Guest Post by Morbo
We all make mistakes. Accidents happen. When I was learning to drive, I made the ever-popular rookie driver error of hitting the gas pedal when I should have hit the brake and ran over a mailbox. No one was hurt, but my dad was so rattled he decided to send me to driving school rather than teach me himself.
Hey, we’re only human. The good news is, redemption and forgiveness are usually there for us if we want them. (Only a few months later, my dad was joking about the mailbox incident.) Thus, when you do something really stupid — like, say, accidentally shoot your friend while hunting quail — the best thing to do is admit your mistake and apologize.
Vice President Dick Cheney seems to be having problems with this concept. As usual, the most arrogant administration in history stuck to its playbook: We’ll tell you what happened when we feel like it. And Cheney hasn’t exactly seemed contrite over this.
So I started thinking that Cheney’s not just a nasty old right-wing hack, he’s also kind of a lousy human being. Maybe it’s time to declare him worst vice president ever.
It’s no small achievement. A lot of losers have been vice president. Let’s face it, it’s usually a pretty crummy job that only on rare occasions becomes a stepping stone to the presidency. More often than not, it’s a bridge to obscurity.
When was the last time someone mentioned William R. King, vice president during the dynamic Franklin Pierce presidency? Do you honestly remember Schuyler Colfax and Henry Wilson, both of whom were vice president under Ulysses S. Grant? Is there a riveting biography of Charles Curtis, who served under Herbert Hoover? Even if there is, would you read it?
Until “Shotgun” Dick came along, I thought the worse vice president in American history was Richard M. Johnson, the eccentric number two under President Martin Van Buren. Johnson was a slave-owner who, among other things, once proposed that Congress fund an expedition to the North Pole because he believed the Earth was hollow. Undoubtedly, the expedition would find a portal, enter it and discover perhaps a flourishing civilization or maybe even dinosaurs.
Johnson got his start in politics by passing himself off as a war hero. He claimed to have killed the Native American leader Tecumseh during the war of 1812. There is no proof he did, and in fact many disputed the claim.
Ironically, Johnson is sometimes pointed to today as holding progressive views on race relations because he took an African- American woman as his common-law wife and even tried to introduce her into society, an act that in 1830s America went over the like a lead balloon.
In fact, Johnson was simply in the habit of forcing himself on slave women who were in no position to resist him. His wife, Julia Chinn, was a slave he inherited from his father. When she died, Johnson grabbed another slave woman from his plantation who eventually ran away from him. Johnson had her tracked down and sold, then took up with her sister. Far from being a hero of race relations, Johnson was merely a rapist.
As a member of the House of Representatives from Kentucky for the years 1829-37, Johnson repeatedly pushed a bill abolishing debtor’s prisons — because he was himself often in debt. By 1840, even Van Buren had tired of him. In those days, presidents and vice presidents were elected separately. Both lost their reelection bids. Johnson entered Kentucky state government and died 10 years later. Amazingly, there are counties in Kentucky, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Illinois named for him, though I’d guess few of the residents of those places know that today.
In retrospect, Johnson comes off as a buffoon — the type of imminently forgettable politician whose corpse litters American political history. There is no comparing his antics to the evil that is Dick Cheney.
Spiro Agnew aside, I’m ready to officially declare Cheney the Worst Vice-President Ever. I think a 21-gun salute is in order.
Maybe not.