Veepstakes: The Best and Worst

In its ongoing veepstakes series, the Fix provides an interesting breakdown of the best and worst vice presidential selections in US campaign history.

THE BEST

5. Joe Lieberman (2000): The Connecticut Senator, back when he was still a Democrat, gave a historic feel (because of his faith) to the Democratic ticket and helped Al Gore "win" Florida.

4. Dick Cheney (2000): Surely our most controversial pick but remember that at the time Cheney was seen as giving George W. Bush much-needed gravitas.

3. Walter Mondale (1976): Jimmy Carter was a little known Southern governor about whom many in the Washington establishment had real concerns. In picking Mondale, a veteran insider, Carter not only allayed those doubts but gave himself a boost in national polls.

2. Al Gore (1992): Gore reaffirmed the idea that the election hinged on a generational choice between the youthful Bill Clinton and the aging George H.W. Bush. Gore also went on to reinvent the responsibilities of the vice president.

1. Lyndon Johnson (1960): John F. Kennedy didn't much like Johnson (the feeling was mutual) but knew the Texas senator was the key to winning the South. The pick was made and Johnson delivered his home region.

THE WORST

5. Dan Quayle (1988): Bad press seemed to cling to the Indiana Senator. From mispelling "potato" to his inexplicable war against "Murphy Brown," Quayle never seemed to be able to get out of his own way.

4. Andrew Johnson (1865): Picked by Abraham Lincoln in order to show a unified front to the nation, Johnson came drunk to his own inauguration and promptly insulted any number of dignitaries in attendance with his speech.

3. Thomas Eagleton (1972): Sen. George McGovern (S.D.) picked Eagleton, a Missouri senator, after several more high-profile choices turned him down. It turned out to be a huge mistake as revelations that Eagleton had been hospitalized for depression forced him off the ticket.

2. Aaron Burr (1800): Although not "picked" by Jefferson -- until the Twelfth Amendment was ratified in 1804, the candidate with the second most electoral votes became vice president -- Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton while in office. Nuff said.

1. Spiro Agnew (1968): Richard Nixon spent much of his first term trying to figure out how to kick Agnew, a former Maryland governor, off the ticket in 1972. Agnew did the deed himself in 1973 when he resigned amid federal charges of bribery and corruption.

The Last Good Campaign

This month’s Vanity Fair provides an excerpt from “The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America” by Thurston Clarke. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the early days of RFK’s 1968 presidential run and his historic anti-war speech at Kansas State University. A couple excerpts:

In 1968, America was a wounded nation. The wounds were moral ones; the Vietnam War and three summers of inner-city riots had inflicted them on the national soul, challenging Americans’ belief that they were a uniquely noble and honorable people. Americans saw news footage from South Vietnam, such as the 1965 film of U.S. Marines setting fire to thatched huts in the village of Cam Ne with cigarette lighters and flamethrowers, and realized that they were capable of committing atrocities once considered the province of their enemies. They saw federal troops patrolling the streets of American cities and asked themselves how this could be happening in their City upon a Hill.

The speech:

The field house was a hulking stone structure with exposed steel rafters and a dirt ring to accommodate livestock shows and rodeos. Because Kennedy attracted a record-setting crowd of 14,500, students stood in stairwells, sat cross-legged on the basketball court and under the press tables, and perched on the rafters and scoreboard, dangling their legs in space. Their signs said, bobby is groovy! and kiss me, bobby. Others said, gene for integrity and traitor!

The Kennedys walked onto the dais with Kansas State president James McCain, Governor and Mrs. Docking, and former governor Alf Landon. The students jumped up, cheering, stamping their feet, and scuffing up clouds of dust that dimmed the light and hung like smoke. They cheered because Kennedy was youthful and handsome, John Kennedy’s brother, and he reminded them of happier times. Seventeen-year-old Kevin Rochat, the son of a K.S.U. official, cheered because he thought everything had gone wrong since J.F.K.’s assassination, and only his brother could make it right. Ralph Titus, who managed the university radio station, believes these conservative students cheered because Vietnam had made even them uneasy.

Kennedy edited his speech during the introductions, sometimes glancing up to study the students in the front rows, as if he were changing the text according to their expressions. He saw girls in long skirts who had never worn makeup, and short-haired boys in neckties who were brave enough to leave their prairie towns but not to burn their draft cards. As Kennedy began, his voice cracked, and those near the stage noticed his hands trembling and his right leg shaking.

...He told the K.S.U. students that their country was “deep in a malaise of the spirit” and suffering from “a deep crisis of confidence”—the kinds of phrases that no politician has dared utter since President Carter was pilloried for speaking of a national “crisis of confidence” during his notorious “malaise speech,” in which he never used the word “malaise.”

Kennedy opened his attack on President Johnson’s Vietnam policy with a confession and an apology. “Let me begin this discussion with a note both personal and public,” he said. “I was involved in many of the early decisions on Vietnam, decisions which helped set us on our present path.”

He acknowledged that the effort may have been “doomed from the start” and admitted that the South Vietnamese governments, which his brother’s administration had supported, had been “riddled with corruption, inefficiency, and greed,” adding, “If that is the case, as it may well be, then I am willing to bear my share of the responsibility, before history and before my fellow citizens. But past error is no excuse for its own perpetration. Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom Now, as ever, we do ourselves best justice when we measure ourselves against ancient texts, as in Sophocles [from Antigone]: ‘All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and he repairs the evil.’ The only sin, he said, is pride.”

Kennedy’s apology elicited the loudest cheers of the morning so far, perhaps because these students appreciated hearing an adult admit to a mistake, or because they too had once supported the war and Kennedy’s mea culpa made it easier for them to admit that they too had been wrong. He framed his opposition to Vietnam in moral terms, telling them, “I am concerned—as I believe most Americans are concerned—that the course we are following at the present time is deeply wrong.… I am concerned—as I believe most Americans are concerned—that we are acting as if no other nation existed, against the judgment and desires of neutrals and our historic allies alike.”

He urged his audience to consider “the young men that we have sent there; not just the killed, but those who have to kill; not just the maimed, but all those who must look upon the results of what they are forced and have to do,” and to consider “the price we pay in our own innermost lives, and in the spirit of this country.” This was why, he said, “war is not an enterprise lightly to be undertaken, nor prolonged one moment past its absolute necessity.”

At first he seemed tentative and wooden, stammering and repeating himself, too nervous to punctuate his sentences with gestures. But with each round of applause he became more animated. Soon he was pounding the lectern with his right fist, and shouting out his words.

Rene Carpenter watched the students in the front rows. Their faces shone, and they opened their mouths in unison, shouting, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” Hays Gorey, of Time, called the electricity between Kennedy and the K.S.U. students “real and rare” and said that “a good part of it is John F. Kennedy’s, of course, but John Kennedy … himself couldn’t be so passionate, and couldn’t set off such sparks.” Kevin Rochat was close to weeping because Kennedy was so direct and honest. He kept telling himself, My God! He’s saying exactly what I’ve been thinking!

Kennedy concluded by saying, “Our country is in danger: not just from foreign enemies; but above all, from our own misguided policies—and what they can do to the nation that Thomas Jefferson once said was the last, great hope of mankind. There is a contest on, not for the rule of America but for the heart of America. In these next eight months we are going to decide what this country will stand for—and what kind of men we are.” He raised his fist in the air so it resembled the revolutionary symbol on posters hanging in student rooms that year, promised “a new America,” and the hall erupted in cheers and thunderous applause.

As he started to leave, waves of students rushed the platform, knocking over chairs and raising more dust. They grabbed at him, stroking his hair and ripping his shirtsleeves. University officials opened a path to a rear exit, but Kennedy waved them off and waded into the crowd. Photographer Stanley Tretick, of Look magazine, watched the mêlée and shouted, “This is Kansas, fucking Kansas! He’s going all the fucking way!”

It was just the beginning of a campaign that would change America.

One of Kennedy’s favorite authors was Ralph Waldo Emerson. According to journalist Warren Rogers, he had marked three passages in the copy of Emerson’s essays that he kept on his desk at home in Hickory Hill. One declared, “If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.” Kennedy was about to discover if Emerson was right.

The Price Of Forgetting A Presidency

The achievements of President Johnson are overshadowed by his failure to get our military out of Vietnam. But on the 100th anniversary of Johnson's birthday, Joe Califano, Johnson's special assistant for domestic affairs, reminds Democrats of Johnson's greatest achievements and urges them to learn from them. Johnson's shrewd political sense, extensive knowledge of parliamentary procedure, compassion and courage helped him achieve what Kennedy had started. Democrats would be wise to not only acknowledge his successes but also learn from his failure. All the candidates have vowed to get us out of Iraq, a challenge that undoubtedly parallels the crisis Johnson faced in Vietnam.

Johnson's "we shall overcome" speech was one of the best ever given to Congress.

John Edwards made reducing poverty a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Yet he never mentioned Lyndon Johnson, the first -- and only -- president to declare war on poverty and sharply reduce it.

Recounting the achievements of Democratic presidents, Barack Obama cites Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy -- but not LBJ, the president responsible for the laws that gave him (and millions of others) the opportunity to develop and display their talents and gave this nation the opportunity to benefit from them.

When Hillary Clinton noted that "it took a president" to translate Martin Luther King's moral protests into laws, she broke the taboo and mentioned Johnson, only to be rebuked. Lyndon Johnson is the invisible president of the 20th century. The tragedy of Vietnam created a cloud that still obscures Johnson's achievements.

Our nation -- particularly Democrats -- pays a high price for indulging in this amnesia. If we make Johnson's presidency invisible, we break the chain of this nation's progressive tradition and deny people an understanding of its achievements and resilience from the time of Theodore Roosevelt. Worse, we lose key lessons for our democracy: that courage counts and that government can work to benefit the least among us in ways that enhance all of us.

Americans under 40 have seen in Washington only administrations that were anti-government, mired in scandal, inept, gridlocked, driven by polls, or tilted toward the rich and powerful. For decades Americans have endured political micromanagement in which passage of one bill -- welfare reform, No Child Left Behind -- over an entire Congress or presidential term is considered an accomplishment.

President Johnson submitted and Congress enacted more than 100 major proposals in each of the 89th and 90th Congresses. His initiatives included establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and endowments for the arts and humanities as well as environmental and consumer protections. But his heart was in the War on Poverty. When Johnson took office, 22.2 percent of Americans lived in poverty. When he left, only 13 percent were living below the poverty line -- the greatest one-time poverty reduction in U.S. history. Johnson proposed and convinced Congress to enact Medicare, which today covers 43 million older Americans; Medicaid, which covers 63 million needy individuals; the loan, grant and work-study programs that more than 60 percent of college students use; aid to elementary and secondary education in poor areas; Head Start; food stamps, which help feed 27 million men, women and children; increases in the minimum Social Security benefit, which keep 10 million seniors out of poverty; and an array of programs designed to empower the poor at the grass roots.

No president since Johnson has been able to effect any significant reduction in poverty. In 2006, the poverty level stood at 12.3 percent; today is it almost certainly higher. He also threw himself into the fight against racial discrimination. In 1964 there were 300 black elected officials in America. By 2001, there were some 10,000 elected black officials across the nation, more than 6,000 of them in the South. In 1965, there were six black members of the House; today there are 42; the only black member of the Senate is headed for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Behind these achievements are important lessons for future presidents. LBJ was a revolutionary whose conviction that poverty and racial discrimination were moral issues helped shape the nation's response. He knew that the political capital from the sympathy generated by John Kennedy's assassination and the huge margin of his own election in 1964 was a dwindling asset. He saw himself in a race against time as he fought to remedy the damage that slavery and generations of prejudice had inflicted on black Americans. In his War on Poverty, he sized up the limited patience of Congress and affluent Americans.

Johnson had extraordinary courage and fought for racial equality even when it hurt him and his party. After signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Johnson was defeated in five Southern states, four of which Democrats had not lost for 80 years. In 1965, he drove the Voting Rights Act through Congress, and in 1966, he proposed legislation to end discrimination in housing.

In the 1966 midterm elections, Democrats lost 47 seats in the House and three in the Senate. Border-state and Southern Democratic governors and members of Congress demanded that Johnson withdraw his housing proposal and curb his efforts to desegregate schools. Undeterred, in 1968, he pushed the Fair Housing Act through Congress.

Those who seek to change the ways of Washington should remember, too, that Johnson knew how to reach across the aisle. He assiduously courted Republican members of Congress to support his Great Society proposals, not only because he needed Republican votes to pass the initiatives but because he saw bipartisan support as an essential foundation on which to build lasting commitment among Americans. He knew that the endurance of his legislative achievements and their acceptance by state and local governments, private interests, and citizens required bipartisan support.

Too many lessons of Lyndon Johnson's presidency have been lost, because the Democratic Party, the academic elite, political analysts and the media have made him the invisible president. It's time to take off the Vietnam blinders and see his entire presidency.

“Past error is no excuse for its own perpetuation.”

In a speech by the junior senator from New York, a raucous crowd was reminded that “All this - questioning and uncertainty at home, decisive war abroad – has led us to a deep crisis of confidence: in our leadership, in each other, and in our very self as a nation.” The implications of a war, of our own doing and being waged on the other side of the world, were playing an increasingly prominent role in the everyday lives of Americans. The exposed fissures in public opinion polarized the country, entrenching those who believed it was the only course our nation could follow to maintain its credibility and its ultimate security, and those who believed that course endangered both.

The senator continued… “I do not want – as I believe most Americans do not want – to sell out American interests, to simply withdraw, to raise the white flag of surrender. That would be unacceptable to us as a country and as a people. But I am concerned – as I believe most Americans are concerned – that the course we are following at the present time is deeply wrong… I am concerned – as I believe most Americans are concerned – that our present course will not bring victory; will not bring peace; will not stop the bloodshed; and will not advance the interests of the United States or the cause of peace in the world.”

The speech was given almost 40 years ago in a fieldhouse on the campus of Kansas State University by Robert Kennedy, a mere three months before he was killed. In the speech, Kennedy went on to chide LBJ when he quoted Sophocles’ Antigone: “All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only sin is pride.”

LBJ had the lessons of history and the realities of the present to guide him to more just conclusions, but he chose to ignore them. While President Bush is a similar situation, he also has the advantage of applying the lessons learned by McNamara, Johnson, Nixon and Kissinger. They are lessons that he can not only draw upon from the historical record, but from conversations with those who were intimately involved. Instead, he chooses to follow an estranged course that spends billions of dollars each week at the expense of the services provided to our own citizens. It is a course that has cost the lives of over 2500 of our brave men and women in uniform. And it is a course that further and further damages our Nation’s credibility while emboldening and inspiring a new generation of jihadists around the world.

The full extent to which the Bush Administration’s foreign policy has eroded our security is yet to be known, but until the well-being of American citizens takes priority over one man’s pride, it appears that we are in for a long and difficult journey.