Posted by
Always To The Right on Tuesday, December 23, 2008 12:07:45 PM
The good news from this CNN poll is that 77% of respondents didn’t
choose Dick Cheney as the worst VP in American history. Unfortunately,
that leaves 23% as the rate of historical illiteracy in the US
No, what this poll suggests is that almost a quarter of Americans
have no grasp of our own history. The question itself is rather silly;
it’s almost as trenchant as asking who makes the worst fast-food taco.
Vice Presidents have little real impact on policy, unless they become
President through succession or election. They do nothing without the
endorsement and forebearance of their presidents, which makes the idea
of best and worst in class almost entirely meaningless.
However, let’s offer three examples that should have rendered the question entirely moot:
- Aaron Burr - The only VP to kill a man in office.
He shot the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel
after Hamilton (reportedly) deliberately shot wide. (Cheney shot a man
by accident, who survived, but there’s a thin parallel for Cheney
haters.) Burr had to flee to South Carolina while VP to avoid
prosecution for murder in New Jersey Later, he formed his own army and
by several accounts intended to rebel against the US and form his own
nation in the Ohio valley.
- John Calhoun - One of the men who
inspired the Civil War and an outspoken proponent of slavery. He
served as VP to both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, resigning
under the latter to take a seat in the Senate. He championed
“nullification”, the supposed right of states to supercede federal law
when they disagreed with it, and the right of secession. More than
most, he amplified the bitter divisions between the South and
abolitionists and set the stage for the deaths of hundreds of thousands
of Americans as well as the extension of slavery for decades.
- Spiro Agnew - The only VP to resign because of
criminal charges, this really shows how illiterate the CNN respondents
had to be. After all, Agnew resigned just 35 years ago, and he worked
for Richard Nixon, one of the most reviled presidents in history.
Agnew pled guilty to a failure to report income in order to avoid
charges of bribery during his tenure as VP and as governor of Maryland.
No matter what one thinks of Dick Cheney, he hasn’t done anything to
eclipse these embarrassments in the American historical record. I
myself think Cheney’s done a good job, but I would allow that history
may prove differently. The burden of history will really fall, as it
should, on George Bush.