of Vice President Richard M. Nixon's (1953-61) that had become policy. Eisenhower probably did not mean it to come out as bad as it sounded, but it was not helpful because Nixon was trumpeting his integral role in the administration in his presidential campaign.
Nor was Nixon's explanation -- that Ike was kidding -- entirely credible.
10. "The chief embarrassment in discussing his office is, that in explaining how little there is to be said about it, one has evidently said all there is to say." That's what Woodrow Wilson wrote in 1885 when, as an academic, he felt compelled to assess the vice presidency. Having written a book and numerous articles about the vice presidency, I disagree -- but I almost always make use of Wilson's dismissive line!
Joel K. Goldstein is a professor of law and author of The Modern American Vice Presidency (Princeton University Press). He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of the American Constitution and theEncyclopedia of the American Presidency and other works dealing with constitutional law, American government and admirality law.
Have an idea for a Top 10 list? Call Joe Muehlenkamp at 977-2519.
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