History Buff's Guide to the Presidents Read Free Page B

president to the vice president to president pro tempore of the Senate. As Senator Lyndon Johnson said, “The difference between being a member of the Senate and a member of the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken sh—.” 7
    For a time, the chamber was known as the “Mother of presidents.” From 1817 to 1849, all six executives had senatorial backgrounds. But since then, the upper house has seen a decline in the number of presidential victories. They are often well represented in elections but usually lose—and badly. On average, senators make up 36 percent of presidential candidates (more than any other group), and they win nomination 22 percent of the time. But in 2008, Barack Obama became the first sitting senator to be elected since John F. Kennedy.” 8

    Lyndon Johnson much preferred his former job of Senate majority leader over the banal position of vice president. Most deputy executives, with the possible exceptions of the grateful Chester A. Arthur and opportunist Dick Cheney, viewed the vice presidency as essentially a political demotion.
In 1957, Senator Jack Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for Profiles in Courage , a biographical sketch of eight U.S. senators, including John Quincy Adams, who refused to follow popular opinion on controversial issues.
    7 . VICE PRESIDENT (14)
J. ADAMS, JEFFERSON, VAN BUREN, TYLER, FILLMORE, A. JOHNSON, ARTHUR, T. ROOSEVELT, COOLIDGE, TRUMAN, L. JOHNSON, FORD, NIXON, G. H. W. BUSH
    John Adams called it “the most insignificant office ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” Thomas Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s deputy, was partial to the joke about the woman who had two sons—one went to sea, the other became vice president, and neither was heard from again. “Not worth a pitcher of warm piss,” said Franklin Roosevelt’s first veep John Garner. When vice presidents died in office—which happened during the presidencies of Madison, Pierce, Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, and Taft—the government simply went without one. 9
    Yet in fourteen cases, deputy executives proved exceedingly important to their party and their countrymen. Eight provided invaluable continuity in the face of untimely deaths. Five were elected in their own right. One ably stepped up when his boss resigned.
    The Cold War elevated the vice presidency to an entirely new level. With the possibility of nuclear strikes, executives began to treat their second in command as potentially just that. Vice presidents became common fixtures in cabinet meetings and the N ATIONAL S ECURITY C OUNCIL . In 1967, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment stipulated that all vacated vice presidencies had to be filled.
    Recently, the office has gone through another transformation. Vice presidents were previously invaluable in “balancing the ticket” geographically. Up to the Civil War, nearly every pair of executives represented both the North and the South. From Reconstruction to World War II, a northeasterner was almost always paired with a midwesterner. Recently, however, the “balance” has been more political, joining moderates with slightly radical sidekicks, as exemplified by the Arkansas-Tennessee White House from 1993 to 2001 and the Texas-Texas pair from 2001 to 2009 (Dick Cheney lived in Dallas, but he claimed residency in his home state of Wyoming to be constitutionally eligible for election).
Franklin Roosevelt, undefeated in four presidential bids, failed in his only attempt to be vice president. Paired with Democratic nominee James Cox in 1920, they lost by a landslide to Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.
    8 . EDUCATOR (14)
J. ADAMS, JACKSON, FILLMORE, PIERCE, GARFIELD, ARTHUR, CLEVELAND, McKINLEY, WILSON, HARDING, EISENHOWER, L. JOHNSON, CLINTON, OBAMA
    Until the late 1800s, the majority of teachers in the United States were male, and a few became president. John Adams, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Chester A. Arthur, and Grover Cleveland taught to make ends meet