PICKING A VICE PRESIDENT:
What's The Worst That Could Happen?

John McCain's nomination of a forty-four year old, relatively unknown and untested woman as vice president has caused as many gasps of joy and incredulousness as Joe Biden caused yawns of indifference. "But really," many will ask, "it's only a vice president, what is the worst that could happen?"

It is only in recent years that the VP has become a prominent and influential role under the forceful will of Dick Cheney and the tireless nagging of Al Gore. ("Guyyyys! Come on, I'm trying to do a PowerPoint over here! Mr.President, Reno is asleep again!") Dan Quayle's responsibilities, on the other hand, included darning the President's socks and organizing his VHS collection. But while the administrative importance of the Vice President is a recent phenomenon, wild-card VP picks have a long history.

Palin seems young at forty-four years old, but she doesn't even crack the top five youngest vice presidents. John C. Breckenridge was a mere pup of thirty-five when he was elected as VP. Assuring his name in history books, he hitched his wagon to the shooting star that was James Buchanan. In all fairness to Mr. Breckenridge, though, if two terms as congressman and a law degree from Transylvania University didn't qualify him to be Vice President, then I don't know what would have.

Fortunately for the country, Buchanan lived long enough to earn a mention in the etymology of the phrase "lame duck" and served out his full term, and so we can only speculate what a triumphant failure President Breckenridge would have been. Unfortunately for the nation, Zachary Taylor provided no such courtesy, and instead allowed us to truly see "what's the worst that could happen?" when a man unfit to be president is nominated as vice president.

In 1850, President Taylor died mysteriously after consuming huge quantities of cherries and milk during a long day in the sun, leaving the office to Millard Fillmore (an illiterate until age seventeen), who was the only president to serve time as an indentured servant, and who would become the nation's most forgotten president. In fact, his only lasting impact as president was the passage of the Compromise of 1850--a political handout to slave holders. Fittingly, Fillmore would go on to run for president again as a member of the Know-Nothing Party, because the Dangerously-Unqualified Party was apparently unavailable. Perhaps Taylor knew what he was doing in selecting Fillmore, whose rank as the fifth worst president pushes Taylor up to tenth instead of ninth.

If the aforementioned veep picks stand out for their lack of qualifications, others deserve mention for their role as political disasterpieces. I'm going to go out on a limb here: you don't know who Richard Mentor Johnson is. And rightly so, too. The man who would become the nation's ninth vice president was well known in his day for two things: killing Indian Chief Tecumseh and having his slave as a common law wife. He was loved for the latter, despised for the former. His selection would prove so politically unfortunate that while Van Buren won the 1836 election, Johnson as his VP did not. A handful of electors hated him so much they refused to vote for him, forcing the senate to vote him in via the Twelfth Amendment. I'm not suggesting Sarah Palin or Joe Biden secretly have children with slaves, but, if they do, history suggests they had better kill a famous Indian chief to balance it out.

Many VPs have been unprepared and many others politically unpopular, but none can rival the political firestorm that was set off by the addition to the ticket of Thomas Eagleton. Imagine, if you will, the media frenzy that would be set off if it were revealed that Sarah Palin has previously undergone electro-shock therapy to cure her mental illness. And not just once either. That was the unfortunate debacle faced by Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, whose underdog candidacy couldn't lure any party bigwigs to join the ticket, thus forcing him to pick a B-stringer like Senator Eagleton. The trouble started with a recurring rumor that Eagleton was an alcoholic who had been arrested for driving under the influence. Responding to these rumors and inquiries about his health, Eagleton released his health records and admitted he had been hospitalized three times in the previous twelve years for "fatigue and nervous exhaustion," and had received electro-shock therapy on two of those occasions.

A brave declaration in an age which did not yet understand depression as a mental illness that was treatable, Eagleton must have been fiercely determined to quell rumors about his alcoholism. Unfortunately, a day after his announcement, columnist Jack Anderson (falsely) claimed to have evidence of Eagleton's arrest record for multiple instances of drunk and reckless driving. So, not only were the rumors of his drunkenness worse than ever, but people thought he was crazy to boot. Despite McGovern's initial support, Eagleton was dropped from the ticket due to concerns that people would not want a potential lunatic with his finger on the button. A few months later, the people's concerns were assuaged as our nation's sanest president, Richard Nixon, was sworn into office.

We at The Washington Pugilist like to point out to the unwashed masses that toughness is a supremely important presidential qualification, and that often the unwashed masses are right to insist on toughness in their elected. Perhaps the best reminder of this in the history of vice presidential picks is William Rufus deVane King. Following in Zachary Taylor's footsteps, Franklin Pierce selected King as his VP in an attempt to find someone who outsucked himself; someone who might make the gaunt and effeminate Pierce appear slightly manlier by comparison. How not tough was W. Rufus King? Well, Congress had to pass legislation to allow him to be sworn in on foreign soil because he was in Cuba dying of tuberculosis at the time of his inauguration. On top of that, King was also ridiculed for his too-close-and-possibly-gay-relationship with the bachelor James Buchanan. Popular nicknames for duo included "Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy" as well as "Buchanan and his wife."

Mostly remembered for as it is for his eccentricities and early death, history offers King another slap in the face; King County, WA was named after King until 1986, when the locals decided they would rather have been named after Martin Luther King, Jr., and so they officially agreed to pretend they were named after a civil rights hero instead of the nation's sickliest vice president. And who can blame them? King is a milestone in presidential weakness. (In a hilarious twist of history, King was bookended as VP by none other than Millard Fillmore and John C. Breckenridge, making the mid-1800s the era of vice presidential patheticness.)

The bottom line is that, relative to the field of potentials bandied about as possible VP picks, Palin is a wild card; but compared to Electro-Shock Eagleton, Miscegenating Mentor Johnson, Babyface Breckenridge, and "Miss Nancy," Palin looks rather tame. Unless, of course, the media shield around her is hiding something worse than a slave child, a history of illiteracy, and a deadly case of tuberculosis causing an insanity for which the only cure is electro-shock therapy...

Hey, prove that it isn't.

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