The Vice Presidency: A Witness Protection Program

 Vice President William Wheeler

 

Obscure –not known to many people                                                                            

Not readily noticed or seen; inconspicuous;                                                               

Out of sight; hidden...Cambridge Dictionary.

Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected vice president of the United States. And nothing was heard of either of them again.……Thomas R. Marshall.

One night, around 4 a.m., as sleep eluded us, we went through a usually reliable soporific process of sleep inducers.  We mentallylisted the kings and queens of England and then the presidents of the United States. Sleep did still did not come so we started thinking about Vice-Presidents of the U.S and realized how few of them we remember. Naturally, the following day, actually, it was later that same day, research commenced.  Quick. Name ten pre 1980 vice presidents.  If you can, you are eligible for the Henry Wilson Award. This raises the question are our American vice presidents obscure or just easily forgotten or both?  The answer is yes. Some of them are not just obscure, they are really obscure. Even more are easily forgotten then they become obscure. A selected few are totally obscure although we hope most were probably known, at least temporarily, to their contemporaries……maybe. Indeed, they are so obscure that most educational history syllabi don’t even address them. Alas, poor William Wheeler we hardly knew ye.  We all know John Adams and J.D Vance and Joe Biden but whoops what happened to Dick Cheney? He’s fading fast. 

Obscurity is in the eye of the beholder. Frequently, it depends on the generation. Historians generally agree that generational naming began in the 20th century. Gertrude Stein coined the term "Lost Generation" about those born around 1900 in her work but it wasn’t an official generation, it was a group of ex-pats who lived in Paris, sat at cafes and wrote novels like The Sun Also Rises. The first official generation was the Silent Generation (1928 -1945). They might have known Charles Davis. The Baby Boomers (1946-1964), probably know Hubert Humphrey, Gen X, how about Spiro T. Agnew? Millennials (1981 - 1996)?, yes, J. Danforth Quayle. As for Gen Z, (1997-2012) probably none unless they are named dropped on dancing videos on Tik Tok. Same goes for Gen Alpha (2011-2024). Gen Beta 2025? we’ll get back to you on that one in 20 years. 

Most of us, hopefully, can name the Vice-Presidents who served during our lifetimes. The author can go back to Alben Barkley as a contemporary.  There’s an obscure one for most people….even for Alben Barkley. 

And, so, you don’t wake up at 4 a.m. thinking “who was the vice president during the Martin Van Buren administration”, we present a brief subjective study of the American vice presidents. After comprehensive research, we have deemed many of these be very obscure no matter the generation. We also understand that there may be reader out there who thinks, “Come on! Doesn’t everyone know Schuyler Colfax?”  Our obscurity methodology involved a listing of each president in order of term served. If we name the president, who was the vice president? Do we know him?

Most of those vice presidents who succeeded to the presidency are well known to varying degrees. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur (to a lesser degree), Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, George Bush, Joe Biden all ascended to the presidency.  Other Veeps** who ascended to the presidency verge on the unknown even when they were president. Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore are murky examples.  Fillmore is so unknown that he is almost known. We visited his home outside of Buffalo, NY, a must see on the Buffalo must see circuit along with Niagara Falls and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House. We were the only ones at the Fillmore House.  They didn’t even have tee shirts or refrigerator magnets, but he is at least well known to us.  There is even a Millard Fillmore Society founded in 1963, but they are dedicated to his unknown ness not his known ness.  Andrew Johnson and Chester Arthur, former presidents are fairly obscure. The totally obscure are those whose names one comes across, and one has no idea who they were, like Levi P. Morton. The less really obscure are those who’s names we read or hear and they may may resonate to some from other events or times in our nation’s history such as James Buchanan’s V.P, John Breckenridge who ran for the Presidency against Abraham Lincoln in 1860.   Our friend, Millard Fillmore, who was Zachary Taylor’s vice president and Hannibal Hamlin, Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president are obscure but they have become less obscure because they were formerly so obscure that they are now popular trivia answers. You will note as we continue that mid-19^th century was the heyday of obscurity for the nation’s second in command. However, we are certain that by 2080, Richard Cheney and J. Danforth (Dan) Quayle will fit into the obscure category.  Our objective was to have a Top Ten Most Obscure List but there were just too many and we kept forgetting them. Mercifully, we will be citing them several more times and you will be reminded of their names during our diligent investigation. You never know, you could be at a casual dinner with friends, a business dinner, a blind date, a Bar Mitzvah, a wedding, a funeral, a church service, an AA meeting….anywhere, and someone might ask, “who was the Vice President during the Franklin Pierce Administration”. You will now be prepared. 

Totally Obscure Vice Presidents – The Obscure of the Obscure.

·      Elbridge Gerry                 Republican   James Madison      1813–1814

·      Daniel D. Tompkins         Republican   James Monroe       1817–1825

·      George Mifflin Dallas        Democratic  James K. Polk        1845–1849

·      William Rufus King           Democratic  Franklin Pierce       1853- 1857

·      Schuyler Colfax                 Republican   Ulysses S. Grant     1869–1873

·      Henry Wilson                    Republican   Ulysses S. Grant     1873–1875 

·      William A. Wheeler            Republican   Rutherford B. Hayes1877-1881

·      Thomas A. Hendricks       Democratic  Grover Cleveland   1885 1889

·      Levi P. Morton                 Republican   Benjamin Harrison 1889–1893

·      Garret A. Hobart               Republican   William McKinley   1897–1899 20

·      Thomas R. Marshall           Democratic  Woodrow Wilson   1913–1921

Ulysses S. Grant managed to have two obscure Vice Presidents which was quite an accomplishment.

There is no need to memorize the above list as you will encounter all of them in the discussion that follows.  However, there will be a quiz at the end. 

In summary: 

·      15 Vice-presidents have become Presidents

·      8 were elevated because of the death of the President

·      7 vice presidents have died in office

·      6 were elected after having been the Vice-president

·      2 vice presidents resigned

·      One became President because the former President resigned 

So, why do we have a vice president?  The Constitution, as ratified on June 21, 1788, included the plans for the vice president. Article II, Section 1 spelled out that “in Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President.” Congress could also declare by law when a vice president had a disability. Article I, Section 3 established the vice president’s role in Congress: “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.”

If a vice president became president pre- 1967, the office of vice president was not filled. In 1967 the 25^th Amendment filled the vacancy when a vice president became president.  Section 2: Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Pay attention to the above because in 1974 the U.S ended up with a president and vice president, neither of whom were elected.

Returning to the consideration of Vice Presidents, the first two, Adams and Jefferson are easy. Adams referred to the office as “The vice presidency is the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” Trouble begins with  our third President, Thomas Jefferson. He served two terms. His first vice president was the odious Aaron Burr, infamous for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel. "Talk less, smile more,” said Mr. Burr.  But in 1805 Jefferson’s number 2 had had us stumped. Of course, it was George Clinton, a former governor of N.Y. Evidently, Clinton grew so fond of the job that he stuck around for the next administration and President, James Madison’s first term.  In 1812, he ran against Madison.  It was close, but he lost. Madison’s second V.P was the first of our obscurables, (our word), Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. Elbridge who? Needing a job, after losing an election for governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry asked President James Madison to choose him as vice president. You may recognize his name as the word gerrymandered originated with his name and from his term as governor when he manipulated election districts to favor Republicans. Then, we were lost again for James Monroe’s #2 but at least he had the same one for both of his terms. It was another former Governor of New York, Daniel Thompkins. “I know, I’m ignorant and undereducated but,” … said Thompkins.  Those of us who have lived in Manhattan know that he gave his name to Thompkins Square on the lower east side. New York would have quite a few former governors and other politicians who became Veeps as we shall see.

John Adams’ son, John Quincy, came next much to the chagrin of Andrew Jackson who lost the 1824 disputed presidential election to Adams with fishy results decided in the House of Representatives. John Quincy brought along John C. Calhoun of South Carolina as vice president. Jackson succeeded Quincy Adams after his one term and Calhoun stuck around to be Jackson’s Vice President. Not obscure, Calhoun was a rabid pro slavery segregationist and states’ rights advocate and major pre-Civil War political voice for secession.  The notoriously prickly Calhoun was too much for the notoriously prickly “Old Hickory” and vice versa and so he resigned the office in 1832. Along came Martin Van Buren for term number two in 1832. We count Van Buren as the first obscure President 1836-1840. If Van Buren is obscure to most of us, naturally, his V.P, Richard Mentor Johnson, could be in the running for most obscure vice president. Johnson (That’s three V.Ps named Johnson that we’ve had) was a former senator from Kentucky who was infamous at the time for his long-term relationship with an enslaved woman with whom he had two children.  One term was all Van Buren, “Old Kinderhook”, would get and, thankfully, we all know the next one in 1840 thanks to the famous campaign slogan of “Tippicanoe and Tyler Too”.  Alas, William Henry Harrison, old “Tippicanoe” died of pneumonia after cleverly giving a three-hour inauguration speech in the rain in March so Vice President John Tyler, former Governor and senator from Virginia, became the first vice president to replace a president and naturally the press labeled him “the Accidental President”. Tyler managed to make everyone in his party angry so there was no nomination in store for him in 1844.  The next president, a favorite of ours was/is fairly obscure.  James Knox Polk kept every campaign promise, good or bad depending on the historian. Polk gave us another contender for very obscure, a former senator from Pennsylvania, George Mifflin Dallas was his vice president and even though Dallas, County, Texas is named for him he is honored on our very obscure list. Polk had promised not to run for a second term and claimed to have achieved his major policy goals, so he kept his promise and didn’t run for re-election. His 1848 successor, Zachary Taylor “Old Rough and Ready” went kaput in 1850 giving us Millard Fillmore of New York. Fillmore is, as we know is almost well known because he is so not well known. He wasn’t even a former governor of New York; he was the first to hold the office of state comptroller. While Fillmore is obscure, he is also infamous for zealously enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1854. 1856 gave us arguably our least known president, Franklin Pierce, the only president from New Hampshire.  If Pierce was our least known, then his vice president, William Rufus King is a strong contender for most totally obscure. King was the first sitting senator (he was from Alabama) to become Vice President.  Suffering from tuberculosis, he became unlucky vice president number 13. King served only 5 weeks and never got to Washington to take up the office.  He took the oath of office in Cuba while trying to recuperate from his disease and became the only vice president to die before getting actually be vice president. King’s other claim to fame involved Franklin Pierce’s 1856 successor,  James Buchanan. Two lifelong bachelors, Buchanan and King shared a Washington, D.C., home and their seemingly intimate relationship led to widespread gossip. Some contemporaries referred to King as “Mr. Buchanan’s wife,” or as a “Miss Nancy,” which was a commonly used 19th-century epithet for an effeminate male.  Speaking of James Buchanan, generally recognized as the worst president the nation has had, his Vice President, at 36, John C. Breckenridge, not quite obscure, was the youngest to hold the office.  The former member of Congress from Kentucky, ran against Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and later joined the Confederate Army. He and Aaron Burr are the only two vice presidents to be charged with treason. 

“I do not propose to be buried until I am really dead.” — New Hampshire Sen. Daniel Webster, on rejecting an offer to be future President William Henry Harrison’s running mate in 1840.

In the election of 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln had Hannibal Hamlin, a former governor of Maine as his running mate. He remains a good trivia question because of his obscurity which, as noted, makes him kind of less obscure. It is also a great name for alliterative politician fans. In fact, we have had three alliterative vice presidents, Hannibal Hamlin, William Wheeler and Calvin Coolidge.  In 1864, seeking support from Democrats in Lincoln’s re-election bid, the Republicans dumped Hannibal and chose Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, a southerner to balance the ticket. If it wasn’t for Buchanan, Johnson would be a candidate for worst president in U.S history. He had no vice president. Then, along came war hero, Ulysses S. Grant and his now obscure vice president, Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and a founder of the Republican Party. Colfax was removed from the ticket in 1873 due to charges of corruption in connection with the Credit Mobilier scandal. Crédit Mobilier, now as obscure as Colfax, was a phony construction company set up to build the Union Pacific Railroad. It was financed with fraudulent bonds and used stocks to bribe government officials, resulting in hefty profits for its shareholders. Sound familiar? Quite a bit of that nowadays. Grant then selected Henry A. Wilson, another top candidate for most obscure. Wilson, a former general, had a stroke in 1873 and then died in 1975. Grant, a Civil War hero, didn’t do well with his vice-presidential selections. 

Rutherford B. Hayes, Republican, is not obscure because of the election of 1876. It was one of the, shall we say, the more tainted of the presidential elections.  Democrat Samuel J. Tildon of, yes New York won the popular vote, but he was one vote shy of victory in the Electoral College. 20 electoral votes in were in dispute. Books have been written about this election and PhD candidates have hurled dissertations at each other at twenty paces over this election but basically Congress established a commission. Good things rarely happen when Congress establishes a commission. Political maneuvering and deals ensued and when it was all over, Hayes was declared victor 185 -184 electoral votes thus giving us William A. Wheeler, a member of the House of Representative from New York, another of our favorite obscurables as vice president. Of note is that Wheeler was clean shaven, no beard or gigantic sideburns in contrast to the hairy individuals that preceded and succeeded him. 

1880 brought us James S. Garfield of Ohio and his vice president would be listed in the upper echelon of obscurables. Garfield was assassinated and Chester A. Arthur of, yes, New York, became president. Arthur escaped major obscurity as he is best known for supporting the Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883), which provided for the open appointment and promotion of federal employees based on merit rather than patronage. Merit! Can you imagine? What a concept. On the hairy face front, Arthur had very strange sideburns but no beard. Arthur did not run for election in 1884 as he was suffering from what we know now as Bright’s Disease, a fatal kidney condition. 

We return to our obscure list in 1884 when Grover Cleveland of……guess which state…..yes, New York, brought along Thomas A. Hendricks a member of Congress from Indiana as his vice president. You will note that there have been six vice presidents from Indiana, second only to New York with eight.  Alas, Hendricks was also to join our list of vice presidents who bit the dust.  He was gone just nine months after his inauguration due to a stroke thus rendering him totally obscure but not as totally obscure as William Rufus King.  

The vice presidency was quite hazardous to the health during the 19^thcentury. As we know, vice presidents would not be replaced after they ascended to the presidency until the 25^th amendment in 1967. Grover Cleveland lost the election of 1888, but we have not heard the last of him.  Fortunately, for our study of obscurables, Benjamin Harrison, grandson of old “Tippicanoe” from 1840 won that 1888 election and presented us with Levi P. Morton as the 22^nd vice president. Morton, a banker, member of the House of Representatives was from……..three guesses…..did you say New York? He had also served as Ambassador to France during the Statue of Liberty gifting. After Harrison lost the election of 1892 to Grover Cleveland, who was at that time governor of…….go ahead, guess…..So, Grover Cleveland was back in 1892 but since Thomas A. Hendricks had gone kaput, Cleveland’s running mate was Adlai Stevenson, former member of the House of Representatives from Illinois and Republican party apparatchik. He was also the grandfather of Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson who lost two presidential elections to Dwight Eisenhower, 1952 and 1956. 

Republican William McKinley former member of Congress and Governor of Ohio won the election of 1896. Garrett Hobart, a former governor of New Jersey was chosen as his running mate after Thomas Reed, who had competed for the presidential ticket, rejected the vice-presidential nomination in a snit. Hobart almost made it through his four years as vice president but, alas, he died from heart disease in 1899.  This ended a streak of obscure vice presidents since McKinley ran with Theordore Roosevelt as his vice-presidential candidate in 1900. “I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than vice president.” Said Roosevelt. And we all know Theodore Roosevelt.  Right? Mckinley was assassinated shortly after his 2^nd term began in 1901 and Roosevelt became president. Teddy ran for re-election in 1904 with running mate Charles Warren Fairbanks, senator from Indiana. Fairbanks and Charles Mifflin Dallas are our two of our obscure vice presidents rendered less obscure because they had cities or counties named after them and would make a good trivia question n’es pas? When Roosevelt did not run again in 1908, a choice he would regret, the rather corpulent William Howard Taft was elected bringing along an obscure vice president with our favorite middle name, James Schoolcroft Sherman a member of the House of Representatives from Indiana. Sherman almost made it through his four years as vice president, but, alas, he expired in October of 1912, of Bright’s disease, (see Chester Arthur), one month before Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected president. Sherman is famous for being the first Vice President to fly in a plane. He was also the first to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game. He was also the last Veep to die in office. Thank goodness because they had been dropping like flies for decades.  

Does the name Thomas R. Marshall ring a bell? He was Woodrow Wilson’s Vice President for two full terms and former Governor of Indiana. The 25^th amendment would have helped him serve as president as Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919 was incapacitated. His wife, Edith, basically ran the country as Marshall  remained largely unaware of his condition because  it was covered up by Wilson’s aides and Madame Wilson. He did not attempt to preside over cabinet meetings, thinking that such action might be viewed as an attempt to usurp Wilson's authority. “Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected vice president of the United States. And nothing was heard of either of them again.”……Thomas R. Marshall. 

“Vice president: A spare tire on the automobile of government.”….. Will Rogers

In 1920 long came another of the of the “worst presidents”, the scandal scarred Warren Gamaliel Harding of Ohio. Harding’s Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall would be convicted of the secret leasing of federal oil reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming to oil companies. There were also several extramarital affairs and a child born out of wedlock.  Harding had few enemies because he rarely took a firm enough stand on an issue to make any. His campaign slogan was a “Return to Normalcy”. Harding died in 1923 elevating his Vice President, Calvin Coolidge  (another alliterative vice president) to the highest office in the land. “Silent Cal” Coolidge from Massachusetts is not obscure and was one of the better presidents. “I enjoyed my time as vice president. It never interfered with my mandatory 11 hours of sleep a day.”, Calvin Coolidge was the 29th vice president.  We return to kind of obscure but not very obscure with the 2^nd in command to 31^st President, Iowan Herbert Hoover. Vice President, Charles Curtis, a Senator from Kansas was the first man with American Indian ancestry to be elected second highest office in the nation. Curtis was 1/8th American Indian and a descendent of Kaw Chief White Plume and Osage Chief Pawhuska. Poor Hoover and Davis along with him, was buried in the Franklin Roosevelt presidential election landslide of 1932.  The Great Depression probably had something to do with it.

Democrat Franklin Roosevelt of New York would be elected four times.  There were assorted vice presidents.  The first was John Nance Garner, Speaker of the House of Representatives from Texas.  Garner had some regrets. "Worst damnfool mistake I ever made was letting myself be elected Vice President of the United States.  Should have stuck with my old chores as Speaker of the House.  I gave up the second most important job in the Government for one that didn't amount to a hill of beans.  I spent eight long years as Mr. Roosevelt's spare tire." He also referred to the vice presidency as “not worth a bucket of warm spit” although he may have used a different word than spit. Still, Garner is not very obscure since he is associated with the famous Roosevelt but Roosevelt’s next Vice President is more obscure than Garner but not completely obscure. Henry Wallace of Iowa.  The nation dodged a bullet when Wallace was not re-nominated for the office in 1944 and replaced on the ticket by Harry Truman. Wallace wanted closer relations with mass murderer Josef Stalin and the Communist regime in Russia. He denounced the Marshall Plan in 1948 and ran as a Progressive (Thomas Dewey was the Republican candidate) in 1948 against…….. Harry S. Truman. Truman, no middle name, just S. Truman became President in 1945 when Roosevelt died. “Look at all the vice presidents in history. Where are they? They were about as useful as a cow’s fifth teat.”, said Mr. Truman,

We return to obscurity with Truman’s vice president, Alben W. Barkley, Senator from Kentucky. As noted, Barkley’s claim to fame was having his 10-year-old grandson call him **Veep, because vice president took too long to say. The media quickly picked it up, especially when the 71-year-old Barkley married a 38-year-old widow whom they dubbed the “Veepess”. Time Magazine, satirically, suggested the president should be “Peep”, the Secretary of State, “Steep”, and the Secretary of Labor, “Sleep”. 

We skip obscures for a few years now since Dwight Eisenhower’s Veep, Richard Nixon is very well known. Nixon was elected President in 1968. While Richard Nixon was undergoing his Watergate travails, his vice president, former governor Maryland, Spiro T. Agnew resigned from office in October 1973 under a cloud of corruption and the American public became familiar with his “nolo contender” plea bargain to one charge of income tax evasion.  Spiro T. Agnew will be a strong candidate for the most obscure list. Nixon selected Speaker of the House, the 3^rd in line for the presidency, Gerald R. Ford as vice president to replace Spiro T. and when Nixon resigned in 1974, now President Ford said, “I’m a Ford, not a Lincoln”. Evidently, he was proud of that. Ford also seemed prone to falling down flights of stairs while wearing WIN (whip inflation now) buttons.  Thanks to the 25^th amendment, Ford selected New York governor, Nelson Rockefeller as his Veep. This ended a long streak of non-N.Y governors as vice presidents. Rockefeller was a major Republican party-political figure during the 1960s but had stayed on past his sell date as governor by 1974.  He should be on our most obscure vice presidents list. He was famous but not many people remember him as a vice president. Ford would choose Robert Dole of Kansas as his running mate in 1976 but in 1974/75 the nation now had two unelected politicians in the two highest offices in the land.

In between Eisenhower and Nixon came John F. Kennedy and when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas (see George Mifflin Dallas), Texas, his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson former senator from Texas became president. Can you name Johnson’s V.P in 1964? Here is where generational obscurities come to the fore.  Hubert Horatio Humphrey, senator from Minnesota was, like Nelson Rockefeller, a major political figure of the 1960s. Now? not so much. “The President has only 190 million bosses. The Vice President has 190 million and one.” said Humphrey. President Jimmy Carter, at a Democratic Presidential Convention introduced him as “Hubert Horatio Hornblower”. Carter’s, vice president, Walter Mondale former senator from Minnesota, again, lost the 1980 Presidential election to Ronald Reagan and George H.W Bush. George H.W Bush is not obscure, but when he served as President, his Vice President was J. Danforth (Dan) Quayle. Dan is fading from memory but many of his quotes will live on, “The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century." Or,  referring to the slogan “a mind is a terrible thing to waste”, said “What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind. How true that is”. You get the idea. 

If you think we are moving to the less obscure because they are more recent, think again. We know Bill Clinton and his Veep, Al Gore but George H. Bush’s vice president.  Did you say Dick Cheney? Cheney was a former member of the House from Wyoming and held several cabinet posts. He went into hiding after 9/11 and was never seen again. Along came Obama and his vice president,  Joe Biden. “It's easy being vice president - you don't have to do anything”, said Mr. Biden. Speaking of Biden, with him as president, came Kamala Harris of California as his vice president. “I love Venn diagrams. I really do; I love Venn diagrams. It's just something about those three circles and the analysis about where there is the intersection, right?”, said Harris

Stepping back one administration between Obama and Biden we have the category of Not Completely Obscure Yet But On the Way. Donald Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, former governor of Indiana could very well be on our most obscure list in another 10 years. 

In the movie, “Back to the Future”, Michael J. Fox goes back in time and meets his parents as young people. He has to ensure that they will fall in love and marry and there will be a Michael J. Fox in the future. Every time something goes wrong and it looks like they won’t get together, he starts fade away just like our most recent vice presidents are starting to fade in the public memory. See Pence, Mike. They are becoming obscure and will be obscure for Generation Alpha and Generation Beta.  Some vice presidents even became more obscure during the research and writing of this essay. We had to look up Garret Hobart several times. 

“One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice-president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.” …….Dan Quayle

And, As Promised, Your Quiz:

1.    Which vice president died before he became vice president?

2.    Who was Schuyler Colfax and was he related to Dodger pitcher, Sandy Koufax?

3.    How many Johnsons served as vice president?

4.    Which vice president was part Native American?

5.    Which vice president killed Alexander Hamilton?

6.    Which vice president was dumb as a rock?

7.    How many vice presidents have become president?

8.    Which vice president was the first to be called “Veep”

9.    Which vice presidents were charged with treason?

10. Which vice president and president is honored by the Millard Fillmore Society?

 

The Vice Presidents

John Adams Federalist     George Washington         1789–1797

Thomas Jefferson1 Republican   John Adams          1797–1801

Aaron Burr   Republican   Thomas Jefferson            1801–1805

George Clinton      Republican   Thomas Jefferson   1805–1809

George Clinton      Republican   James Madison      1809–1812 4

Elbridge Gerry       Republican   James Madison      1813–1814 5

Daniel D. Tompkins Republican James Monroe       1817–1825

John C. Calhoun    National Republican John Quincy Adams       1825–1829

John C. Calhoun    National Republican        Andrew Jackson     1829–1832 

Martin Van Buren  Democratic  Andrew Jackson     1833–1837

Richard Mentor Johnson  Democratic  Martin Van Buren           1837–1841

John Tyler    Democratic  William H. Harrison        1841 12

George Mifflin Dallas       Democratic  James K. Polk1845–1849

Millard Fillmore     Whig  Zachary Taylor               1849–1850 

William Rufus King Democratic Franklin Pierce       1853

John C. Breckinridge  Democratic James Buchanan   1857–1861

Hannibal Hamlin    Republican   Abraham Lincoln   1861–1865

Andrew Johnson    Democratic  Abraham Lincoln   1865 

Schuyler Colfax      Republican   Ulysses S. Grant     1869–1873

Henry Wilson        Republican   Ulysses S. Grant     1873–1875 17

William A. Wheeler Republican   Rutherford B. Hayes1877–1881

Chester A. Arthur   Republican   James A. Garfield   1881 

Thomas A. Hendricks  Democratic Grover Cleveland1885 

Levi P. Morton      Republican   Benjamin Harrison 1889–1893

Adlai E. Stevenson Democratic  Grover Cleveland   1893–1897

Garret A. Hobart   Republican   William McKinley   1897–1899 

Theodore Roosevelt Republican William McKinley   1901 

Charles W. Fairbanks Republican Theodore Roosevelt1905–1909

James S. Sherman   Republican   William H. Taft      1909–1912 

Thomas R. Marshall Democratic Woodrow Wilson   1913–1921

Calvin Coolidge     Republican   Warren G. Harding 1921–1923 

Charles G. Dawes   Republican   Calvin Coolidge     1925–1929

Charles Curtis        Republican   Herbert C. Hoover 1929–1933

John Nance Garner Democratic  Franklin Roosevelt 1933–1941

Henry A. Wallace   Democratic  Franklin Roosevelt 1941–1945

Harry S. Truman    Democratic  Franklin Roosevelt 1945 

Alben W. Barkley   Democratic  Harry Truman       1949–1953

Richard M. Nixon  Republican   Dwight Eisenhower1953–1961

Lyndon B. Johnson Democratic  John Kennedy       1961–1963 25

Hubert H. Humphrey Democratic Lyndon B. Johnson1965–1969

Spiro T. Agnew      Republican   Richard Nixon       1969–1973 26

Gerald R. Ford      Republican   Richard Nixon       1973–1974 28

Nelson A. Rockefeller Republican Gerald Ford        1974–1977

Walter F. Mondale  Democratic  Jimmy Carter         1977–1981

George H. W. Bush Republican   Ronald Reagan       1981–1989

J. Danforth Quayle Republican   George H. W. Bush 1989–1993

Albert A. Gore, Jr.  Democratic  William J. Clinton   1993–2001

Richard B. Cheney  Republican   George W. Bush    2001–2009

Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Democratic  Barack Obama       2009–2017

Michael R. Pence    Republican   Donald Trump      2017–2021

Kamala D. Harris   Democratic  Joseph R. Biden, Jr. 2021–2025

J.D. Vance   Republican   Donald Trump      2025–present

*Vice president is a type of title, and titles are subject to specific rules of capitalization. Titles are specific to a person’s rank, office, job, or position. When vice president is used as a title to specify a particular person, it is capitalized.

But when it is used without a specific person in mind, it stays in the lowercase form.

Sources:

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/what-is-the-constitutional-role-of-the-vice-president

Millercenter.org

https://www.britannica.com/browse/Vice-Presidents

https://www.kurtshistoricsites.com/vice-president-grave-directory/

https://www.archives.gov/presidential-records/vice-presidential-records

https://cv.libguides.com/US_Vice_Presidents

etymonline.com/word/veep

 

A Brief History of Election Day..........Earning Your Electoral College Degree in Applied Mathematics..........Election Day Around the World

  

 

 

“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”

Mark Twain

 

The word “elect” - c. 1300, eleccioun, Anglo-French "tact of choosing" someone to occupy a position, elevation to office" (whether by one person or a body of electors. Etymology on line informs that candidate is from the Latin candidatus "one aspiring to office," originally "white-robed," White was the usual color of the Roman toga, but office-seekers in ancient Rome, as well as fraternity members in the movie Animal House, wore a gleaming white toga, probably whitened with fine powdered chalk, presumably to indicate the purity of their intentions in seeking a role in civic affairs. 

An election is the formal process of selecting a person for public office or of accepting or rejecting a political proposition by voting. Were that it was so simple. 

 

    Around 508 B.C, the Greeks implemented the earliest form of democracy.  They had a "negative" election -- that is, each year voters were asked to vote for the political leader or "candidates" they most wanted to be exiled for the next ten years. The early ballot system was voters wrote their choice on broken pieces of pots, ostraka in Greek, and from this name comes our word to ostracize. If any "candidate" received more than 6,000 votes, then the one with the largest number was exiled. If no politician received 6,000 votes, then they all remained. Since voters were only male landowners, the number of voters was small. If there was a fairly even spread of votes, no one would be exiled, so usually only very unpopular political leaders were ostracized or exiled. The Greeks were definitely on to something here.  Wouldn’t this be fun in this day and age?

    During the 13th century, Venice elected a Great Council comprised of 40 members. The Venetians implemented "approval voting." In this type of election, electors cast one vote for every candidate they found acceptable and none for those they found unacceptable. The winner was the person who was acceptable to the largest number of voters.  

    Meanwhile, in England, in 1275 King Edward I called a meeting of Parliament (parler was Norman French for talk) as well as his tenants-in-chief. Edward invited representatives from every shire (including Bilbo Baggins and Frodo), and town in England. These men were elected as representatives by the people living in the locality. When the representatives arrived they met in five different groups: (1) the prelates (bishops and abbots); (2) the magnates (earls and barons); (3) the inferior clergy; (4) the knights from the shires; (5) the citizens from the towns.  After this date, whenever the king needed money, he called another Parliament. And since Edward was constantly involved in wars and building castles, he needed a lot of money.  In 1430 an Act of Parliament divided constituencies (voting districts) into two groups: counties and boroughs. Note that the need for money before and after elections has been a recurring theme throughout history. 

The US Presidential Election of 1789 was the first presidential election to take place after the ratification of the United States Constitution. Held on February 4, 1789, it resulted in the unanimous election of George Washington as the first President of the United States, with John Adams elected as the first vice president. This election and other early elections differed from modern-day presidential elections in the U.S. as candidates did not campaign for office.   Outward displays of political ambition were viewed with suspicion by the public. So ambitious politicians discreetly made their interests known while their allies publicly lobbied for them a precursor to the curse of political commercials that inundate us annually.  Additionally, there were not yet any formal political parties, although the divide between Federalists and Republicans became wide during Washington’s second term. Presidential and vice-presidential candidates did not run on a shared ticket. Instead, the candidate who received the most votes from the Electoral College became president, while the runner-up became vice president. Finally, the president was chosen by electors – who were themselves selected by each state through various methods – who were each allowed to cast two votes. Washington, after his unanimous election, travelled to the temporary US capital of New York City, where he was inaugurated on April 30,1889.

When you vote for president, you’re technically voting for an elector to cast an electoral vote for you.

Here in the U.S, we have our national elections on a Tuesday.  Why?  Glad you asked. Originally, election days varied by state, but Congress passed the Presidential Election Day Act, which was adopted on January 23, 1845, to set a single election day for the entire country and combat voting fraud created when different states held their elections on different days. In 1844, for example, voting occurred in different states from November 1 through December 4. As a result, people called “floaters” were able to cross state boundaries to vote in another state after voting in their own state.  In the election of 1844, Democrat James K. Polk (underrated and an excellent President) barely defeated Whig Henry Clay.  Initially the law applied only to presidential elections, but later, in 1872, it extended to congressional elections as well and then to the senate in 1914. 

In 1845 the United States was still a largely agrarian society. Farmers made up most of the labor force. Early November was a good time to vote because the harvest was over, but the weather was still optimistically mild and sprained wrists from excessive cow milkings had healed.  Some days of the week were better than others.  Two days were definitely out. Sunday was a day of rest and worship. Wednesday in many areas was a market day, when farmers sold their goods in town. Transportation was problematic so a travel day was sometimes required. If people couldn’t use Sunday or Wednesday as their travel day, then that meant election day couldn’t be on Monday or Thursday, either. Tuesday was perceived as the best option. Election Day was specified as the Tuesday “after the first Monday” to prevent it from falling on November 1, All Saints Day. 

Article II of the Constitution established the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a system put into place by our founding fathers as part of the Constitution. It is not a place. There is no Electoral College campus or football team. Of note is that the words 'Electoral College' do not appear in the Constitution. It simply refers to “electors.” The phrase “Electoral College” did not emerge in federal law until 1845. The fledgling government set up a system of electors who would act as the representatives for the voters in each state. The electors cast the final vote for the country’s president. There are a total of 538 total electors in the Electoral College. Each state gets an elector for each representative they have in Congress — two senators from each state, plus every House member who are allocated based on state population. No state would have fewer than three electors, no matter how few people lived there. Tied with 3 each are, Alaska, Delaware, The District of Columbia …..which isn’t even a state, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.  Moose and buffalo do not count as voters in Alaska and Wyoming.  It was one of the great compromises of the Constitutional Convention. The delegates to the Convention couldn’t agree on a method to elect a chief executive, which was a new concept in 1787. James Wilson, James Madison, John Dickinson, Roger Sherman and Gouverneur Morris worked out the details.

Ours is known as an indirect popular election, designed in part, to help states with a smaller population know that their voices were equally valued compared to larger states with more people. The magic number for any presidential candidate is 270 electors to win the election. These are the numbers every babbling talking head beats to death throughout election night and into the days that follow. It’s a simple majority: divide the 538 total electors by two, then add one for the majority. Most states have a winner take all policy. If the candidate wins the overall popular vote in the state, he or she wins all of that state’s electoral votes. There are two exceptions to this rule: Maine and Nebraska. These states allocate two electoral votes for the state’s winner of the popular vote, plus one electoral vote for the winner of the popular vote in each Congressional district. The winner-take-all system means that it doesn’t matter if a candidate wins a commanding lead in a state or just barely squeaks into the majority like Henry Clay defeating Andrew Jackson by just 4 votes in Maryland in the 1832 election or Democrat Woodrow Wilson defeating Republican Charles Evans Hughes by 56 votes in New Hampshire during the election of 1916. That candidate gets all of the electoral votes for the state regardless — which is how we’ve ended up with candidates who won the Electoral College but not the popular vote.  Five times in our history, a candidate has won the popular vote and lost in the Electoral College. 

1824: Andrew Jackson lost to John Quincy Adams.

1876: Samuel Tilden lost to Rutherford B. Hayes.

1888: Grover Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison.

2000: Al Gore lost to George W. Bush.

2016: Hilary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.

The Constitution granted states the power to establish standards for voting rights. As a result, mostly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males, who owned property and were older than 21 were the only group allowed to vote. On February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified, granting Black men the right to vote and congress the power to enforce that right. However, laws, including poll taxes, literacy tests and grandfather clauses, were enacted in mostly Southern states, suppressing Black voting rights until 1965. August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified, granted American women the right to vote

When a Candidate Reaches 270 Electoral Votes, that it.  The election is over Right? Well not quite. After every single voter’s ballot, hanging chads and all is counted, the presidential election is still not officially over. That doesn’t happen until the electors cast their ballots, which will happen this year on Dec. 14. The Constitution mandates that “on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, the electors meet in their respective States to cast their votes for President and Vice President of the United States.” The Electoral College ensures that that all parts of the country are involved in selecting the President of the United States.

 On rare occasions, electors do not vote as pledged. The Constitution and federal law do not require electors to abide by the results of the popular vote in their states, so we occasionally have” faithless electors” who go rogue and cast ballots for candidates other than the one to whom they are pledged. Thirty-three states require electors to cast their votes as pledged.  No “faithless elector” has ever been prosecuted. There have been more than 150 faithless electors since 1789 for various reasons. Have Faithless Electors ever changed an Electoral College election? No.  In 1872, 66 electors cast votes for Horace Greeley, the Democratic candidate opposing incumbent Ulysses S. Grant.  The problem was Mr. Greeley was quite dead, having expired immediately after the election. Who can be an elector? That same Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution says that current federal employees can’t be electors, specifically, a “Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

Alexander Hamilton defended the Electoral College (Electors). “The mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure,” he said in Federalist No. 68. “I venture somewhat further and hesitate not to affirm that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent.”

The December 12 meetings are held at the state capitols and in the District of Columbia.  Electors cast their votes and sign a form confirming they voted. That all goes into the Certificate of Vote. Once those documents go to the federal government, the Office of the Federal Register confirms the votes and then they are read out in Congress in early January. 

The concept of electors was not new.  From the Middle Ages until 1792, leaders of the Holy Roman Empire were elected by a college of prince-electors from various German states.

  What were some of the other ideas for picking a President?  At least four methods were proposed: election by Congress, election by state governors, election by state legislatures, and direct election by voters. Also rejected were a Spelling Bee, an apple pie bake-off or an arm-wrestling contest, 2 out of 3 wins.  

There you have it and now you are eligible for your degree in Electoral College Applied Mathematics. 

People in other countries get to vote too. In fact, 10 other countries have an Electoral College. In Vatican City, yes The Vatican, the Pope is elected,by the College of Cardinals, an international group of church leaders who were appointed by a previous Pope. Myanmar has a complicated system in which three presidential candidates are chosen by the Presidential Electoral College, which consists of members of the lower and upper houses of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, or Assembly of the Union and members of the nation's military.  Emphasis on military.  Speaking of complicated, Estonia has a system even more complicated than ours with the Parliament voting on presidential candidates. If none of them manage to secure two-thirds of the vote after three rounds, the electoral college consisting of both members of Parliament and local council members chooses between the two candidates who got the highest number of votes. Whew! Meanwhile, in Burundi there is an electoral system to elect representatives to its Inama Nkenguzamateka, or Senate. India chooses the president and vice-president indirectly through an electoral college consisting of members of both houses of the Indian Parliament. Not to be outdone by India, rival Pakistan has a president who is selected by an electoral college, consisting of members of the Senate, National Assembly and provincial assemblies. Off the coast of Africa, Madagascar uses an electoral college of municipal, communal, regional and provincial leaders to pick 42 of the 63 members of its Antenimieran-Doholona, or Senate. 

 In mountainous Nepal 56 of the 59 members of its National Assembly are elected by an electoral college of state and municipal government leaders and people who climbed Mount Everest. In the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago, has a president picked by an electoral college of selected Senate and House of Representatives members. And lastly, way out in Vanuatu, the island’s president is elected by an electoral college consisting of Parliament and presidents of the nation's six provinces and the winner of Survivor.   

Voter registration is compulsory in more than half of world that conducts elections.  In Argentina, Chile, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands for example, voter registration is automatic which is an enormous benefit to the chronically lazy.  It is based on government records such as census counts. In other cases, qualified residents are required to register themselves. Failing to register is punishable by a fine in some places, including New Zealand, Tonga and the United Kingdom. It appears that the most convenient system, online voting is working very well in Estonia. Since 2005, the country has collected the ballots online by way of a national ID card. The cards, which are embedded with unique chips and PIN codes, were already in use to do things like pay taxes, transportation fares and writing Amazon product reviews. 

Twenty-Five countries in Africa have tried switching to a fingerprint system. It’s known as biometric voting, and it’s designed to identify voters by fingerprint pattern in order to prevent fraud . Things did not go well.  Just look at the African governments.  A seemingly good idea can, surprise, go very wrong.  In Ghana, the system fell apart halfway through their election day. The fingerprint reading kits failed, forcing the government to extend the election for a second day. In Kenya, laptops ran out of battery power only an hour into voting, forcing the results to be delayed almost a week. This reminds us to never let a machine know you are in a hurry.  Don’t lose your marbles in Gambia, as the democratic voting process comes in the shape of a little glass marble. Citizens cast their vote by rolling a marble down an iron chute representing their choice candidate. Cast beads hit a bell inside the drum. This is the “pinball machine” voting method. It probably lights up and dings too.  In 2000, Brazil became the first country to have elections completely electronically. More about that later. They modelled their new machines to look like easy-to-use telephone booths, The good old pen and paper ballot hasn’t gone away though. Paper ballots have their advantages — they’re easy to use, cheaper, hard to hack, and not reliant on energy sources. Plus, they can be recounted — a simple fact that does much to put voters at ease. 

 

“The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” —Joseph Stalin

 

Would that the New Zealand model for election day be spread worldwide.  On election day in the land next to the land down under, election advertising is banned, candidates' social media pages are pulled down, and talking heads on TV can't give away any information on exit polls, projections, or even what a candidate is wearing, not even a rhinoceros costume…….see Sao Paolo, Brazil below…….  New Zealand's Election Commission has rigorous rules that no outlet may broadcast “any words or images likely to influence voters” before the time the polls close. The fines for breaking these rules can be up to tens of thousands of dollars plus no New Zealand meat pie for six months. 

 

The problem with political jokes is they get elected. —Henry Cate, VII

 

In Russia, you can vote for anyone on the ballot as long as it is Vladimir Putin.  If you vote for anyone else, you will go to prison and commit suicide by stabbing yourself in the back. In China, you must vote for candidates of the Communist Party.  If you vote for anyone else, you will go to prison and Vladimir Putin will stab you.

Unexpectedly, the loony, barking mad dictatorship North Korea does actually have elections... these are, surprise, corrupt and repressive. Parliamentary elections are held every five years to elect the Supreme People's Assembly - but each district has only one candidate, who is personally selected by Kim Jong Un, and voters who wish to dissent must do so in public, using a special ballot box. This ensures nobody actually dissents……and lives. 

Open elections, on the other hand, can be problematic such as when Brazilians elected a Rhinoceros (“Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros, I'll stare at something less prepoceros”. …..Ogden Nash)  to the Sao Paolo City Council . While numerous animals and objects have been run in elections around the world as a joke or to make a statement through the years, the people of Sao Paolo, Brazil were seriously fed up with corruption and graft on their city council. In protest, they elected Cacareco, a rhinoceros residing at the Sao Paolo Zoo. He received 100,000 votes, far more than for any human candidate. A "Cacareco Vote" is still used as a term to mean protest vote in Brazil. On September 13, 1938, Boston Curtis became the new Republican precinct committeeman for the town of Milton, Washington. Curtis happened to be a  mule. The deed had been arranged by Democrat Milton Mayor Kenneth Simmons. He wanted to make Republicans look foolish and show that the average voter had no idea who he was supporting.

Lastly, in Africa, we turn to  Liberia. Miraculously, in 1927, Charles D.B. King won re-election to the presidency with 234,000 votes. That’s pretty good since Liberia only had 15,000 registered voters at the time.

 

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”……Winston Churchill.

 

Sources:

https://people.howstuffworks.com/10-countries-besides-us-have-electoral-colleges.htm

 

https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/history

 

https://www.usa.gov/electoral-college

 

https://www.britannica.com/topic/electoral-college