Where did you hear all this? From your grandpa’s weird neighbor at the old folks home or a BBC dcumentary?
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I’ll give you a few bits from a recent article in The Atlantic:
"Nixon initially chose him in 1968 because, as a moderate governor from a border state, he had both supported the civil-rights movement and made several tough-on-crime speeches. After the election, however, Nixon lost interest. He was eager to dump Agnew from the ticket when he ran for reelection in 1972, but he couldn’t. By then the vice president, with his attacks on the press and the political elites, had become a darling of a different faction: conservatives. Had Nixon retained the right’s support during his first term, this wouldn’t have been a problem. But his decision to open relations with Communist China, in addition to his support for a raft of liberal social and economic policies on the domestic front, soured his relationship with conservatives. By 1972, they were in open revolt, even running a protest candidate in the primaries, Ohio Representative John Ashbrook. Nixon needed Agnew—not to govern, but to campaign. So Agnew stayed. Nixon’s desire to dump Agnew stemmed from his belief that Agnew was too ineffectual for the office he held. The irony is that, thanks to Nixon, the responsibilities of the vice presidency had grown considerably by the time Agnew entered the office. Constitutionally, the vice president’s role was legislative, not executive. To the extent that vice presidents did anything in the pre-World War II era, it happened over in the Congress, where the vice president served as the president of the Senate, casting tie-breaking votes and certifying electoral-college counts.
…"But all of this was secondary to a larger issue with Agnew: He wasn’t very good at being an executive vice president. He was too buddy-buddy with the Secret Service, too undisciplined with his staff. And for Nixon, this was a huge problem. “Everybody else raises points about Agnew, raises them for reasons that are wrong,” he told Ehrlichman and Haldeman. “I mean, taking on the press is fine, doing his political chores are fine, alliteration’s fine. But goddamn it, [pounding the desk] if he can’t run a staff, he cannot be in this office.”
Balitmore Sun: "In the process, Agnew made himself the darling of conservative Republicans, who never really warmed to Nixon. However, Agnew became such an irritant to the inner circle — Ehrlichman once complained that he “couldn’t be programmed to leave a burning building” — that the trio soon was plotting to dump him from the GOP ticket in 1972. Nixon for a time yearned to replace him with Treasury Secretary John Connally, but finally abandoned the notion in the face of a likely Senate confirmation fiasco. In several conversations caught on the White House tapes, Nixon talked of the possibility of removing Agnew from the direct line of presidential succession by appointing him to the Supreme Court! Cooler heads finally prevailed and it was decided dumping him would unduly aggravate the party’s right wing, and he stayed on the ticket.
“For a time, as the Watergate affair threatened to imperil the Nixon presidency itself, Nixon articulated on the tapes that Agnew’s continued presence as vice president was providing “an insurance policy” against Congressional action to impeach and remove the president himself. As Nixon put it, "No assassin in his right mind would kill me. They know if they did they would wind up with Agnew!”
Or how about the NY Times, from November 29th, 1973?:
"WASHINGTON—**The choice of Gerald Ford to be Vice President is, of all Mr. Nixon’s personal political decisions, both the worst and the best he has ever made. Worst because Ford as Vice President will prove fatal to Mr. Nixon’s efforts to retain the Presidency; best in that the country in the weeks and months ahead will see the end of the nightmare of the Nixon Presidency and a transition of power into a Ford Presidency that is both honest and competent.
This view continues to gain weight here in Washington as political observers watch with grim satisfaction as the Nixon tragedy plays itself out. While it is impossible to foresee the ending—resignation, impeachment or physical disability—the President’s portion of the chessboard has been swept clean of defenders, with the exposed king scrambling frantically, and vainly, to save himself. President Nixon cannot survive in office much longer, and Michigan’s Gerald Ford will be America’s next President.**
While he was Vice President,** Spiro Agnew’s greatest value to Richard Nixon was as an insurance policy. It was impossible to seriously consider removing Mr. Nixon with Mr. Agnew the alternative President. Thus, Mr. Agnew’s sudden resignation from the Vice‐Presidency placed Mr. Nixon in jeopardy though I doubt this was realized in the White House. By stepping down, Mr. Agnew suddenly made Mr. Nixon’s removal from office possible.
**
**As long as the Vice‐Presidency remained vacant, however, President Nixon was secure. Congressional Democrats had no desire to maneuver any Democrat into the Presidency and give the impression of “stealing” the 1972 election, and Carl Albert, Speaker of the House, gave every sign of dreading the prospect that the job might fall to him. What Congressional Democrats feared most was a new Vice President who would become an unbeatable Republican Presidential nominee in 1976. Jerry Ford would be an ideal caretaker President—an adequate, politically nonthreatening choice. Despite a conservative voting record, he is considered a decent, competent and thoroughly likable member of the club. Jerry Ford, then, is clearly not a Spiro Agnew, and as Vice President, he is a viable and attractive alternative to Mr. Nixo
**