Title: Dumping the vice president: An historical overview and analysis. Author: Sirgiovanni, George Source: Presidential Studies Quarterly, v24, Fall94, p765 (18p) Abstract: Chronicles the phenomenon of `dumping' the Vice President when the incumbent President seeks reelection. Examples of Spiro Agnew and Dan Quayle, former vice presidents during the administrations of Richard Nixon and George Bush, respectively; Trend toward giving meaningful assignments and roles to vice presidents. DUMPING THE VICE PRESIDENT: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND ANALYSIS Abstract In recent decades, the Vice Presidency has attracted far greater public and scholarly attention than it ever had, prior to World War II. One of the curious aspects to this most curious Office is that every Vice President lives with the specter of being "dumped" from his party's ticket when the incumbent President seeks reelection. In the most recent Presidential election, there was considerable speculation that this fate would befall Vice President Dan Quayle. This article seeks to examine the history of this phenomenon--"dumping" the Vice President. The eight occasions in which this occurred are closely reviewed. The article will demonstrate that the circumstances involved in all of these events were most peculiar, and either cannot happen or are most unlikely to reoccur in the modern context. The article concludes that a host of factors have made "dumping" a Vice President far more difficult than in the past, and as such this is one political spectacle that will occur infrequently, at most, in Presidential campaigns of the future. Virtually until the moment he was renominated, former Vice President Dan Quayle had to contend with the speculation that he might be removed from his party's national ticket. While the gossip and guesswork surrounding Quayle was especially intense, all Vice Presidents who serve under a first-term President are subject to dismissal before the next campaign. A historical overview and analysis of this phenomenon--"dumping" a Vice President--seems a useful contribution to the scholarly work on the Vice Presidency. Among the forty-five men who had served as Vice President, eight suffered the humiliation of being dumped from their national-party ticket when the incumbent President sought reelection. But in every case, the attendant circumstances were so extraordinary that they are unlikely ever to reoccur. Moreover, various evolutionary factors in the Office of Vice President, commencing with Richard Nixon's tenure and developing since that time, appear to have made it more difficult to dump a reluctant Vice President from the ticket. The rules employed in the first four national elections were most peculiar: Electors voted for two persons, both for President, and whoever received the highest total became President while the runner-up served as Vice President. Thus, in 1789 Virginia's George Washington received one vote from each Elector, while John Adams of Massachusetts received a plurality of the second votes cast, and thus became Vice President. Adams owed his selection mainly to the widespread desire for some regional "balance" in the highest echelons of the new national government.[1] When Washington stood for a second term in 1792, Adams stayed on as Vice President. A staunch Federalist (as the supporters of Washington's Administration came to be-known), Adams survived an attempt by those who opposed the Federalist agenda (soon labeled Republicans) to oust him in favor of their candidate, George Clinton.[2] Given the system then employed, it would not quite be correct to say that Washington "kept" Adams on the ticket. Still, one suspects that a negative word from the Great Man would have been enough to displace Adams. But Adams had supported the Administration[3] and had capably discharged his duties. Beyond that, removing him would have created various entanglements for Washington--just as all subsequent Chief Executives faced with the same decision would come to realize. In Washington's case, had he even appeared to countenance an intrigue against Adams, the Federalist Electors' votes might have been splintered enough for the opposition's candidate to come in second place. In 1796, Adams narrowly defeated Thomas Jefferson for the Presidency. Under the rules, Jefferson, now Adams' bitter rival, became Vice President; he had received more Electoral votes than either the Federalists' Vice Presidential hopeful, Thomas Pinckney, or the Republican candidate, Aaron Burr. In no sense can it be said that Adams dumped Jefferson for their 1800 rematch, as the Federalists again tried to elect Pinckney to the second spot, while the Republicans, to their eventual regret, stuck with Burr.[4] This time Jefferson barely won, but a crisis arose because all the Republican Electors, fearing that Adams might come in second if their own votes were at all scattered, had marked their two ballots the same way: one for Jefferson, one for Burr. Thus neither man had an Electoral College majority, and the issue had to be decided in the House of Representatives. Burr and some Congressional Federalists sought to deprive Jefferson of the Presidency, but ultimately he prevailed, with Burr sworn in as Vice President. Not surprisingly, Jefferson dumped Burr in 1804.[5] Since they essentially had run as a "ticket" in 1800, Burr must be counted as the first dumped Vice President. However, the Twelfth Amendment, which did away with this unworkable election procedure, eliminates any possible recurrence of the circumstances that preceded Burr's removal. George Clinton served as Jefferson's second Vice President, and when James Madison ran for President in 1808, Clinton remained on the Republican ticket and became the first Vice President to serve under two Presidents. In April 1812 Clinton also became the first Vice President to die in office, obliging Madison to choose a new running mate, Elbridge Gerry, for his reelection bid. Gerry also died in office; Madison's is the only Administration to be stricken by such double tragedy. In 1816, James Monroe won with running mate Daniel Tompkins, who remained aboard for Monroe's successful reelection. When Monroe ran for a second term in 1820, the Federalist party had become so ineffectual that it could not field a Presidential candidate. Left to itself, the Republican Party splintered into various regional and personal factions, each vying for the 1824 Presidential prize. The supporters of John C. Calhoun realized early on that 1824 was not their man's year; so, they offered him as a candidate for Vice President.[6] In the complicated maneuvering that followed, both principal contenders, Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, endorsed Calhoun's bid. Ultimately this election was decided in the House, in Adams' favor. Immediately, Calhoun from his Vice Presidential chair began throwing lines of support to the Jacksonian "Democrats," grimly determined to settle accounts with Adams in 1828. Personal ambition as well as genuine policy disagreements with Adams motivated Calhoun. However, such an escapade is almost inconceivable in the modern era. Even more incredibly, when Jackson mounted his rematch campaign in 1828, Calhoun stood as his running mate.[7] When Jackson won, Calhoun became the second person to serve as Vice President under two Presidents, and the only one to serve under separate party banners. Calhoun's cleverness finally caught up with him, as a host of personal and political issues--the likes of which are all highly infeasible in a contemporary con-text--led Jackson to break with him.[8] There was the "Eaton malaria" affair, involving Mrs. Calhoun's attempts to ostracize from Washington society the wife of the Secretary of War; this fracas strained relations between Calhoun and the ever-chivalrous Jackson. Also, Calhoun's enemies dredged up the fact that Calhoun, as Monroe's Secretary of War, had criticized General Jackson's impetuous military foray into Spanish Florida in 1818. While conceivably something like this might reoccur, in an era of total media saturation such a momentous event probably would be fully aired at the time. Calhoun's vigorous support of his home state's interests on the tariff issue also put him at odds with Administration policy, and led eventually to the "Nullification Crisis" of 1832 and Calhoun's resignation of the Vice Presidency near the close of his term. Today, while it is still possible that a President will find himself seriously at odds with the Vice President's home state, under such circumstances a Vice President likely would value his national-figure status more than this parochial ties. He therefore would seek to remain judiciously neutral in the conflict or, if necessary, probably would sacrifice his local following before cutting ties to his own Administration. But Calhoun acted differently, and for good measure he spitefully cast the tie-breaking Senate vote against confirming a Jackson favorite, Martin Van Buren, as Ambassador to Great Britain. Enraged, Jackson resolved to elevate Van Buren to the Vice Presidency, in place of Calhoun. Today a Vice President would welcome a prospective rival's receiving an overseas assignment, in the hope that distance would induce forgetfulness on the President's part. From 1828 until 1916, no Vice President was returned for a second term. (This eight-eight year span plausibly can be extended to ninety-six years, if one passes over Calhoun's atypical case and begins the count in 1820, when Tompkins was retained for a second run with the same President.) Yet remarkably, Vice Presidents were dumped only three times during these years. Elected Vice President with Jackson in 1832, Van Buren won the Presidency in 1836. His running mate was Richard Johnson, who owed his political career to past military exploits. However, Virginia's Democratic Electors, protesting aspects of Johnson's personal life (he lived with an African-American mistress and the two children they had together),[9] withheld their votes for him. This left Johnson one vote shy of an Electoral College majority, but the U.S. Senate settled the contest, in his favor. Technically, Richard Johnson's name might be added to the list of dumped Vice Presidents, because in 1840 the Democratic convention refused to renominate him on the ticket with President Van Buren. (Again, Johnson's social arrangements were the cause of his trouble). However, the convention declined to nominate anyone else for the post, because no alternative candidate could be agreed upon--especially as Johnson, for all his notoriety, remained popular with many Democrats. Instead, the convention left the matter to the voters, "trusting that before the election . . . their opinion shall become so concentrated as to secure the choice of a Vice President by the Electoral Colleges."[10] Essentially this is what occurred: Johnson's supporters continued to press his cause, while the several other Democrats who received state nominations for Vice President all eventually dropped out.[11] Van Buren's loss to William Henry Harrison forever prevents us from knowing what would have happened to Johnson if his party had won; probably, he would have retained his job. When Harrison died a month into his term, John Tyler became the first Vice President to succeed to the Presidency by dint of tragedy. He proved too unpopular to stand for another term, and of course he could not have dumped his running mate in any case, as he served out Harrison's term without a Vice President of his own. So did all the subsequent Vice Presidents suddenly elevated to the Presidency until the passage of the Twenty-fifth Amendment in 1967. Tyler's successor, James Polk, got along with his running mate, George Dallas, but Polk did not run for a second term. Next came Zachary Taylor, who died in 1850, making a President of Millard Fillmore, who was denied his party's nomination in 1852. Then came Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, both of whom were not renominated and thus had no opportunity to dump their Vice President. Pierce could not have done so anyway, as his running mate, William King, died shortly after the Inaugural. In 1860, Buchanan's running mate, John Breckinridge of South Carolina, more-or-less dumped the national Democratic Party by running for President as the Southern Democratic candidate against Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas and the eventual winner, Republican Abraham Lincoln. The new President's first Vice President was Hannibal Hamlin, who got along well with Lincoln. By late spring 1864, Lincoln's renomination was assured, and most Republicans, Hamlin included, assumed there would be no charge in the Vice Presidential end of the ticket, either. But while Hamlin came from the safely Republican state of Maine, Andrew Johnson, the War Democrat military governor of the border state of Tennessee, also was available. Lincoln had grown to admire the Tennessean, and thought he would attract support in quarters that neither Hamlin nor Lincoln himself could reach. Even as he professed neutrality, Lincoln admitted his preference for Johnson to a handful of Republican leaders, who dutifully ousted Hamlin at the Republican convention on the first ballot. The New York Times perfectly captured the dynamics of what had transpired:[12] while it was conceded that Mr. Lincoln's nomination was essential to the cause of the Union, . . . no such importance was attached to the renomination of Mr. Hamlin. Everyone would have been contented with it, but no one saw any special reason for desiring it. While the fundamental cause of Hamlin's dismissal--i.e., his Chief Executive felt that a stronger running mate was available--could befall any Vice President, all of Lincoln's actions must be considered in the context of the Civil War. Lincoln always poses a special case, and this includes his dumping of Hamlin. Andrew Johnson had no opportunity to dump a running mate in 1868. He was fortunate not to have been dumped out of office himself, as he avoided conviction in an impeachment trial by one vote. In 1868 Ulysses Grant won the Presidency, with Schuyler Colfax as his running mate. When Grant ran again in 1872, Colfax was dumped from the ticket. Some students of this era, knowing that Colfax was linked to the Credit Mobilier scandal, might assume that he was dumped for that reason. Actually, Colfax's Credit Mobilier troubles came to light after he had been dumped; indeed, Grant's second-term Vice President, Henry Wilson, was touched by the scandal, as well.[13] Mistakes, misfortune, and perhaps misunderstanding--all of a highly unusual sort--combined to end Colfax's Vice Presidential tenure.[14] Colfax caused most of the trouble himself in September 1870, when he issued a formal announcement on his future plans: I intend, with this term, to close my public life absolutely. I will then have had eighteen years of continuous service at Washington, mostly on a stormy sea--long enough for any one; and my ambition is all gratified and satisfied. General Grant will doubtless be renominated and I think he should be. . . . But the people will want some Eastern or Southern Vice President and should have one. I shall leave public life voluntarily, and without a regret, and expect to go into active business. My friends here all know of this determination, and I assure you it is no pretense, but a reality, as you will see. This is the last campaign in which I shall participate, and I feel happy at the prospective release from the exactions, cares, misrepresentations and excitements of political life, as the student who is about to graduate and go forth from the walls in which he has been for years, free from professors and critics. For those who knew the man, this was an old story: throughout his political career, Schuyler Colfax had been announcing his retirement from politics--and just as routinely, he had changed his mind every time.[15] But now he was playing on a national stage, and his announcement stirred up what one newspaper called a "political breeze"--with the strongest tailwind favoring Senator Wilson of Massachusetts.[16] He was a good candidate, with support from labor, blacks, and the old antislavery forces of the GOP; nor did it hurt that the newspapermen of the day liked him much more than Colfax.[17] And yet another factor worked in Wilson's favor: his fellow-Senator, Charles Sumner, had become one of Grant's most vitriolic critics, and the prospects of elevating Sumner's Massachusetts counterpart no doubt appealed to some of the people around Grant. For a full year, Colfax continued to insist that his decision to quit politics after 1872 was irrevocable. He wanted to spend more time with his family, and he knew he could earn considerably more money in private life. However, by December 1871 the usual pattern had returned: Vice President Colfax began having second thoughts. While he still wanted to retire, he now pointed out that he never had said he would not run if the party determined to nominate him anyway. And if this were to occur, why, "such a contingency would bring with it considerations to which he would give all proper weight when it arrived"--though certainly he would not want his decision to appear ungrateful, whatever it might be. By mid-January he was writing to a friend: You will see I have yielded so far to the demands of our friends here, as to allow myself to be placed where you wished me to be, that is, willing to accept a renomination if our friends deem it best and wisest to put the old ticket in the field. For his part, Wilson let it be known that "by the advice of some of the best Republicans of the land--East, West, and South--I leave the question to personal and political friends." In other words, Colfax was in a fight, one that probably would not have arisen had he not virtually invited another contestant into the ring. As if this were not enough, Colfax's relations with President Grant were strained by two perhaps-interrelated events. First, Colfax's announced "retirement" had led some in the GOP to consider him as the Presidential nominee in 1872. Such talk resulted from the intra-party strife triggered by the first round of Grant Administration scandals. With Colfax's own reputation in early 1871 as yet undamaged, newspapers began touting him for the top spot, on the assumption that Colfax would bridge the differences between the reformers and the Administration men and thereby reunite the party. Even Horace Greeley, who eventually led the Liberal Republican bolt against Grant, reportedly said, "I hope to develop sufficient strength in the convention to force Grant off the track and to nominate Schuyler Colfax." To contain the political damage to himself, Colfax insisted: I shall have to say about once a week that I am for Grant, as I really am, and even that does not prevent . . . [various people] from persistently asserting that I am in a conspiracy to supplant him. What did Grant think? "Give yourself not the least concern," he confidentially wrote his Vice President in November 1871, "about the effect on me of anything the papers may say to disturb our relations." But it is hard to believe that the Colfax-for-President boomlet did not strain relations between the two men to some degree. Some suspected--and Grant may well have been one of them--that the Vice President's "retirement" was from the outset a gambit meant to encourage a Colfax-for-President movement.[18] Interestingly, in August 1871 Grant made a most unusual request of Colfax. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish had wanted to resign for some time, and Grant felt he no longer could prevail upon him to stay; therefore, a replacement at State was needed. And so Grant wrote to Colfax:[19] In plain English will you give up the Vice Presidency to be Secretary of State for the balance of my term of office? . . . In all my heart I hope you will say yes, though I confess the sacrifice you will be making. It is entirely possible that Grant made this request partly to take Colfax out of the running for 1872;[20] certainly the offer served as a kind of test of Colfax's loyalty to Grant. Apparently Colfax declined, for as the day drew nearer for Fish to retire, the Vice President joined forty-four Senators in signing a letter asking the Secretary to remain in the Cabinet. Fish did stay on in his job, and so, for the time being, did Colfax, whose most ardent supporters continued to urge him as a replacement not for Fish, but Grant himself. Years afterward, one of Colfax's friends expressed the view that such talk, coming on the heels of the State Department matter, "effectually alienated the President's friends" from the Vice President. As the 1872 convention drew nearer, Grant's political position became steadily stronger; there would be no serious challenge to his renomination. Colfax, having thought better of the retirement option, now could only hope to hang onto the second spot on the ticket. Human nature being what it is, Grant could not have been overly sorry to see Colfax challenged seriously for the Vice Presidency. Officially, the president remained neutral between Colfax and Wilson--which in effect helped the latter. On the first convention ballot, Wilson prevailed. Colfax left the convention telling friends that his original letter announcing his retirement plans had not been intended for public consumption. It is hard to imagine the circumstances that led to Colfax's undoing resurfacing in a modern setting. No Vice President today would release so emphatic a retirement statement unless he were absolutely certain of the decision--which in itself would be most unlikely, given that Vice Presidents now look upon the job as a stepping stone to the Presidency, not as a career-capping honor. This especially would be the case with a young Vice President--such as Colfax, who was only forty-seven when he announced his retirement. The other facets of Colfax's dilemma are equally infeasible now. No President would ask a Vice President to resign in mid-term to become Secretary of State; and not even the most desperate dissident party faction could now hope to enlist the Vice President as a standard bearer against the incumbent President. Following Grant in the White House was Rutherford Hayes, who won the much-disputed 1876 election with running mate William Wheeler. Hayes served a single term. Then came James Garfield, who died in office and was succeeded by Chester Arthur, whom the Republicans refused to nominate in 1884. Following him was Grover Cleveland; his Vice President, Thomas Hendricks, died in 1885. Running with Allen Thurman in his 1888 reelection bid, Cleveland received more popular votes than his Republican opponent, Benjamin Harrison, but Harrison won narrowly in the Electoral College and became President. Harrison's running mate was Levi Morton, a prominent banker-politician from New York. He performed his duties as President of the Senate in such a by-the-books, non-partisan way--most notably in the debate over the so-called "Force Bill," which would have provided federal oversight of elections to ensure that Afro-Americans in the South were allowed to vote--that he sometimes annoyed fellow Republicans.[21] Although this probably contributed to the lack of pity for Morton when he was dumped in 1892, it did not directly lead to his political demise. Before the 1892 Republican convention, Morton maladroitly created the impression that he did not especially want a second term as Vice President. He claimed that the convention should make its choice free of any lobbying from the incumbent; this was reported in some quarters as a statement of disinterest in his job.[22] In no respect had Morton been as unequivocal as Colfax; nevertheless, Morton would suffer precisely the same fate. At the GOP convention, attention initially focused on the presidential nomination, which Harrison won by staving off a last-ditch bid by James G. Blaine, whose futile bid was managed by "Boss" Tom Platt of New York.[23] Then came the one surprise of what would be a lackluster campaign. The convention ousted Morton in favor of Whitelaw Reid--a New Yorker, a Blaine man, a seasoned figure in Republican and diplomatic circles, and the publisher of the powerful New York Tribune, which had subtly been promoting his candidacy for some time. Reid's backers--with Boss Platt the chief among them--naturally did what they could to spread the story that Morton had lost interest in his job as Vice President. In the constant retelling, it was made to seem that Morton definitely did not wish to succeed himself. Though untrue, this was enough to open the door to Reid, who with Platt's backing garnered substantial support within the all-important New York delegation.[24] After deciding upon Reid in caucus, the New Yorkers put his name before the full convention, whereupon Reid received the nomination on the first ballot.[25] For his part, President Harrison--though he had preferred and expected Morton to be renominated--was not unduly disturbed that one New York running mate had been replaced by another. Rather, Harrison worried that Reid, who as publisher of the Tribune had battled the typographers' union, might repel the labor vote.[26] An analysis of Morton's removal from the ticket must begin with his having created an impression--or at least, his having made it possible for others to create the impression--that he wanted to leave the Vice Presidency. Ultimately, this was the key factor in his dismissal. (Reid himself conceded to Morton that he would have been renominated "if you had not been quoted as saying you didn't want it.")[27] No modern-era Vice President--no matter how prone to malapropisms, no matter how unguarded the moment--would dare to "play hard to get" concerning his own renomination. The stakes now are universally understood to be far higher than in Morton's day. Back then the Vice Presidency was considered a "dead end" job; now the office is seen as a stepping stone to the Presidency, and thus there are always hopefuls hovering about, ready in a moment to twist to their own advantage any hint of the incumbent's wavering interest in the job. Vice Presidents know this, and they act accordingly. Then there is Boss Platt's role to consider. Various explanations have been offered for why he helped dump Morton in favor of Reid. It may be that, as Blaine's chief supporter, Platt simply wanted to reestablish his power credentials by forcing a new Vice Presidential nominee onto the ticket. It has been suggested that he privately wanted Harrison to lose and, figuring that Morton was a stronger candidate, deliberately put in a weaker substitute to sink the ticket. Possibly Platt disliked what he regarded as Reid's reformist views, and saw an opportunity to remove such a potentially pesky presence from New York State. For our purposes, the relevant point is not why Platt acted as he did,[28] but that now a sitting Vice President could not possibly be overthrown by one individual--except an incumbent, renominated President of the United States. This leads directly to the next element of the Morton-Reid affair--an element which simply could not occur again. No modern-day President would behave as passively as Benjamin Harrison did, and no party convention now could impose its will on any Presidential nominee, particularly an incumbent--even one challenged for renomination. For purposes of comparison, let us temporarily break chronology. In 1976 Ronald Reagan mounted a far more serious challenge to President Gerald Ford than Blaine mustered against Harrison. Although Ford dumped his incumbent Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller, in order to appease the party's conservative faction, Ford did so months before the first Presidential primary, not at the convention itself. Also, once Ford did win, he named the running mate he wanted, Bob Dole--who in contrast to Reid's relationship to Blaine was not an identifiable "Reagan man." In 1980, Teddy Kennedy's challenge to President Jimmy Carter in no way jeopardized Vice President Walter Mondale's place on the ticket--so long of course as Carter himself prevailed over Kennedy. If anything, the intra-party fight made Mondale's job all the more secure, as he vigorously defended his boss throughout the primary gauntlet. In a similar vein, conservative Pat Buchanan's challenge to President George Bush probably made conservative Vice President Dan Quayle's place on the 1992 Republican ticket more secure. Perhaps if Presidential primaries had existed in Morton's day, he would have stumped the land on Harrison's behalf and thereby ingratiated himself enough to remain on the ticket. A final point to be made about Morton concerns the stratagem of substituting one figure from New York or some other key state with another politico, in this case Whitelaw Reid. First, in modern politics it is nearly inconceivable that a state delegation would take the lead in dumping one of its own, even for someone else of that state--as happened in 1892. Beyond that, modern-era candidates are comparatively independent of party officials and placemen, and no longer can be treated as so many interchangeable parts, as was the case in 1892. Replacing Vice Presidents did not help Harrison, as this time Cleveland and running mate Adlai Stevenson (grandfather of the future Presidential candidate) regained the White House for the Democrats. Cleveland made no attempt at a third term, and Republican William McKinley triumphed in 1896. His Vice President, Garret Hobart, probably would have been on the reelection ticket, but he died in 1899. McKinley filled the resulting vacancy in 1900 with Theodore Roosevelt, who became President upon McKinley's assassination in 1901. T.R. won in 1904 but did not seek a third term. It should be mentioned that if Roosevelt had run in 1908, almost certainly he would have tried to dump his Vice President, Charles Fairbanks. The two men strongly disliked one another, but not even Roosevelt--a popular incumbent easily nominated by his party for a near-certain second term--was able to stop the 1904 Republican convention from selecting Fairbanks, to mollify a discordant party faction. Roosevelt's successor was William Taft, who sought reelection but was defeated when T.R. staged a third-party comeback and thereby split the GOP enough to allow Democrat Woodrow Wilson and running mate Thomas Marshall to win. For the losing effort, Taft kept Vice President John Sherman on the ticket. In 1916 Wilson stayed with Marshall and won again. Finally, for the first time since Daniel Tompkins in the days of Monroe's "Era of Good Feelings," a Vice President had succeeded himself and served out all eight years of a single Presidential Administration. In 1921, Warren Harding became President; when he died in 1923, Vice President Calvin Coolidge took over. With Charles Dawes as his running mate, Coolidge won in 1924, but he stepped aside in 1928. His successor was Herbert Hoover, whose Vice President was Charles Curtis. In 1932, the Hoover-Curtis team remained intact, as no one else in the GOP desired a place on the sure-loser of a ticket. The next President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, dumped his first two Vice Presidents, "Cactus" Jack Garner and Henry Wallace. It is worth noting that neither event would have happened if Roosevelt had stepped down after eight years, as is now Constitutionally required. Moreover, both events resulted from extremely unusual circumstances. Roosevelt's first Vice President, Garner, served out a full two terms. Then came the fateful year of 1940. Garner's basically conservative instincts had led him to become steadily more estranged from his boss' New Deal liberalism, and largely for this reason he opposed FDR's unprecedented third-term bid. Personal ambition played a role, too: Garner formally put himself up for the Democratic nomination, against Roosevelt. Garner's bid failed miserably, and naturally this made it impossible for him to remain on the ticket.[29] Of course, while it still could happen that a sitting Vice President would oppose his President's bid for a second term, this must be regarded as an extremely improbable scenario. FDR's second Vice President was Henry Wallace, whom FDR forced upon the convention by threatening not to run himself unless Wallace were added to the ticket. Yet Wallace too was dumped, when Roosevelt stood for a fourth term in 1944. Democratic Party insiders knew that Roosevelt's health was very poor and that he had little chance of living another four years. This made the Vice Presidency all-important, and many party officials lacked confidence in Wallace, who was personally eccentric, very liberal, and quite naive about the USSR. Roosevelt waffled on whether he wanted Wallace back on the ticket; he said he did, yet he also expressed support for several other potential running mates. Amidst a tangle of duplicity and confusion at the Democratic convention, two powerful groups, the Southern chieftains and the big city bosses, got together and dumped Wallace, then replaced him with compromise candidate Harry Truman.[30] Nothing like this could happen in the modern political context. It would be impossible that news about a President's failing health could be so widely known at a party convention, yet remain secret from the media and general public. Indeed, conventions themselves are now somewhat anachronistic. Because primaries almost always determine the nominee in advance, the modern convention is tightly controlled by that winning candidate, not by individual party mavens or state delegations. As such, there no longer are "party bosses" to speak of, who could take command should the President act so indecisively about the Vice Presidency--which in itself is now most unlikely, regardless of the President's state of health or mind. Truman took over the FDR's death, and when Truman ran in his own right in 1948, he asked Supreme Court Justice William Douglas to join the ticket. Douglas declined. Then, the day before the convention vote, Truman received a call from Senate Minority Leader Alben Barkley and Leslie Biffle, the Secretary of the Senate and Barkley's chief political supporter. Barkley asked whether Truman would mind if he sought the Vice Presidency; Biffle added that they already had secured enough delegate votes for Barkley's nomination. In his memoirs, Truman recorded his response as, "Why didn't you tell me you wanted to be Vice President? It's all right with me."[31] Barkley himself later acknowledged that "I had not been President Truman's choice as a running mate."[32] The Barkley nomination served as a kind of transitional point in the Vice Presidential selection process. Truman probably could have installed his first choice, Douglas, on the ticket, but when Douglas declined Truman was forced to accept the will of the convention. Thus, the President was acquiring steadily greater, but not yet total, control over this decision. Elected in a surprise, Truman did not run again in 1952. His Republican successor, Dwight Eisenhower, won a smashing victory with a young California running mate, Richard Nixon. Generally and correctly regarded as the first "modern" Vice President, Nixon largely transformed the office from a "do nothing" job into one with high visibility and some substantive responsibilities.[33] Also, Nixon's youth--he was just forty when he became Vice President--and the two-term limitation on Eisenhower guaranteed that Nixon would seek to use the Vice Presidency as a stepping stone to the top job. However, Nixon almost did not become Vice President at all. In 1952 he nearly was forced off the ticket by damaging press reports that linked him to a supposedly-secret "slush fund"; Nixon saved his career with a dramatic TV speech that convincingly refuted the charges against him. As Vice President, Nixon remained controversial, and in 1956 Harold Stassen and a few other Republican leaders concluded that the party would be stronger if Nixon were dumped. Eisenhower sent mixed signals on the subject. Several times he suggested to Nixon that his career might be enhanced if he took a Cabinet post in a second Eisenhower Administration; yet, Eisenhower also said he wanted Nixon to "chart his own course."[34] As the Vice President fully realized, "the disastrous appearance that 'Nixon had been dumped'"[35] would be fatal to his chances of ever waging a credible Presidential campaign of his own. So, he fought to remain in his job. For almost four years, Vice President Nixon had been traveling extensively on behalf of Republican candidates and causes; now, some of the political "I.O.U."s he had collected could be called in. Well before the GOP convention Nixon had received pledges of support from a majority of the delegates, and 180 of the 203 House Republicans publicly endorsed him for Vice President. In the New Hampshire primary nearly 23,000 people cast write-in votes for Nixon, and various polls indicated broad Republican preference nationally for a second Eisenhower-Nixon ticket. All these factors insulated Nixon against the movement to dump him, and taken together they would have created problems even for Eisenhower, had he resolved to push Nixon off the ticket. Of course, Ike still would have had the power to do so, but it would have been a hard, highly divisive step--far more so than it had been in the past. The GOP won handily in 1956, and Nixon in turn sought the Presidency for himself in 1960. But John Kennedy won this much-disputed election. Kennedy's running mate, Senator Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas, had a major role in bringing his Electoral-rich home state into the Democratic column. Tragedy intervened before JFK got to decide whether to keep Johnson aboard in 1964, leaving some close to the scene to speculate on what might have occurred.[36] The belief here is that Kennedy would have stuck with Johnson. First, by 1960 the Presidential nominees in both parties had secured virtually total control over the choice of a running mate. This in itself makes it less likely that any Vice President will be dumped in the next cycle. At least implicitly, dumping a Vice President acknowledges that a mistake had been made in the first place. This posed no great problem when conventions chose the Vice Presidential nominees. But now, a President who changes his ticket in effect confesses that he has made a mistake--a rather big one. Because Presidents like everyone else are loathe to admit errors, there is now built-in disincentive for a President to dump the Vice President. However, this is not the only reason to conclude that JFK would have kept Johnson in 1964. From our vantage point, we know that LBJ whipped Batty Gold-water in one of the greatest landslide elections of all time. Such an outcome might not have seemed so certain to Kennedy at the time he would have made the big decision. Dumping Johnson might have put Texas in some risk, and this alone would have stayed Kennedy's hand. Not only that, but Kennedy would have gone into the election weakest in the South, the very region he had in mind when he put LBJ on the ticket in 1960. Johnson had been a big help in holding Dixie, but three years later, thanks to the civil rights controversy, Kennedy's standing there was if anything even more problematic. Kennedy certainly would have understood this, and he would have asked himself the obvious question: why dump Johnson, who had proved himself in 1960 and ought to do as well in 1964, for somebody else, when there was no compelling reason to take such a gamble? Beyond the obvious answer to that question, John Kennedy's decision would have been influenced by the dynastic ambitions of his own family. Although Presidents before him had tried to groom their successors, no one would have more assiduously sought to do so than JFK, as in his case the preferred one was his own brother, Robert Kennedy. As such, John Kennedy never would have dumped LBJ for someone capable of using the Vice Presidency as a launching pad for a 1968 Presidential run, in competition against Brother Bobby. More than likely, Old "Uncle Cornpone," as the Kennedy people called their own Vice President, would have seemed less of a threat than anyone else. This too would have assured Johnson's remaining on the ticket. Of course, it was LBJ himself who got to choose the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee in 1964, and he played out the suspense until the last moment--far longer than JFK, who had a flesh-and-blood incumbent to decide upon, could have. Moreover, by the time the Democratic convention convened in August 1964, all political observers realized that Goldwater was a disaster and that Johnson would win in a landslide. Rarely if ever has a Presidential nominee had more of a "free pick" than LBJ did in 1964.[37] The choice he finally made, Senator Hubert Humphrey, added ideological and regional balance to the ticket. Beyond that, LBJ accurately sensed that Humphrey had the kind of obeisant character that Johnson demanded for subordinates. Had Johnson sought reelection in 1968, he almost certainly would have retained this most eager-to-please of Vice Presidents. But it was not to be. Given a shot at the top prize when Johnson stepped aside, Humphrey narrowly lost to Richard Nixon, who chose for his running mate a first-term governor of Maryland, Spiro Agnew. In 1972, Nixon's Democratic challenger, George McGovern, chose Tom Eagleton as his Vice Presidential nominee. Almost immediately it was discovered that Eagleton had a history of mental illness, and he was forced off the ticket and replaced by Sargent Shriver.[38] On the GOP side, Nixon, who rather quickly had lost confidence in Agnew, considered dumping him. Agnew's survival owed partly to peculiar circumstances that worked in his favor, and partly to difficulties now entailed in the dumping of any Vice President. First, Agnew was lucky that Nixon did not simply want to dump him for anyone; rather, Nixon wanted to replace Agnew with a specific individual, Treasury Secretary John Connally.[39] Ordinarily, this might have made it tougher yet for Agnew to hold on; however, at the time Connally was still a registered Democrat. Many GOP regulars would have been outraged at the appointment of a Democrat to the national ticket--or so Nixon feared. The prospects of party disunity stayed his hand. Beyond that, Agnew spent his four years as Vice President building substantial support among the party's conservative wing. Indeed, so rapid was Agnew's demise (not to mention Watergate) that one easily forgets how, from early-to-mid 1973, the polls showed him as the front-runner for the 1976 GOP nomination. While Agnew is a special case owing to his resignation for accepting bribes and kickbacks, in his public behavior he acted like other modern-era Vice Presidents; that is, he was the number-one party wheelhorse. He gave speeches around the country, he raised money for candidates, he stirred up partisan hell, and in general he took on the necessary political chores that the man in the White House, intent upon looking "Presidential," usually prefers to leave to someone else. Inevitably this gives the Vice President a base of party support at least quasi-independent of the President himself. Sometimes this support is most intense for Vice Presidents with high "negatives" among the electorate at large--Agnew and Dan Quayle are good examples. As such, dumping a Vice President is now very likely to spark division and rancor within party ranks--precisely the last thing a President facing reelection wants to have happen. That said, we turn next to the 1976 election, the last occasion in which a Vice President was dumped from the ticket. The prevailing circumstances were extraordinary, starting with the fact that both President and Vice President were in office without a vote having been cast for them. First came the resignation of Agnew, whom Nixon replaced with Gerald Ford, who, after becoming President himself, named Nelson Rockefeller to the Vice Presidency. GOP conservatives howled with rage at the elevation of Rockefeller, their great liberal nemesis.[40] Beyond that, although the two men got along well personally, Rockefeller would have chafed in the Vice Presidency under any Chief Executive, but perhaps all the more so under the more cautious, even plodding style of Gerald Ford. Wanting a Presidential term in his own right, Ford realized that he had created a serious problem for himself, and before long the temptation to fix it by dumping Rockefeller would prove overwhelming.[41] The day after Ford announced his bid for a second term, his campaign manager said that "The Ford and Rockefeller campaigns are not one and the same"--adding, a bit later, that Rockefeller was "the number one problem. You and I both know that if Rockefeller took himself out, it would help with the nomination." For his part, Rockefeller tried to generate grassroots support for himself, presumably to hold onto his job. It was hopeless: one South Carolina Republican, after Rockefeller had visited the state, declared, "You might say he changed some of our minds from 'hell no' to just plain 'no.'"[42] Eventually the two principals met to discuss the matter, whereupon Ford bluntly told Rockefeller: There are serious problems, and to be brutally frank, some of these difficulties might be eliminated if you were to indicate that you didn't want to be on the ticket in 1976. I'm not asking you to do that. I'm just stating the facts. Rockefeller got the message and replied: I understand. Well, it's probably better that I withdraw. If I take myself out of the picture, that will clear the air. I'll give you a letter saying that I don't want to be considered as a Vice Presidential nominee. Rockefeller, of course, was not acting voluntarily. President Ford's own chief of staff reports that Rockefeller said Ford had told him:[43] I really feel, it's very important that I [Ford] get this nomination. And I have been talking with my political advisers and I think it would be--as much as personally I feel badly (sic) about it--it would be better if you were not on the ticket and if you would withdraw. Ford recounted the matter a bit differently--"It was a decision by him"--in his public remarks after the deed had been done. But in his memoirs, Ford more candidly acknowledged: I was grateful for his [Rockefeller's] expression of unselfishness, his willingness to do what was in the best interests of the party and the country--and me. At the same time, I was angry with myself for showing cowardice in not saying to the ultraconservatives, "It's going to be Ford and Rockefeller, whatever the consequences." As the convention neared, Ford owned a slight lead over Reagan--who then made a rather ironic gamble: he announced that his running mate would be Senator Richard Schweiker, who at the time was as liberal as Rockefeller. But the move shook loose no delegates, and Ford held onto the nomination. With Bob Dole as a running mate, Ford narrowly lost to Democrat Jimmy Carter. The verdict would have been reversed if Ford had captured the Electoral College votes of New York--the one state Rockefeller might have done the most to help carry. In retrospect, Ford's dumping of Rockefeller offers a useful lesson to future Presidents. Apparently some of his supporters hoped to appease the Reaganite conservatives by sacrificing Rockefeller;[44] this quickly proved a mistake. Conservatives wanted Ford out, too, in favor of their hero Reagan--who naturally did not abandon his nomination quest just because Rockefeller had been taken out. If anything, Ford's action showed weakness and thereby inspired the Reagan forces all the more. Ford should have realized this, and perhaps his successors will profit from his mistake. Jimmy Carter began the practice of formally interviewing prospective running mates. He chose Waiter Mondale in part because "We were personally compatible"[45]--one of the first times this factor was given substantial weight. In 1980 Cutter gave no thought to changing the reelection ticket, but he and Mondale lost to Ronald Reagan. That campaign's Republican Vice Presidential sweepstakes turned into a wild affair, as a Reagan-Ford "dream ticket" almost came together at the convention. When it fell through at the last moment, Reagan turned to George Bush, who had run second in most of the primaries. Although personal compatibility was not much of a factor in this selection, the two men quickly developed a good working relationship, and Reagan did not consider dumping his Vice President from the ticket in 1984. That year, Democratic Presidential nominee Mondale made history by naming a woman to the ticket, Rep. Geraldine Ferraro. Then, questions arose concerning Ferraro's Congressional financial-disclosure forms. For a few days her survival on the ticket was in jeopardy, but the Mondale-Ferraro team stayed intact, only to suffer a landslide defeat. In 1988, Bush became the first sitting Vice President since Martin Van Buren to win the Presidency. Once the campaign began in earnest, about the only threat to his election stemmed from his Vice Presidential choice, Senator Quayle, whose nomination generated a firestorm of media attacks that rapidly put his continuance on the ticket in doubt. For the fourth time since World War II--and the third time in sixteen years--the dumping of a Vice Presidential nominee had arisen as a real possibility. Vice Presidential nominees now seem more vulnerable to being dumped than incumbent Vice Presidents. Should this trend persist, a recognized status as a media favorite may become a principal qualification for the Vice Presidency. Quayle adopted the successful Mondale-Bush model, and by all accounts he performed every assignment he received to Bush's satisfaction. But Quayle's most lasting contribution to Vice Presidential history will be that he demonstrated just how little impact the bottom of the ticket has on the outcome of Presidential elections. In 1988, polls showed overshelming public preference for Quayle's Democratic counterpart, Lloyd Bentsen. Yet, Bush still won handily. Voters vote for the top of the ticket. In 1992 Quayle stayed aboard, but now Bush had significant poll problems of his own, and it was he, not Quayle, who sank the GOP ticket. Once again the Vice Presidential pick had a negligible effect on the contest. This generally has been the case, but the Quayle experience dramatically underscored the point. Assuming that future Presidential nominees recognize this, they should feel freer to give even greater weight to "personal compatibility" when filling out the bottom of their tickets. In turn, this should lead to even fewer cases of Vice Presidents being dropped. Bush's opponent, Bill Clinton, chose Senator Al Gore as his running mate. The choice of a Tennessean by an Arkansan in a winning campaign suggests that the "regional" factor is now less important in the Vice Presidential selection process. Apparently, this time-honored political folkway has succumbed to the "homogenizing" impact of the transportation and communication revolutions and other factors. Gore's best move of the campaign probably came when he declined to enter the Presidential sweepstakes himself. During the primary season, Clinton's rivals hit him with harsh attacks, and very possibly Gore too, had he been a candidate, might have succumbed to such temptation, and thereby made himself a less appealing running mate. Interestingly, most recent winners of the primary ordeal have not selected a Vice President from the pool of recently-defeated rivals. Reagan did when he selected Bush (after the Ford deal fizzled), but consider this much longer list: Agnew, Eagleton (and Shriver), Mondale, Dole, Ferraro, Quayle, Bentsen, and Gore. This may be coincidental, or perhaps the increasingly vituperative primary process explains the trend. What will befall the Clinton-Gore Administration is anyone's guess. However, despite some early rumors of friction and disagree ment, surely the "winter book" odds overwhelmingly favor Gore's retention on the ticket in 1996. It would be absurd to conclude with a prediction that no future Vice President ever will be dumped from his party's reelection ticket. There are no "iron laws of history" at work here--and all the less so, as the power to dump a Vice President now rests with one individual, who is of course up for reelection as well and therefore is himself in at least some degree of political jeopardy. However, such spectacles never have been regular occurrences at any time in U.S. history; moreover, the circumstances appertaining to most of these occasions are either impossible or extremely unlikely in contemporary politics. It is no coincidence that, since the end of World War II, only one Vice President has been dumped from his party's ticket. Both the office itself, and the means employed to nominate Vice Presidents, have changed in ways that strengthen the Vice President's chances of remaining on the ticket--which all Vice Presidents fervently hope to do. Thus, the long-term likelihood is that "dumping" a Vice President will remain an uncommon event. Vice Presidents, the nation's human insurance policy, now have acquired a bit of coverage themselves. Notes 1. Richard P. McCormick, The Presidential Game (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 32-7. 2. McCormick, 46-9. 3. John Ferling, John Adams (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 309-10. 4. William Nisbet Chambers, Political Parties in a New Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 113-29. 5. Jonathan Daniels, Ordeal of Ambition: Jefferson, Hamilton, Burr (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1970), 201-49, 288; Chambers, 150-69. 6. Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom Vol. II (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 65-6; John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 101, 108. 7. Niven, 109, 131, 162; Mary Hargreaves, The Presidency of John Quincy Adams (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985), 248. 8. Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845 Vol. III (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), 8-14. 9. Leslie Dunlap, Our Vice-Presidents and Second Ladies (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1988), 545. 10. McCormick, 177. 11. Major Wilson, The Presidency of Martin Van Buren (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984), 202. 12. H. Draper Hunt, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1969), 179. 13. Matthew Josephson, The Politicos (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1938), 183; Donald Young, American Roulette (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston), 87. 14. Willard Smith, Schuyler Colfax, The Changing Fortunes of a Political Idol (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1952), 333-68. Except where otherwise indicated, all of the quotations peritinent to the campaign of 1872 can be found in these pages. 15. Dunlap, 109. 16. Ernest McKay, Henry Wilson: Practical Radical (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1971), 215-42; Richard Abbott, Cobbler in Congress: The Life of Henry Wilson, 1812-1875 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1972), 241-46; Harwood, 102-08. 17. Elias Nason and Thomas Russell, The Life and Public Services of Henry Wilson (Boston: B.B. Russell, 1876), 405-06; Edgar Wiggins Waugh, Second Consul (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1956), 221. 18. Michael Dorman, The Second Man (New York: Delacorte Press, 1968), 71; Irving Williams, The Rise of the Vice Presidency (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1956), 62-3; Michael Harwood. In the Shadow of Presidents (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1966), 99. 19. Smith, 331-32. 20. Harwood, 99. 21. Robert McElroy, Levi Parsons Morton: Banker Diplomat and Statesman (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1930), 194; Dorman, 86-7; Homer Socolofsky and Allan Spetter, The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987), 65. 22. McElroy, 196-97; Leslie Southwick, Presential Also-Rans and Running Mates, 1788-1980 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 1984), 394; H. Wayne Morgan, From Hayes to McKinley (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1969), 415. 23. Harold Gosnell, Boss Platt and His New York Machine (New York: Russell and Russell, 1969), 112. 24. Royal Cortissoz, The Life of Whitelaw Reid Vol. II (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921), 178. 25. Bingham Duncan, Whitelaw Reid (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1975), 150-57. 26. Harry Sievers, Benjamin Harrison, Hoosier President (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1968), 232. 27. Sievers, 232n26. 28. Sievers, 232; Morgan, 415; DeAlva Stanwood Alexander, Four Famous New Yorkers: The Political Careers of Cleveland, Platt, Hill and Roosevelt (Port Washington, NY: Ira J. Freidman, 1969), 186-87. The idea of making Reid Vice President to be rid of him in New York is not so far-fetched, not with Platt involved. That is precisely what he did at the 1900 COP convention--with well-known results--with then-New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt. Incidentally, Platt himself is of no help in efforts to deduce his motivation. He soon had a serious falling-out with Reid, while he and Morton apparently got over any hard feelings or differences between them, as Platt supported him for Governor of New York in 1894 and for President of the United States of 1896. Perhaps for this reason, in his 1910 autobiography Platt pretends that he had opposed Reid's Vice Presidential nomination in 1892. See Thomas Platt, The Autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt (New York: B.W. Dodge, 1910), 255-58, 297-98, 312, 247. There can be no doubt of Platt's key role in the switch; he himself was known to boast about it (see Sievers, 232n26) before it became an unhappy memory for him. 29. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1956), 422-30; Bascom Timmons, Garner of Texas (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), 261-78; James Farley, Jim Farley's Story (New York: McGraw-Hill Company, 1948), 217-22, 253-54; Williams, 171-75. 30. Merle Miller, Plain Speaking (New York: Berkley Publishing Corporation, 1974), 181-203; Norman Markowitz, The Rise and Fall of the People's Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941-1948 (New York: Free Press, 1973), 81-123; Jules Witcover, Crapshoot (New York: Crown Publishers, 1992), 84-98; Williams, 177-209. 31. Alfred Steinberg, The Man from Missouri (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1962), 315-16; Harry Truman, Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial and Hope Vol. II (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1956), 190-91. 32. Alben Barkley, That Reminds Me--(Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1954), 198. 33. Joel Goldstein, The Modern American Vice Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 137; Marie Natoli, American Prince, American Pauper (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), 147-48; Dorman, 198-241; Young, 259-61; Harwood, 200-06. 34. Richard Nixon, Six Crises (New York: Pocket Books, 1962), 175. 35. Nixon, Six Crises, 173. 36. Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), 204-05; Merle Miller, Lyndon, An Oral Biography (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1980), 304-09. 37. Eric Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (New York: Dell, 1969), 225-51; Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1984), 239-323. 38. Theodore White, The Making of the President, 1972 (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), 25689. 39. Nixon, RN Vol. II (New York: Warner Books, 1978), 168-69; Paul Light, Vice-Presidential Power (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1984), 107. 40. Light, 195-97. 41. This story is told in Gerald Ford, A Time to Heal (New York: Harper and Row, 1979). Except where otherwise indicated, all quotations pertaining to Ford-Rockefeller are from this book, pp. 296-97, 327-28. 42. Michael Kramer and Sam Roberts, "I Never Wanted to be Vice President of Anything" (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 375. 43. Witcover, 284. See also Michael Turner, The Vice President as Policy Maker: Rockefeller in the Ford White House (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 178-79. 44. Turner, 179. 45. Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 37. ~~~~~~~~ By GEORGE S. SIRGIOVANNI Professor of History, Rutgers University