Vice presidents are always obscure, until they're not.
Say what you will about Northwestern University's former Medill School of Journalism, those annealed in its furnace tend to stick together. Two of my classmates made the complicated trek to Charlevoix, waaaay up in you-can't-get-there-from-here Northern Michigan, for my older son's wedding.
Back in the day, I also schlepped to keep up with my far-flung classmates — I think it was my way to be quasi-adventurous while having someone who knew the territory close by and, not incidentally, a free place to stay.
So when Medill classmate Mary Kay Magistad based herself in Bangkok, freelancing around Asia, I slid by to offer my support. It was a memorable visit — how could it not be? I saw the king and queen of Thailand, at least from a distance, in a procession of red Mercedes ferrying them out of the palace gates, where I happened to be loitering.
And I saw Dan Quayle, then the vice president, up close. He came to town and I couldn't resist showing up at his press conference. The motorcade arrived, police motorcycle outriders, communications vans, Cadillac limousines flown in on Air Force Two. At least a dozen vehicles, this long line of flashing red lights, a strobing parade of American power where, at the very end, a door flies open and disgorges Dan Quayle. I couldn't help think of that scene in a Bugs Bunny cartoon where a huge spaceship spits out a series of smaller vessels, Russian nesting doll style, until finally out pops tiny Martin the Martian.
Quayle was one of the more laughable vice presidents — remembered today, to the degree he's remembered at all, for telling a class he was visiting that "potato" is spelled "potatoe." Spoiler alert: It's not.
But Quayle also represents all vice presidents, in his invisibility and inadequacy. Among the most astounding things of this very astounding week, after the fact of a powerful man doing a selfless thing for his country — Donald Trump had almost made us forget it is possible — was the alacrity with which the Democrats rallied around Vice President Kamala Harris.
Not to take anything away from her many fine qualities. But it is a reminder that when you're dangling from a cliff from a sapling that's pulling out of the earth, you don't vet the person throwing you the rope too closely. The party ready to vote for Joe Biden's mummified corpse saw that dusty cadaver magically transform into a living, breathing, talking, fund-raising woman. Talk about an upgrade.
A few commentators remarked on the anonymity of Harris over the past three and a half years, forgetting that anonymity is the central defining quality of the vice presidency, celebrated in song. (And a rather good song too, Tom Lehrer’s “Whatever Became of Hubert?” about Lyndon Johnson's VP, Hubert Humphrey: "Whatever became of Hubert? / Has anyone heard a thing? / Once he shone, on his own / Now he sits home alone / And waits for the phone to ring.")
Despite a third of the presidents having first been vice president, the job is still considered "not worth a bucket of warm spit," to quote Franklin D. Roosevelt's first of three vice presidents, John Nance Gardner (though, like many oft-repeated quotes, evidence is scant he actually said those words, more likely a "quart" or "pitcher" of tepid expectorant).
Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on July 22, 2024. Harris on Monday compared her election rival Donald Trump to “predators” and “cheaters,” as she attacked the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime.
Erin Schaff/AFP via Getty Images
The first vice president to rise to the presidency was — anybody? — John Adams. His vice president was another future president, Thomas Jefferson, a reminder that political rivals often found themselves bound together. For instance, Dwight Eisenhower disliked Richard Nixon, who was seen as a crude red-baiter. They were twinned at the 1952 Republican National Convention (in, ahem, Chicago) because Nixon was seen as a sop to the defeated forces of isolationist right-winger Ohio Sen. Robert A. Taft. Ike had his vengeance in 1960 when his tepid support might have cost Nixon the election. A reminder that Biden going all-out for Harris was not preordained, but another sign that our current president has the good of his country in mind.
Some of America's most beloved presidents slipped into the office through the vice presidency. The youngest president ever, Teddy Roosevelt, took office at 42 after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. Harry Truman — admired now, derided in his time — was so out of the loop nobody bothered to tell him about the atomic bomb when he became president April 12, 1945, not three months after FDR's fourth inauguration and not four months before Hiroshima.
Will Kamala Harris become No. 16? As I like to say, we don't have to argue. We can just wait and find out.
