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Veeps: What Does History Tell Us?
August 29, 2008
I was sitting here in wonderment at John McCain's VP pick for a few minutes and have been trying to settle myself 
back down and figure out what history tells us in these matters. First I looked back and thought, well, when it comes to the general election, it doesn't seem to matter whom the candidates have picked for VP. The presidential nominee can pick a career statesman and lose the election; the nominee can pick a novice or oddball and win.
It seemed that we vote for the presidential nominee, the one who we think will steer the country as we'd like to see it steered.
I looked back and decided that history shows that no matter the fact that the VP is "only a heartbeat away" from the top position, the elections turned on the presidential nominees. Voters went for Nixon (even with Agnew); they picked the elder Bush (even with Quayle). The critical mass, it seemed, will be making their choice between Obama and McCain, not Biden and Palin.
I looked back at the first women voters. The first presidential election in which American women voted was in 1920 between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox. Men and women together went in droves for Harding, whose VP was Coolidge. Cox's VP nominee was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Then I got worried. So is it that it doesn't matter who the VP is? Or has the American electorate in fact indicated that it kind of prefers the VP to be a somewhat mysterious and unknown quantity?
With Palin, people think McCain is making a play for women voters, and also consolidating his base with conservatives. Maybe he just looked at the history books and figured Palin fits into the pattern of successful tickets in the tradition of such VPs as Agnew, Quayle, and Coolidge, not to mention Fillmore, Hamlin, and Wheeler.
Those vice presidents of ours make for a fascinating melange. Read about them in this new book from Top Shelf Productions, Veeps: Profiles in Insignificance, by Bill Kelter, with illustrations by Wayne Shellabarger, which I'll be reviewing in an upcoming LJ. It's a quirky book, but full of fascinating detail.
Posted by Margaret Heilbrun on August 29, 2008 | Comments (1)
