They’re rarely recognized except if they go on to be President. Heck, two of them made it onto Mt. Rushmore. Anyway:
While they were VP, who was, in your opinion, the best Vice President of the US, and why?
My nomination: Thomas R. Marshall (Wilson’s VP). He was very personalble and had a great sense of humor:[list]
[li]In 1917, during a Senate debate on the country’s needs, he said, “What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.”[/li][li]He asked people passing by his office in the Capitol to toss his some food, as if he were a caged zoo animal[/li][li]Gave a book to Wilson after their election win, inscribed: “From your only Vice”. (Wilson was not amused, however.)[/li]
I looked in the mirror today/My eyes just didn’t seem so bright
I’ve lost a few more hairs/I think I’m going bald - Rush
*Libertarian: I nominate Alben William Barkley because he did almost nothing. *
Hey! We have the same initials! Watch what you’re saying.
For nothingness, try Hanibal Hamlin. Instead of serving in DC as VP, he went back to Maine and served as a private in the Coast Guard throughout the Civil War.
I looked in the mirror today/My eyes just didn’t seem so bright
I’ve lost a few more hairs/I think I’m going bald - Rush
Um, until recently, the veep was window dressing, he was a useless functionary and was thus used to “balance the ticket” (try to make more people happy). I don’t know who it was that first used his VP to do something useful for the country, but it was in the last 40 or 50 years. If you want a VP that did nothing, just look to 1950 or earlier.
To pursue Surgo’s thoughts a bit, Walter Mondale (Carter’s VP) was the first one to have real responsibilities, AFAIK. So that really limits the field to Mondale, Bush, Quayle :), and Gore. Unless you buy Lib’s reasoning that the less a public official does, the better they’ve done.
Kennedy made Lyndon Johnson his VP partly for ticket-balancing, and partly because it put Johnson in the position where he could cause Kennedy fewer problems than anywhere else. I’d bet a bucket of money that Lyndon absolutely hated being VP; probably felt like he’d been put in a gilded cage.
Poly - ROFL! Hadn’t heard the ‘two sons’ line before - I’ll have to remember that one.
Split decision on the origins (and original wording?) of the ‘bucket of warm ___’ remark. I’ve searched a number of Web quotation sites, including Bartlett’s; no luck. Have printed references I can check but they’re at home.
I’ll bet the “warm” quote is attributed correctly in that seemingly funny book about vice presidents used a source in the “Vice-President’s Residence” question to the mailbag.
“The vice-presidency isn’t worth a bucket of warm piss.” John Nance Garner, said to (soon-to-be Vice President) Lyndon Baines Johnson
“A family had two sons. One ran away to sea; the other was elected Vice President. Neither was ever heard from again.” was Thomas Marshall.
(both of these according to my copy of Bland Ambition.)
My favorite vice-president? Probably Alben Barkley. A fun guy, a great Senator, and anyone who dies on such great cue deserves honors. (For those unfamiliar with it, Barkley had given a commencement speech and was being asked questions by the students; when someone asked how he felt regarding returning to the Senate, he stated “I shall serve in the Senate so long as the good Lord shall allow” and promptly fell dead of a heart attack.
Almost as good as Sedgewick, IMHO.
JMCJ
Die, Prentiss, Die! You will never have a more glorious opportunity!
Quayle was a good VP because he made Bush look like a freaking genius, but Ford kept Nixon out of jail, so that has to count for something…
What? Oh, you didn’t mean who was the best from his President’s point of view? Well E-X-C-U-S-E… ME!
If you’re talking “good of the nation” kind of best, then I’d put George Bush first and Al Gore second… I don’t particularly like either one of them, but they’ve probably done the most good in their extra curricular activities, in spite of being vice presidents…
I’m sorry, but asking “In all of U.S. history, who was the best vice president?” is like asking “In all of NFL history, who was the best ball holder for kickers?”
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
