The American Vice Presidency (88 page)

Of course, leading up to that responsibility, the presidential nominee will also weigh the political ramifications of the choice in terms of achieving the presidency. But the two factors need not be mutually exclusive. The wise and responsible party standard-bearer will select a vice presidential nominee who not only is qualified to assume the presidency but also can help him or her win it, or at least not impede that quest because of political or personal factors.

At the same time, Americans at the ballot box should take time to evaluate the presidential nominees in terms of their judgment in choosing a running mate. There may be no better yardstick of a prospective president’s responsibility than this decision, tentatively placing someone “a heartbeat away” from the leadership of the country. Failure to act wisely and soberly should raise serious public doubts concerning the presidential nominee’s own worthiness to assume the nation’s highest office. The sign that Harry Truman placed on the Oval Office desk—“The Buck Stops Here”—should apply as well on this critical decision to all those who seek the presidency for themselves.

This book is a chronicle of all forty-seven American vice presidents, from John Adams to Joseph R. Biden, and the evolution of their office over nearly 225 years, from early oblivion to current significance. It draws first on many of the essential vice presidential biographies of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries and the start of the twenty-first, listed among the titles in the bibliography. A starting point was the work of the United States Senate Historical Office staff on the men who have simultaneously served by constitutional dictate as presidents of the Senate. I am particularly grateful to Donald A. Ritchie, the U.S. Senate historian, for setting me off on a challenging course, and to the Library of Congress staff for facilitating my access to the more than three hundred books consulted in this project.

Building on these invaluable sources, I have relied on my own reporting in Washington and around the country from 1954 to the present. It has included interviewing and traveling with every occupant of the second office from Richard Nixon to Joe Biden and covering every president who chose them. My efforts have been made possible by a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship grant for 2012–13, gratefully acquired through recommendations from former vice president Mondale and the
former Republican vice presidential nominee Bob Dole, and were smoothly squired through the application process by Jim Turner of the NEH staff.

Most of the vice presidents, especially the early ones after Adams and Jefferson, remain little known to their countrymen. In the process of reviewing them, I have attempted to make the case for more responsible selection of the men and, now, women sought as presidential running mates. The book is a plea, too, for greater voter responsibility in holding presidential nominees and presidents to account in placing one individual a single act of fate or circumstance away from the highest office.

Personal experience has played a role in this pursuit. As a newspaper reporter, the matter of presidential succession has been brought home to me in witnessing at close range the assassination of one presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, in Los Angeles in 1968, a failed attempt against President Gerald R. Ford in Sacramento in 1975, and two months later a realistic hoax involving a fake pistol against the presidential candidate Ronald Reagan at the Miami International Airport. All these incidents, as well as joining a death watch over another presidential hopeful, the Alabama governor George C. Wallace, at a hospital in suburban Washington in 1972, underscored for me the imperative of the wise and thoughtful selection of presidential running mates, particularly in a land of growing gun violence and, in at least one case, of corruption in high government places.

I thank particularly three of the surviving vice presidents—Walter Mondale, Richard Cheney, and Joe Biden—for granting interviews for this book and all the others who have talked to me over time, including the late Hubert Humphrey and Gerald Ford and Dan Quayle, about the office they held and their notions on their satisfactions enjoyed and frustrations endured along the way. I am also grateful to many vice presidential aides, most notably Richard Moe, chief of staff to Mondale at the time of his selection. He helped prepare the Minnesota senator in the summer of 1976 for the key discussions with Democratic presidential nominee Jimmy Carter that led to the Carter-Mondale ticket that fall and their partnership, which became the model for subsequent White House leadership teams.

I am grateful as well for the assistance and counsel of the staffs at Smithsonian Books, led by Carolyn Gleason, as well as Christina Wiginton, and for the meticulous editing of Robin Whitaker, all in the quest of
enhancing public awareness of the second office and what has become the de facto assistant presidency. Finally, my wife and fellow author, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, and my always supportive children have my thanks for their encouragement during the three years of researching and writing this chronicle.

Jules Witcover

Washington, D.C.

1.
McCullough,
John Adams
, 402.

2.
Madison,
The Constitutional Convention
, 92.

3.
Witcover,
Crapshoot
, 13.

4.
Ibid.

5.
Ibid., 14–15.

6.
Ibid., 15.

7.
Ibid.

8.
Lyon,
The Constitution and the Men Who Made It
, 230.

9.
Witcover,
Crapshoot
, 15–16.

10.
Ibid., 16.

11.
Ibid., 16–17.

12.
Lyon,
The Constitution and the Men Who Made It
, 231.

13.
Ibid., 248.

14.
Ibid., 231–32.

1.
Horsman, “The Elections of 1789 and 1792,” 5.

2.
Kaminski,
George Clinton
, 170.

3.
Ibid.

4.
Ibid., 17.

5.
Ibid., 172.

6.
Hatfield,
Vice Presidents of the United States
, 6.

7.
McCullough,
John Adams
, 392.

8.
Hatfield,
Vice Presidents of the United States
, 6.

9.
McCullough,
John Adams
, 402.

10.
Ibid., 447.

11.
Ibid., 392.

12.
Ibid., 399.

13.
Ibid.

14.
Ibid., 402.

15.
Ibid., 404.

16.
Ibid., 405.

17.
Ibid.

18.
Ibid, 406–7.

19.
Ibid., 407.

20.
Ibid., 410.

21.
Ibid., 417.

22.
Ibid., 421.

23.
Ibid., 417–18.

24.
Ibid., 429.

25.
Ibid.

26.
Ibid., 425–26.

27.
Ibid., 434.

28.
Ibid., 422.

29.
Kerber, “The Federalist Party,” 1:10.

30.
Chernow,
Alexander Hamilton
, 422.

31.
McCullough,
John Adams
, 447.

32.
Ibid., 448.

33.
Ibid., 449, 452.

34.
Ellis,
First Family
, 166.

35.
McCullough,
John Adams
, 458.

36.
Ibid., 452.

37.
Ibid.

38.
Ibid., 459.

39.
Ibid., 462.

40.
Schlesinger,
History of U.S. Political Parties
, 1:xxxv.

41.
McCullough,
John Adams
, 462.

42.
Ibid., 464.

43.
Ibid., 465.

44.
Witcover,
Party of the People
, 47.

45.
McCullough,
John Adams
, 465.

46.
Ibid., 465–66.

1.
Wibberley,
Man of Liberty
, 4, 15–29.

2.
Ibid., 64.

3.
Ellis,
American Sphinx
, 42–44.

4.
Ibid., 47–49.

5.
Ibid., 65–66.

6.
Ibid., 66.

7.
McCullough,
John Adams
, 448.

8.
Ibid., 473.

9.
Ibid., 474.

10.
Kurtz,
The Presidency of John Adams
, 229.

11.
McCullough,
John Adams
, 483.

12.
Ibid., 489.

13.
Binkley,
American Political Parties
, 79.

14.
Bowers,
Jefferson and Hamilton
, 373.

15.
McCullough,
John Adams
, 503.

16.
Pancake,
Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton
, 247; McCullough,
John Adams
, 505.

17.
Pancake,
Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton
, 250.

18.
McCullough,
John Adams
, 521.

19.
Ibid., 536.

20.
Ibid., 536–37.

21.
Ibid., 577–79.

22.
Cunningham, “The Election of 1800,” 32.

23.
Ibid., 34–35; McCullough,
John Adams
, 545.

24.
Ellis,
First Family
, 204–5.

25.
Cunningham,
The Jefferson Republicans
, 240.

26.
Ibid., 186.

27.
Ellis,
First Family
, 204–5; McCullough,
John Adams
, 545.

28.
Cunningham,
The Jeffersonian Republicans
, 240.

29.
Ibid., 241; Schachner,
Thomas Jefferson
, 652.

30.
Schachner,
Thomas Jefferson
, 653.

31.
Ibid.

32.
Ibid.

33.
Bowers,
Jefferson in Power
, 245–46.

34.
Cunningham,
The Jeffersonian Republicans
, 242.

35.
Schachner,
Thomas Jefferson
, 657.

36.
Ferling,
Adams vs. Jefferson
, 191.

37.
Ibid., 193.

1.
Isenberg,
Fallen Founder
, 224.

2.
Lomask,
Aaron Burr
, 299–300.

3.
Ibid., 299–301.

4.
Isenberg,
Fallen Founder
, 230.

5.
Lomask,
Aaron Burr
, 302.

6.
Ibid., 309–11.

7.
Ibid., 313.

8.
Cunningham,
The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power
, 205; Isenberg,
Fallen Founder
, 246.

9.
Ibid., 206.

10.
Isenberg,
Fallen Founder
, 231–33.

11.
Ibid., 247–50.

12.
Cunningham,
The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power
, 206.

13.
Isenberg,
Fallen Founder
, 247.

14.
Blum et al.,
The National Experience
, 180.

15.
Ibid., 164.

16.
Ibid., 181.

17.
Cunningham,
The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power
, 211–12.

18.
Bowers,
Jefferson in Power
, 236.

19.
Ibid., 213–14.

20.
Ibid., 253.

21.
Isenberg,
Fallen Founder
, 253.

22.
Chernow,
Alexander Hamilton
, 673.

23.
Isenberg,
Fallen Founder
, 255.

24.
Ibid., 257.

25.
Ibid., 258.

26.
Ibid., 259.

27.
Ibid., 260–61.

28.
Chernow,
Alexander Hamilton
, 262, 693.

29.
Lomask,
Aaron Burr
, 352–53.

30.
Isenberg,
Fallen Founder
, 265–66; Chernow,
Alexander Hamilton
, 701–4.

31.
Isenberg,
Fallen Founder
, 267–68.

32.
Chernow,
Alexander Hamilton
, 717; Lomask,
Aaron Burr
, 357.

33.
Lomask,
Aaron Burr
, 361; Chernow,
Alexander Hamilton
, 718.

34.
Isenberg,
Fallen Founder
, 273–34.

1.
Kaminski,
George Clinton
, 275.

2.
Ibid., 21.

3.
Ibid., 24–25.

4.
Ibid., 26.

5.
Ibid., 280.

6.
Spaulding,
His Excellency George Clinton
, 289.

7.
Ibid., 290–91; Kaminski,
George Clinton
, 283.

8.
Spaulding,
His Excellency George Clinton
, 292; Kaminski,
George Clinton
, 280–81.

9.
Spaulding,
His Excellency George Clinton
, 287; Cunningham,
The Jeffersonians in Power
, 280–81.

10.
Kaminski,
George Clinton
, 289–90.

11.
Ibid.

12.
Ibid., 293.

1.
Billias,
Elbridge Gerry
, 3–5.

2.
Ibid., 9.

3.
Ibid., 47.

4.
Ibid., 48, 49.

5.
Ibid., 52.

6.
Ibid., 87.

7.
Ibid., 195, 199.

8.
Blum et al.,
The National Experience
, 167–68.