The American Vice Presidency

by Jules Witcover

  Curtis fixed on a mansion in downtown Washington owned by the wealthy widow of Senator John B. Henderson of Missouri, a brownstone castle only a few blocks north of the White House on Sixteenth Street, which she wished to have named the Avenue of the Presidents. She even sold some parcels of land along it as an enticement for foreign embassies to locate there. She had offered a house there to Vice President Coolidge, but he declined. Curtis, hoping to pick up on the offer, sent his sister Dolly to examine the house, and she came back excited about the prospect. But in the end Mrs. Henderson’s relatives balked, and nothing came of an official vice presidential residence until the 1970s, when Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller donated his mansion on upper Massachusetts Avenue for that purpose.

  Curtis later found himself embroiled in a diplomatic spat when Dolly got into a feud with Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt and the wife of House Speaker Nicholas Longworth, over a matter of protocol. When Curtis’s wife died, his sister invited the vice president to live with her at her Washington home, where she would serve as his official hostess at diplomatic and congressional dinners. Alice, it seems, raised an objection with her husband that at such dinners Dolly should be seated after the dean of the diplomatic corps and his wife but before other diplomatic and congressional wives. The Longworths used Dolly’s show of pretense to boycott Prohibition-era “dry” dinners the Speaker didn’t care to attend anyway. In the end, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson placed Curtis’s sister after the dean of the diplomatic corps and his wife but before other diplomatic wives.19

  William Allen White in the Emporia Gazette wrote, “If Washington does not do right by our Dolly, there will be a terrible ruckus in Kansas. We will be satisfied with nothing less than she be borne into the dinner on the shoulders of Mrs. Nick Longworth, seated at the center of the table as an ornament with a candelabra in each hand and fed her soup with a long-handled spoon by the wife of the Secretary of State.”20

  Curtis himself suffered major ridicule during the Washington march of bonus-seeking veterans in 1932. The vice president had presented himself as a major figure of sympathy for the Great War veterans marching for early payment of the bonuses that Congress had promised them. Although Curtis had never served in the military, he often cited his father’s Civil War service in asking for veterans support. But when the marchers came and encamped around Washington and the Capitol, he called on Hoover to call out troops to disperse them.

  In July, the architect of the Capitol had its lawn sprinklers turned on, so the marchers, rather than encamping, decided to march single file around the Capitol. Curtis declared he had not authorized the march and ordered them off the property. But the District of Columbia police chief told him only the president could call out the army or move them. So Curtis then took it upon himself to call out the marines, which made him even more the brunt of ridicule.21

  It was in this context that voices were heard calling for dumping Curtis from the next Republican national ticket. Curtis himself talked about going home to Kansas and running for the Senate again. But with the Kansas delegation still behind Curtis, Dawes reiterating he was not available, and no other Republican willing to hitch his wagon to Hoover and the Depression, Curtis was renominated.

  As a little native color, about all he added to the Hoover cause in the subsequent election was his Indian heritage. On the campaign train, an Indian maiden reciting “Hiawatha” performed from time to time on the rear platform. Curtis campaigned heavily, particularly in the West, but was often heckled by veterans for his role in the dispersal of the Bonus Army in 1932. When a veterans’ group presented a petition to the Senate censuring Hoover, Curtis demanded that the language be deleted but was told to strike it out himself, and the leader of the group in leaving refused to shake the vice president’s hand.22 It was a fitting coda to what is widely considered a failed vice presidency in a failed administration. In November, Hoover and Curtis, unable to extricate themselves from the political carnage of the Great Depression, were snowed under by the New York Democratic governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his running mate, House Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas.

  Curtis, rather than going back to Kansas, stayed in Washington. In 1935, he became chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, hoping he could restore his reputation in the party by returning it to majority status in the Senate. But before the 1936 election he died of a heart attack at age seventy-six at the home of sister Dolly. He never regained his earlier political success or his popularity as the Indian jockey and has been more remembered as the inspiration for Alexander Throttlebottom, the hapless vice president who applied for a public library card but couldn’t get the required two references in the Broadway stage hit Of Thee I Sing, by George and Ira Gershwin.

  JOHN NANCE GARNER

  OF TEXAS

  When John Nance Garner became Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1931, he attained the highest public office to which he had ever aspired. With considerable reluctance, he then traded it in for another that he later famously described as “not worth a bucket of warm spit,” or at least that was the sanitized version of what he actually said.

  His assessment no doubt grew out of his experience. Serving as president-in-waiting for arguably the most powerful American chief executive in history was often a most frustrating responsibility. Garner was vice president to Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the first eight of FDR’s thirteen-plus years, long enough to inspire Garner to seek to take the office from him and to end his own more than forty-year political career in the failed effort. Yet for most of their association, “Cactus Jack” was regarded by many as the most constructive vice president up to his time, helping his president carry out the policies he did not always favor.

  Garner was born on November 22, 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, in the town of Blossom Prairie, Red River County, Texas. He was the namesake son of a Confederate cavalry officer whose family came from colonial roots in Virginia by way of Tennessee. His grandmother was a direct descendant of Sir Robert Walpole, prime minister of England.1 His Scots-Welsh father was a hard-working farmer who raised the boy in a Texas log cabin. Young Garner had only four years of primary education, walking three miles twice a day to an unpainted schoolhouse. With Texas entering statehood, politics became a constant subject of discussion at home, and his father often took him to local debates, giving him political aspirations of his own. At age eighteen, John set off for Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, but for reasons of inadequate preparation, health, and finances soon returned home and found a job in a local law firm. At twenty-one he was admitted to the Texas bar and set up practice in the county seat of Clarksville.2

  With little thought and no hesitation, young Garner ran and lost a bid for his first public office as a city attorney. Feeling run down, he went to a doctor and was told he had tuberculosis. To relieve his respiratory afflictions, in December 1892 he moved to Uvalde, in the dry Rio Grande Valley west of San Antonio. There he joined a local law firm and began to ride the judicial circuit for hundreds of miles over nine counties through what was known as cattle-and-cactus country. He often bedded down on the ground at night. At one point he took ownership of the Uvalde Leader in lieu of a legal fee, gathering, writing, and printing local items.3

  In 1893, he was elected a county judge, the same year he met Mariette “Ettie” Rheiner, who became his wife and life-long secretary. Garner served as ex-officio county school superintendent, charged with overseeing a local poor fund. When he learned that some Mexicans had used the dole to buy tequila and whiskey, he began giving harmless placebos to those suspected of doing so. A few days later, Garner’s political foes spread the word that a welfare recipient had died of the “pills” Garner had given him. They blamed the man’s alleged death on Garner, and the bad publicity cost him his judgeship. But shortly afterward, the “dead” man, who had been kept out of sight until after the election, reappeared on the local streets. Garner
said later of his defeat by trickery, “It was the best thing that ever happened to me.” Had he not lost that seat, he said, he probably wouldn’t have run for and been elected to the Texas Legislature in 1898.4

  There he won a reputation as a deft and fair mediator between railroad and shipping interests. In a debate over the state flower, he proposed the cactus blossom but lost out to the bluebonnet. Henceforth, the nickname “Cactus Jack” stuck to him. Another legislative nonstarter was his plan to carve Texas into five states to give it more U.S. senators, but when a colleague asked, “Who would get the Alamo?” the notion died.5

  In 1896 Garner was a delegate to the Democratic state convention in Corpus Christi to choose a nominee for a vacant congressional seat. Armed with ten proxy votes, Garner threw in with Rudolph Kleberg, part owner of the famous King Ranch, in return for being named chairman of the convention’s redistricting committee in the booming state. Kleberg was nominated for the House seat and then elected. As the committee chairman, Garner carved a new legislative district out of his home county and surrounding area and won election to Congress from it in 1902 and reelection for the next thirty years.6

  Upon his initial election, Garner immediately issued a declaration of independence, telling his constituents he wanted to hear their views, then clarifying his position: “But when a piece of legislation is in its final form and comes up for a vote, you won’t be there. You will be down here attending to your business. I propose to make up my mind on any measure and cast my own vote according to what I think is in the public interest.”7

  He was, however, essentially a loyal party man on most matters and slowly rose to leadership posts. When President Woodrow Wilson finally called on Congress to declare war on Germany in 1917, Garner voted for the resolution and summoned his only son, Tully, recently graduated from college. “Son,” he asked, “how do you feel about going to war?” The boy replied, “I aim to go, Dad.” Garner answered, “I’m glad to hear it, for you’ve got to go. I couldn’t have cast that vote to send other fathers’ boys to war if I hadn’t known I was sending my own.”8

  By the 1920s, Garner was the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. He became a regular attendee at Speaker Joe Cannon’s poker-and-whiskey club, called the Boar’s Nest, the predecessor of one of Garner’s own clubs when he attained his great ambition. But he did not have an easy path to his prime goal, the speakership. After the landslide election of Herbert Hoover, the enlarged Republican majority in the House easily retained Nicholas Longworth in the chair. The defeat, however, left Garner as the undisputed Democratic leader in the House, and soon Longworth and Garner teamed up in what came to be known as “the Board of Education.” It was a bipartisan watering-hole hideaway on the floor above the Capitol rotunda, where the daily dispensing of wisdom and whiskey prevailed, along with the “education” of wayward legislators.

  Once asked why it was so called, Garner said, “You get a couple of drinks in a young congressman and then you know what he knows and what he can do. We pay the tuition by supplying the liquor.”9 While prohibition was still the law of the land, attendees at the Board would ignore it as they engaged in Garner’s favorite toast: “Now we’ll strike a blow for liberty!” Afterward, Republican Longworth would give Democrat Garner a ride to his hotel in the Speaker’s car and often pick him up for work the next morning as well.10

  In 1930–31, politics and mortality contrived to bring Garner his life’s wish. After the year’s congressional elections, the control of the House was in doubt, to the point that Longworth sent Garner a telegram: “Whose car is it?” Garner replied, “Think it’s mine. Will be pleasure to let you ride.”11 Garner was wrong at that moment but not for long. By the time of the opening of the next House session, fourteen members, including Longworth, had died. After special elections to replace them, Garner was elected as Speaker by three votes.

  Garner became a harsh taskmaster of the House Democrats. He told them, “You are at the controls. You must remember that you are in command and are no longer the minority party.”12 With the Great Depression now enveloping the country, he appealed for a balanced budget, uncharacteristically taking to the House floor with an impassioned plea for necessary programs and the taxes to pay for them. He warned, “I believe that if this Congress should decline to levy a tax bill there would not be a bank in the United States in existence in sixty days that could meet its depositors.” Challenging the whole chamber, he went on, “I want every man and every woman in this House who … is willing to try to balance the budget to rise in their seats.” At first there was silence, then one by one nearly every member stood. Garner continued, “Now, if they don’t mind, those who do not want to balance the budget can rise in their seats.” None did.13

  The first interest in Garner as a national candidate came from William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper tycoon, who raised the possibility in a radio talk in early January of the election year. They had known each other when Hearst was in the House of Representatives, and when Garner was asked at his daily press conference, “What have you got to say about your presidential candidacy?” he shot back, “I haven’t a word to say. I am trying to attend to my business here. Now I’ll talk about anything else you want to.”14

  Garner’s adamant resistance did not, however, still a rising interest in Texas, but Garner held fast. After visiting Hoover on one occasion, he offered, “I always thought of the White House as a prison, but I never noticed until today how much the shiny latch on the Executive office door looks like the handle on a casket.”15

  Garner’s real interest was cementing his hold on the House speakership. He told his biographer, “I have no desire to be President. I am perfectly satisfied right here in the Speaker’s office. I worked twenty-six years to get to be Speaker. If we win this election I will have a comfortable majority to work with in the House. If we are on the political upswing as it looks, I will have a longer tenure as Speaker than any other man ever had.” He said he had no intention of doing anything that might deadlock the Democratic National Convention against the nomination of the presidential frontrunner, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York.16

  But with Hearst leading the way in California and Treasury Secretary William McAdoo also in Garner’s corner, the Democratic primary in the Golden State in May 1932 surprisingly gave Garner the state’s forty-four delegates over New Yorkers’ FDR and rival Al Smith. Together with the Texas delegation, Garner went into the convention with ninety delegates and a scattering of second-place support.

  McAdoo, speaking for the California delegation, had promised, “California will stay with Garner until hell freezes over.”17 But Roosevelt’s floor manager, James A. Farley, told Garner the convention would deadlock unless Roosevelt went over the top on the next roll call. Garner said later, “So I said to Sam, ‘All right, release my delegates and see what you can do. Hell, I’ll do anything to see the Democrats win one more national election.’ ”18 The floodgates opened, FDR was nominated on that ballot, and Garner was nominated as Roosevelt’s running mate by acclamation.

  In the fall campaign, Garner was happy to be pitted against Hoover, painting him as a tool of Wall Street, and he went off for two weeks of hunting and fishing. At Farley’s urging, he made a few speeches but was convinced the election was in the bag. Meeting Roosevelt in Hyde Park, Garner told him, “All you have to do is stay alive until election day. The people are not going to vote for you. They are going to vote against the depression.”19 And he added, “Hoover is making speeches, and that’s enough for us.”20 Later, after delivering a speech to businessmen in New York, Garner said, “I got on a train and came back to Texas. I had no more to say about the campaign. I had not campaigned for the nomination for vice-president. I didn’t want the office. I wanted to stay on as speaker of the House.”21

  On Election Day, the Roosevelt-Garner ticket won forty-two of the forty-eight states, and Garner was also elected to the House for the sixteenth time but resigned his House seat to t
ake the vice presidency. Accepting the limits of the office, he declared, “I am nothing but a spare tire and have nothing to say. I believe it is my duty as vice president not to do any talking about government policies. I owe that to the boss. He is spokesman for the administration.” And he told his old friends in the press corps, “I will always be glad to see you, but don’t ask me to talk. That is not my job anymore. The man who is moving into the White House will do the talking.”22 Later, however, he acknowledged, “I couldn’t get it into my head that I shouldn’t express my own views instead of agreeing with the president about everything. I had the feeling that it was my duty to express honest views, whether they agreed with the president [or not].”23

  Less than three weeks before FDR and Garner were to be sworn in as president and vice president, Garner came fatefully close to the presidency itself. On February 15, 1933, President-elect Roosevelt was riding in a motorcade in Miami with Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago when an unemployed and disgruntled bricklayer named Giuseppe Zangara fired five times at the car, killing Cermak and wounding four others, but Roosevelt escaped unscathed. Had the president-elect been slain, the vice president elect would have been sworn in as president on March 4.

  After nearly a lifetime in one of the highest leadership positions in Congress, Garner was not likely to go gently into semiretirement as a benign Senate presiding officer. He carried out its routine duties with good humor, as when the despised Senator Huey Long of Louisiana, the infamous King-fish, paused in a filibuster and demanded that Garner require the presence of all senators. Garner replied, “In the first place the senator from Louisiana should not ask that. In the second place, it would be cruel and unusual punishment!”24