Oval Office Oddities

by Bill Fawcett

  George W. Bush was speaking in Tbilisi in the nation of Georgia in 2005 when Vladimir Arutinian threw a hand grenade at him and the Georgian president. The grenade had been wrapped in a plaid handkerchief, which prevented it from exploding.

  OTHER THAN THAT, HOW WAS THE PLAY?

  The title of this little section is the punch line of a very sick joke. But in reality, it was an appropriate comment for one person involved in Lincoln’s assassination. John Parker was assigned to guard President Lincoln the night he was shot. At this time, only one personal guard was on duty at a time. It was the custom of the guard to sit on a chair just outside the door to the president’s box. That night, at Ford’s Theater, Parker was anxious to see the play, and instead of taking his usual place, he went and sat in the front of the balcony. Since the door to the box was closed, President Lincoln never new he was unguarded. On that night, the doorkeeper of the theater watched as John Wilkes Booth went in and out of the theater about five times, each time taking another drink to get his courage up. Each time the actor would survey the door and empty chair to see if the guard was at his post. The final time, Booth got up his nerve, rushed into the unprotected box, and shot Abraham Lincoln. Parker later confessed his dereliction of duty to his superior, Colonel Crook, who had guarded the president himself earlier that day. Strangely, with all the blame and conspiracy theories that abounded after the assassination, nothing was said about Parker’s failure and no one asked how Booth could have gotten into the box itself. Colonel Crook did not speak to anyone of Parker’s failure until after the negligent guard died some years later.

  MISSED

  The feeling that later led to the American Civil War grew to fever levels during the administration of Franklin Pierce. Trying for compromise, and being basically ineffective, soon led to a situation where just about everyone was angry with the fourteenth president. The crowds that daily grew in front of the White House were a cause for concern that Pierce’s life was in danger. For the first time, a personal bodyguard was hired. This bodyguard, one Thomas O’Neil, was supposed to accompany Franklin Pierce at all times. But he was absent when someone finally took a shot at the president. Fortunately, all the attacker used was a hard-boiled egg. Quickly taken into custody, the presidential egger then attempted suicide using a pocket knife he carried. Being a good egg himself, Franklin Pierce eventually dropped the charges against the egg thrower.

  GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE

  A frustrated and eventually insane office seeker, Charles Guiteau shot President James Garfield twice outside the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Baltimore. The first shot he fired only grazed the president’s arm. But when Guiteau fired again he managed to hit the president in the back, causing a serious but not immediately life-threatening wound. What did kill the twentieth president was a combination of where the bullet lodged and how the doctors reacted.

  This was in the days before X-ray machines, long before, as William Roentgen would not discover X-rays until 1895. If they had existed, James Garfield would have recovered easily. The problem was that the bullet was hard to find. And since bullets tended to cause a wound to become septic, that is infected, it had to come out. But in those days, probing for the bullet was a literal statement. Doctors poked around in the wound, tearing up the body even further until they encountered the metal bullet and could pull it out. That is what the president’s doctors did. Since they were working on the most public case in their lives, they did so with vigor. But no one could find the bullet, even after repeated attempts. So many attempts led to another problem. This was before the time when surgical instruments were kept sterile. For days on end doctors probed the president with dirty scalpels and blood-encrusted probes. But they could never find the bullet and, surprise, the wound became infected and the president got worse. Worse yet, this was also the time before anesthetics were common and the president endured all of this while fully conscious. Finally, just to make Garfield totally uncomfortable, he was lying there shot, probed, and infected during a summer in Washington. The Washington heat and humidity sapped the strength from healthy men, much less a wounded and suffering president.

  Desperate measures were tried. Inventor Alexander Graham Bell was brought in with a metal detecting device he had created, but he, too, was unable to find the bullet’s location. Such painful efforts continued until Garfield finally died. Had he simply crawled into a corner or been someone with a lower profile, the doctors might have given up looking for the bullet and he might have lived. But James Garfield got the best care the government could provide—and it killed him.

  SELF-DEFENSE

  Always a man to do for himself, Theodore Roosevelt, who became president when William McKinley was assassinated, immediately began carrying a handgun somewhere on his person at all times. When asked about it, he replied that he wanted to “have some chance of shooting the assassin before he could shoot me.”

  25

  AND THE OTHER WAS ELECTED VICE PRESIDENT…

  “Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea and the other was elected vice president of the United States. And nothing was heard of either of them again.”

  Thomas Marshall, vice president to Woodrow Wilson

  A HEARTBEAT AWAY CAN BE VERY FAR

  Until very recently vice presidents of the United States didn’t get much respect—and with reason. The position has spent two centuries searching for an identity and meaning. From the first, the vice president has had only three responsibilities: one was to break ties in the Senate, the second to supervise and report the vote of the Electoral College, and the third to succeed to the presidency in the case of the president’s death. Until the Twenty-fifth Amendment was passed in 1967, the process of succession was itself mostly undefined and was based on tradition and not law.

  The Founding Fathers weren’t exactly excited about there even being a vice president. Some of those who helped to write the Constitution were fairly sure the position simply was not needed. One of the representatives, George Clinton, called the vice presidency “an unnecessary position,” which makes it mildly ironic that he later became vice president under James Madison. Among the extended and contentious debates that characterized the creation of the Constitution, less than a day was spent on the vice presidency. From this inauspicious start, things went downhill. There was no budget for the vice president other than salary, no staff, and not even an office. The sloppy way the office was created has left doubt to this day as to where, officially, the vice president stands in the government. Is he part of the legislature, since his duties include the Senate, or part of the executive branch, which there is always a chance he might have to head?

  FIRST DIBS

  John Adams was sworn in and began to serve as the first vice president eight days before George Washington was sworn in as the first president.

  At first, the vice president was the man who got the second most votes in the Electoral College. The idea was that he was the next most qualified to take over the presidency. This concept was shown to be a dismal failure fairly quickly. Only once has the vice president chosen to run in the next election against the man he served with. This was in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson, who had been vice president under John Adams, ran against Adams and defeated him. The law was quickly changed to the more familiar election of the president and vice president as a “ticket.” It took years for Adams to even slightly forget Jefferson’s victory and his defeat and he never forgave him.

  Because some presidents have run for a second term with a different vice president, there have actually been four more vice presidents than there have been presidents. Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland, and McKinley all had two different vice presidents. Franklin D. Roosevelt holds the record with three. The difference in the number would have been greater, but there used to be no provision, or even requirement, for replacing the vice president if he became president. There have been several years in the more than two centuries since John Adams took hi
s oath when, for various reasons, there was no vice president.

  WHO CARES?

  The presidential debates have almost always stirred interest. It wasn’t until 1976 that the vice presidential candidates ever met to debate. It was a TV debate between Walter Mondale and Bob Dole. The ratings came in significantly below those of that election’s presidential debate.

  PAY’S GOOD

  If the honor was dubious, it is certain the vice presidents have never been after the job for the money. The pay is okay, though in real dollars it actually used to pay better than it does today. There is also a small expense allowance, which is taxable too.

  Here is a quick look at what we paid our backup leaders:

  1789

  $5,000

  ($75,800 in today’s dollars)

  1907

  $10,000

  ($247,600 in today’s dollars)

  1949

  $30,000

  (about $300,000 in today’s dollars)

  1964

  $43,000

  (about $250,000 in today’s dollars)

  1969

  $62,500

  (about $300,000 in today’s dollars)

  2001

  $171,500

  2004

  $192,600

  The pay was actually pretty good, since so little was expected of the vice president until recently. Until Walter Mondale was elected, the vice president lived at his own home, some not even living in Washington, D.C. Mondale began the tradition of the vice president having use of the Naval Observatory building (long since converted into a home) as the vice president’s official residence. The question is, what changed to make the vice president worth three times as much today as in 1969?

  SILENCE IS GOLDEN

  Throughout most of U.S. history, the vice president was not encouraged to make policy statements. Perhaps the most memorable non-statement by a vice president came when Woodrow Wilson’s vice president was asked what he felt the nation needed. Thomas Marshall’s non-political and safe answer: “What this nation needs is a good five-cent cigar.”

  ODD MEN OUT

  Of the forty-six vice presidents, all but two were elected. Only in modern times did anyone hold the office after being appointed by the president and approved by the Congress. These were both the result of the scandals surrounding Richard Nixon. When Spiro Agnew resigned under the cloud caused by his earlier corruption, Gerald Ford was appointed to take his place in 1973. Then in 1974, Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford was president, and Ford appointed Nelson Rockefeller to be his vice president. So it took three different vice presidents to fill the job over just a few years in the mid-seventies.

  Because he was appointed and not elected to the office of vice president, Gerald Ford was the first and only president to date who was not voted upon by either the people or the Electoral College.

  TERM LIMITS

  Determining how long a vice president can be president is based on the old rule you learned along with fractions: “rounding up.” Anything over half is rounded up and below half a term is rounded down. This means that if a vice president becomes president one day more than two years before the term ends, then he rounds up and he is eligible to run only once more, due to the two-term limit. But if he succeeded to the office with one day less than two years remaining, then the vice president’s first term is rounded down and not counted, so he could run twice more. This means that a vice president could, by law, serve for a period of up to one day less than ten years total. (The two years minus a day rounded down to zero and not counting, and then two four-year normal terms.)

  SPREADING THE WEALTH

  When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, the states were much more independent and jealous of each other. This meant that when they designed the office of vice president it was decided that the president and vice president may never be from the same state.

  WINGMAN

  Yes, just as any winged aircraft the president flies in is always identified as Air Force One, any aircraft carrying the VP is designated Air Force Two.

  THEME SONG

  The president is always greeted with the song “Hail to the Chief.” He is the only man in the nation for whom this is played. When the vice president appears, “Hail Columbia” is always played.

  IRA IRE

  Where a former president receives a very generous pension and a substantial budget for staff after leaving office, a former vice president receives only the benefits of his standard government pension plan, no different from that of any federal employee, and not a penny more for anything.

  COWBOY HEAVEN

  There is nothing more Texan than the Dallas Cowboys, except their name. The city of Dallas was named after James K. Polk’s vice president, George Mifflin Dallas, who had been a strong supporter of Texas statehood. Dallas was not even from Texas, but was from Pennsylvania.

  HAPPY TALK

  Since the vice president oversees and reports to the U.S. Senate the vote of the Electoral College, on four occasions vice presidents in this role have been able to announce to the Senate that the man elected President was them. These four are Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, and George H. W. Bush.

  BUMMER

  On the same note, there have been times when the vice president had to oversee and report to the Senate a vote by the Electoral College that meant they had been defeated and someone else would be the next president. This has happened only three times so far. The three unlucky VPs were John Breckenridge (Lincoln won), Richard Nixon (when JFK beat him), and recently Al Gore (that he had been defeated by George W. Bush) in 2000.

  TIE BREAKER

  One of the duties of the vice president is to vote whenever there is a tie vote in the U.S. Senate. This is not a common occurrence. The most times this has happened is twenty-nine, way back when John Adams was VP. (But there were a lot fewer Senators then so ties were more common.) Recently Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, and Dan Quayle did not cast a single tie-breaking vote. The most in the last fifty years were eight cast by Richard Nixon in eight years and by George H. W. Bush only seven in eight years, or less than one a year.

  SHORTEST TERM OF OFFICE

  Since 1967, the Twenty-fifth Amendment makes the provision for the vice president to stand in for the president when he is temporarily unable to serve. Because of the Amendment, Vice President George H. W. Bush served as president for a total of eight hours in 1985 while President Ronald Reagan was undergoing surgery. This became the record for the shortest period a vice president has served as president. Then in 1988, George H. W. Bush became the first vice president in the twentieth century to be elected president next, and the shortest time record was lost.

  LOYALTY

  Vice President Aaron Burr fell into disgrace not for shooting and killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel but for plotting to split off a large portion of the Western Territories and create a new nation from them. He hoped to organize the disgruntled frontiersmen and Indians into an independent nation with himself in control and strong European support. The Western Territories were what is known today as the Midwest.

  THE DISLOYAL OPPOSITION

  After serving as vice president to Buchanan, John Breckenridge left Washington to become first a Confederate senator and then a Confederate general. He has the distinction of being the only former vice president to ever command troops in combat against the U.S. Army.

  CHANGING ATTITUDES

  The American democracy of today was not a sure thing. As vice president, John Adams was known to be an elitist who distrusted the popular vote as a way to elect leaders. He was of the opinion that the presidency should be a lifetime position and that the seats of the senators should be hereditary, being inherited by the children of the senators and their children.

  SO SORRY

  When Calvin Coolidge was elected vice president in 1920, he received a telegram from Thomas Marshall, his predecessor. The telegram read simply: “Please accept my sincere sympathies.”


  NAP TIME

  Calvin Coolidge tended to enjoy his rest. He once expressed the thought that he preferred how things had been when he had been the vice president of the United States. Because there were few duties, nothing prevented him from getting his preferred eleven or more hours of sleep per day.

  BRIEFLY NOT BRIEFED

  In the few months he served as vice president for FDR, Harry Truman received not a single briefing on the war, the Soviet Union and Stalin, or anything significant—this despite the fact that Franklin Roosevelt was known to be in poor health and at risk. Truman was not even aware of the existence of the atomic bomb until he took office and had almost immediately to decide whether to use it. When asked about how he felt about becoming president, Truman replied, “I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

  NOT CLOSE

  Dwight Eisenhower was never comfortable with Richard Nixon as his vice president and involved him little in running the government. When once asked if he could identify for a reporter any national policies to which Vice President Nixon had contributed, Ike’s answer was, “If you give me a week, I might think of one.”

  ZOMBIE

  When asked to become a candidate for and likely become the next vice president, the famous speaker and political leader Daniel Webster turned it down with the reply, “I do not intend to be buried until I am really dead.” Pretty well says it all.

  26

  THEY SAID THAT?

  Presidents can say the darnedest things….

  FORWARD MARCH?

  Lincoln once commanded a number of Illinois militia as captain in the Black Hawk Indian War of 1832. As a young man, Abe Lincoln was, as he often observed later, notoriously ignorant of even the basic commands. He often recalled how, at one point, he had ordered his men into a line while they crossed a field. The field was surrounded by a stone fence and when they reached the gate, he could not remember the command to form them up to cross through it (form column of two). But he was a quick thinker and, rather than embarrass himself, Lincoln recounts that he simply dismissed the men on one side for a two-minute break, with orders to reform on the other side of the gate when it was over.