To most Americans the names of most Vice Presidents more that 20 years ago is a sealed book. Almost all defeated candidates for that odd office are sunk in a very deep historical oblivion for almost all Americans.
Gone and Soon to be Forgotten
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
I had to rack my mind to remember some of the other losing VP candidates, especially of my lifetime. I remember Bentsen because of his very overrated “You’re not JFK” quip to Quayle.
Walz will be remembered by his local constituents the way I’ll always remember Martin O’Malley attempting to win the Dem primary against Hillary Clinton – a crappy destructive governor.
Edmund Muskie, Thomas Eagleton, and Sargent Shriver. I didn’t have to look it up. I think if you did a comprehensive assessment of these four men, you’d discover Walz compares unfavorably to the other three. It’s indicative of the decay of the Democratic Party electorate, of the body of people attracted to public office, and of the electorate that he’s a public figure in a consequential office. His career is also a case study in how the various screens which separate prospective teachers from positions in the apparat select for mediocrity. And what’s the Democratic Party’s most vigorously organized constituency? The teachers’ unions.
I didn’t have to look it up.
You are a rara avis Art.
Walz even makes Geraldine Ferraro look good by comparison. Buh-bye, Tampon Tim!
I did know McGovern’s running mates off the top of my head (Thomas Eagleton and Sargent Shriver) but I would have had to look up Edmund Muskie if Art hadn’t already mentioned it.
However, I remember them for other reasons: Eagleton for allegedly describing the Democrats (over 50 years ago!) as the party of “abortion, amnesty and legalization of pot”; Shriver for having married Eunice Kennedy and for his name being attached to the Shriver Center on Poverty Law in Chicago (I get occasional correspondence from them at my day job); and Muskie for, allegedly, crying over the Manchester (NH) Union Leader publisher insulting his wife, which lead to his dropping out of the ’72 primaries.
By the way, my Mom went to high school with Thomas Eagleton and I once had the pleasure of meeting him. He was one of the old breed of Democrats who believed in respectful debate, not the hateful poison that marks our current political scene. The idea that he was cashiered from McGovern’s ticket simply for having been under the care of a psychiatrist is almost funny today.
For extra credit, who can name the running mates for third party/independent candidates such as George Wallace (68), John B. Anderson (80) and Ross Perot (92)?
Wallace was Curtis Lemay. Can’t recall Anderson’s running mate. Perot was Admiral Stockdale
Eagleton was pro-life. He probably was done a good turn by getting off the sinking ship SS McGovern.
You are correct sir! As for John Anderson, had to look it up, his running mate was Patrick Lucey, former governor of Wisconsin and Jimmy Carter’s ambassador to Mexico.
One barnacle we could scrape off the Constitution would be the elimination of the semi-elective VP position. Allow the President to appoint up to a half-dozen VPs to supervise portfolios of departments and agencies. When you have a vacancy in the presidency, you could have a short term (8-9 months) successor drawn from an ordered list of federal officials while the state legislatures form an electoral college to chose a new president and said choice puts an administration together. If the vacancy occurred in the last 17 months of a president’s term, you could just allow the successor to finish out the term. (Over 235 years, there has only been one vacancy that late in a president’s term for whatever reason).
I will always remember him as Blofeld, and his roles in Alita: Battle Angel and a few Tarantino movies. It’s taken me some effort to hear the name J.D. Vance and not immediately think of the actor from Law & Order. And recently I thought of “J.D. Vance, Vance Refrigeration”.
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Many VPs and candidates for the position were rightfully perceived as cyphers. Those of some competence like John Nance Garner regarded the position itself in about the same as he did. Note: His quote about spit was the cleaned up version. In reality it was rather more earthy.
Cactus Jack! A true character.
Ho looks like a grinning gargoyle.
Art, I don’t think that approach–multiple VPs–would be at all helpful. We already have the various Secretaries who head their various Departments. They and the VP already advise the President on what steps to take.
We have a Vice President in no small part for knowing who’s in charge. If the President is incapacitated, we may need for one man to be able to Constitutionally take charge and direct the government, especially the military.
It’s true enough that, in practice, the role is primarily ceremonial. Even so, every Presidential candidate must wisely choose their VP pick. Such person can in some cases make or break the ticket.
Art, I don’t think that approach–multiple VPs–would be at all helpful. We already have the various Secretaries who head their various Departments. They and the VP already advise the President on what steps to take. We have a Vice President in no small part for knowing who’s in charge. If the President is incapacitated, we may need for one man to be able to Constitutionally take charge and direct the government, especially the military. It’s true enough that, in practice, the role is primarily ceremonial. Even so, every Presidential candidate must wisely choose their VP pick. Such person can in some cases make or break the ticket.
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See Wm Schneider on VP picks. Your single best guess is that the VP pick will net you 2% of the ballots in his home state. If electoral advantage is your concern, pick someone from a purple state who might flip it. (It’s atypical for VP picks to be utile in that way, Tim Kaine, Lloyd Bentsen, and Al Gore the exceptions). That aside, Schneider notes that the risk is on the downside and you should avoid picking someone who generates embarrassments and distractions, of which Geraldine Ferraro and Thos. Eagleton would be the premier examples. You can avoid the distractions by eliminating the position.
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Extant constitutional provisions meant to address presidential disability are unworkable (as we have seen) and could be foreseen to be when they were adopted in 1967. If you had a workable system, an order of succession specified by statutory law made congruent with constitutional provisions would suffice. NB, the order of succession right now is specified in statutory law and always has been. I’m not understanding your argument why an appointive VP is worse than a quasi-elective one for these purposes. If you had multiple VPs you could have an order of succession among them specified by seniority and a presidential designation if two were confirmed on the same day. If it’s your concern that the president will manipulate the order of succession ‘ere departing, make it the law that an officer does not take his place in the order of succession until six months after he has been confirmed and sworn in. Absent a VP, you might have Dean Rusk succeed to the presidency for an interim period in 1963 and William Simon do so in 1974; not seeing why we needed to have a dissatisfied Lyndon Johnson lurking around to avoid that.
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Note, there are scores of officials who are (notionally) direct reports to the president. Who but politicians tries to run an organization that way?