In looking at the vice presidents over the past 40 years, one is struck immediately by one undeniable fact: very few of them were presidential material should the need arise, and one of them took a plea bargain over a slew of felonies while he was vice president.
Also not surprisingly, that one was a Republican, Spiro T. Agnew.
He was, however, a perfect illustration of the adage, “Birds of a feather flock together.” He was Richard M. Nixon’s vice president for the first four years of that presidency, and, as we know, Nixon bowed out a few years later, just before they rolled the political paddy wagon up to the White House gates.
Nixoniana forms the basis of my current cogitation on political uselessness. The first political memory I have is of my grandfather, a lifelong Republican accountant, watching Nixon in debate against Kennedy and saying that Nixon was the most reprehensible politician on earth, in itself seeming hyperbole. History, however, bore out my grandfather’s words, until now. It’s a good thing my grandfather died in 1969; this election would have killed him. He could not have tolerated the cowardice of John McCain, nor his ill-advised choice of running mate, nor his reprehensible—not to say vile—tactics in running that campaign. My grandfather was a Republican, not a scoundrel.
Of course, a look at history reveals a number of bad decisions concerning running mates. That same look also reveals the worst of a bad bunch were Republicans. Richard M. Nixon was vice president to war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower; from that platform, he launched his, thankfully, ineffective and unsuccessful first bid for the presidency against John F. Kennedy.
Lyndon Baines Johnson was Kennedy’s vice president. Nothing particularly heinous comes to mind about him. In fact, he had the good sense not to seek another term in the midst of the Vietnam debacle. There remains, however, in many people’s minds, the possibility that he had something to do with Kennedy’s assassination. I’m not sure I believe it. And it hasn’t been proven. So it’s a non-issue…but still, it does mean that Democratic vice presidents can be as problematical as Republican ones, if not quite as thoroughly unprincipled in general.
Gerald Ford, who became Nixon’s second vice president, wasn’t unprincipled, just dumb as a box of rocks. When he pardoned Nixon, it’s a good thing my grandfather was still dead. I was so upset, I almost joined Gramp in a fit of distress. I couldn’t believe Nixon was going to get away with befouling the office of the president as he did. I still can’t.
But worse, that entire incident seemed to pave the way for Republicans to take ever more liberties with both the U.S. Constitution and good sense until we ended up with George Bush the First. He picked a cipher as a running mate, Dan Quayle, and I cannot say his presidency even began to approach his son’s on the Distress Scale. The economy was lousy under Bush I; he had gotten a less vibrant economy coming in than the massively good one Bush II inherited from his Democratic predecessor. So perhaps that’s an excuse. Still, he and his nebbish veep did enough damage, what with Iraq I and various misadventures in the Caribbean. At least he wasn’t a moron.
The Democratic vice presidents during the period before and after Bush I included Hubert Humphrey, from all accounts a skillful and relentless political negotiator, but not a criminal in any sense of the word. Walter Mondale seemed a nice Midwestern guy; nothing much to report. Al Gore was a little pompous—OK, a lot pompous—on the presidential trail after his eight lackluster years with his larger-than-life boss, Bill Clinton. But of course, Gore did invent the Internet. (Couldn’t resist.)
Which leaves only Republicans, two of them before now, to consider; Nelson Rockefeller and Dick Cheney.
Rockefeller was so rich, he didn’t have to do anything else. He had been an OK governor of New York State. He wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t on the take, and I don’t think any sort of illicit activities (at least beyond private bedroom doors, as he supposedly died in the arms of his mistress) were ever alleged against him.
But Dick Cheney. There are not enough pixels on the Internet to describe the willful damage done by this man. He has single-handedly all but destroyed the U.S. Constitution. He doesn’t need to do more. That, if the union survives the current election, will be quite enough. Can the Constitution be repaired? Is there any will in a Congress divided by partisanship one can only describe, on the Republican side, as Born Again Fascism, to repair it? In light of the very palpable need to keep citizens from starvation in the aftermath of the destruction of our economy, will there be time and interest in repairing it? Or, if Obama wins, will he of necessity have to hand the nation on to the next leader lacking a viable Constitution? Correction: lacking a viable Constitution for a free people. The current one, decimated by the Cheney onslaught and hog-tied by Executive Orders and meatball interpretation, might serve well for a nation of debt slaves. But perhaps that’s as it should be: the economic juggernaut, sent tumbling toward the abyss by Reaganomics, has resulted in two to three generations of financial slavery for the bulk of U.S. citizens.
It is completely unthinkable that John McCain and Sarah Palin, about as prepared to serve in high office as I am to be the first black woman elected governor of Maryland, should be elected. (I’m not black.)
No matter what happens, however, we need to rethink the office of vice president. Fortunately, I have worked out a simple solution: eliminate the office. If a president dies in office, then the next in line to succeed would be the Speaker of the House of Representatives. This has a great deal of beauty in it. First, that person was elected by his or her constituents on his or her own merits, not as a placeholder for the real deal. Second, the person is used to dealing in two-year terms, meaning he or she might be inclined and trained to get the lead out and push programs forward, rather than sitting on them for the better part of four years. Third, the House of Representatives is our lower house, roughly comparable to the House of Commons in England. Thus, those elected to it are more “of the people” than are the upper house, our Senate (comparable in a very loose way to the House of Lords, in which membership is hereditary. Still, in some cases, a six-year Senate term seems like a lifetime.)
Think about it. Write your Representatives and Senators about it. But most of all, think about it when you vote on November 4th. Sarah Palin is already wanted for questioning in her home state about her potentially actionable activities as governor. She is a gun-toting, smooth-talking pseudo-soccer mom who wants, more than anything, to prove she is capable of serving in high office. She would prove the opposite, because her analytical powers are as lacking as her running mate’s good sense. And the entire nation, not just the few injured when Nixon and Agnew ignominiously stepped down, would suffer acutely, long after an impeachment proceeding—and certainly there would be one—removed her from the office in which she is so unfit to serve.
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