When was agnew vice president

And vice-presidential selection has traditionally been attuned to that. Whether a sop to factions that lost the race for the top spot or an attempt to balance the qualities of the presidential nominee, the vice-presidential choice has generally had more to do with winning than with governing.

That was certainly the case with Agnew. Nixon initially chose him in because, as a moderate governor from a border state, he had both supported the civil-rights movement and made several tough-on-crime speeches.

After the election, however, Nixon lost interest. By then the vice president, with his attacks on the press and the political elites, had become a darling of a different faction: conservatives. But his decision to open relations with Communist China, in addition to his support for a raft of liberal social and economic policies on the domestic front, soured his relationship with conservatives.

By , they were in open revolt, even running a protest candidate in the primaries, Ohio Representative John Ashbrook. Nixon needed Agnew—not to govern, but to campaign. So Agnew stayed. The irony is that, thanks to Nixon, the responsibilities of the vice presidency had grown considerably by the time Agnew entered the office. To the extent that vice presidents did anything in the pre-World War II era, it happened over in the Congress, where the vice president served as the president of the Senate, casting tie-breaking votes and certifying electoral-college counts.

As presidents gained more control over running-mate selection, a transition that began with Franklin Roosevelt in , the office began to transform. The personal selection of a running mate enabled presidents to view their next-in-line as a team member. This was first fully realized during the Eisenhower-Nixon years.

As vice president, Nixon abandoned the Senate and took up a number of executive functions, serving on commissions, liaising with Congress, and acting as an administration surrogate at home and abroad. It was this new executive vice presidency that Agnew was supposed to fill. But while Nixon was happy with the electoral work Agnew did— was a squeaker of a race, and Nixon believed Agnew had helped him win it—when it came to governing, he was deeply disappointed in his vice president.

A trip to Africa turned into a debacle for Agnew. Haldeman , in which the three discussed how to dump Agnew from the ticket, the Africa trip loomed large. But our trips really had a better effect, because, by God, we were out there talking to the people, visiting hospitals, and going through plants. In a conversation with Secretary of State Bill Rogers , Nixon noted how good the press coverage of his own travels as vice president had been. Agnew, though, gave the press nothing to cover in Africa—golf outings seldom make for good copy—and so the coverage focused on more earthy fare.

Haldeman: Newsweek. They [ laughing ] climaxed the report by saying that one of the highlights of this trip was leaving Kenya or somewhere in Africa where he and his personal physician and his very attractive red-headed secretary came down from their hut to watch a pair of rhinoceroses copulating. Nixon is often portrayed as viewing the media only as his enemy.

You know, that preoccupation of fighting the press all the time. He was too buddy-buddy with the Secret Service, too undisciplined with his staff. And for Nixon, this was a huge problem. Agnew, he concluded, was a local politician in a job far too big for him, too concerned about loyalty and not enough with competency. Tangles with the press, paranoia, poor staffing choices—these could describe the Nixon presidency as much as the Agnew vice presidency.

As disparaging as Nixon was of Agnew, as much as he believed Agnew fell short of the high bar Nixon had set in the s, his tendency to over-identify with Agnew was at its most damaging when Nixon focused on their similarities rather than their differences. In June , Agnew scheduled a meeting with Nixon to ask for more responsibility.

He was hoping to run for president in , but in his first four years in office, he had failed to distinguish himself in any meaningful way. Nixon, however, was not in a generous mood when it came to Agnew.

So Nixon did not immediately catch on that Agnew was not just there to shore up his presidential bona fides. Agnew had something else on his mind, an investigation in Maryland that seemed to be gathering steam. And when Agnew drew an explicit parallel to Watergate, Nixon went all in :. It was at Auschwitz II, at In the conclusion to an extremely embarrassing situation, President Dwight D. It was one of the first of many such incidents in Abd-ar-Rahman, the Muslim governor of Cordoba, was killed in the fighting, and the Moors retreated Former U.

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