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February 16, 2006

B-Sides: Cheney not first sitting VP to shoot somebody

Mark Bennett

Movie spy Austin Powers once asked, “Who does No. 2 work for?”

Of course, he was dunking one of Dr. Evil’s thugs into a toilet at the time, demanding to know who employed the henchman known as “No. 2.” The guy in the next stall — oblivious to the circumstances — could only mistakenly assume all the noise and Austin’s question centered around gastro-intestinal issues.

Many Americans, in the course of our nation’s 230 years, have probably pondered the same question for far different reasons …

“Who does No. 2 [the vice president of the United States] work for?”

Well, the VP under LBJ (aka HHH, or Hubert Horatio Humphrey) once said, “The president has only 190 million bosses. The vice president has 190 million and one.” The U.S. population has grown since the 1960s, when Humphrey served, so today’s vice presidents must answer to 295 million and one bosses. That’s a pretty big management team.

With the potential for a massive to-do list, don’t our No. 2s deserve a Vice Presidents Day, just like this Monday’s Presidents Day? After all, 96 percent of our VPs have not shot people while in office.

“They’re all pretty solid guys,” said Dan Coen, one of the foremost experts on the 46 men who’ve held the nation’s second-highest office.

Coen tried to illuminate those “solid guys” for the average American in his 2004 book “Second String: Trivia, Facts and Lists About the Vice Presidency and its Vice Presidents.” He also runs an Internet Web site called vicepresidents.com. It’s six years old and non-partisan. And even though it’s packed with trivia, biographies, essays, analysis, historical fun facts and statistics about the people who served as vice presidents as well as those who tried to serve as vice presidents, vicepresidents.com can be kind of a lonely place in cyberspace.

“Unless Dick Cheney shoots somebody or there’s an election, we’re not a busy Web site,” Coen said Tuesday.

While he was speaking by telephone from his office in Los Angeles, Coen’s cell phone was ringing. That’s because Dick Cheney did shoot somebody in a quail hunting accident Saturday afternoon in Texas, hospitalizing 78-year-old Austin lawyer Harry Whittington. Coen already had fielded 20 calls from the press, including mine.

So exactly why does a guy who runs a management consulting business in California and who graduated from San Jose State University with a mass communications degree know so much about the Avis of our government’s executive branch?

“I’ve been a student of history, just like a lot of people,” Coen said.

But do most history buffs know that Cheney isn’t the only sitting VP to shoot somebody? Aaron Burr — the No. 2 guy under Thomas Jefferson — shot and fatally wounded his political archrival, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, in a pistol duel July 11, 1804.

“The most fascinating thing is that Burr was never convicted,” Coen said.

Burr and Hamilton “were both pretty crazy guys,” Coen explained.

But Burr was a quirk among vice presidents. Well, except maybe for William King — President Franklin Pierce’s VP — who was “rumored to dress up in women’s clothing,” Coen said.

For the most part, they’ve been solid, quiet types. “And the one commonality among all of them is they’re all politically experienced,” Coen said.

That includes the current guy with 295,001 bosses, Dick Cheney. “In our time period, he’s the most quiet and hidden,” Coen said.

But Cheney is unique, his unintended shotgun blast notwithstanding. He carries political clout within the Bush administration, unlike most of the past VPs.

“Who saw Al Gore as vice president?” said Chris Olsen, chair of the Indiana State University history department and an associate professor. “He was invisible for eight years because [President Bill] Clinton was such a dominating figure.”

And unlike other vice presidents, Cheney comes from the same wing of his party as his president. Usually, presidential candidates pick a dissimilar vice president to balance the ticket and broaden their voter base, rather than choosing someone most qualified to be “a heartbeat from the presidency.” That’s how a John Tyler, a Southerner, ended up as the No. 2 guy on the Whig Party ticket under William Henry Harrison. Most of the Whigs barely acknowledged Tyler, Olsen explained. And yet after they won the election, Harrison wound up dying a month after taking office and Tyler became No. 1.

Tyler is one of nine VPs to assume the presidency because of death or resignation. That tidbit is on vicepresidents.com.

And did you know the only state to produce more VPs than Indiana’s five is New York with 11? Or that the only 20th-century vice president who failed to win his party’s presidential nomination was a Hoosier, Dan Quayle?

Quick … who’s George Clinton. Like me, you probably said, the Godfather of Funk and leader of Parliament, Funkadelic and the P-Funk All-Stars. But actually, another George Clinton was Thomas Jefferson’s second VP. (He dumped Burr, who Jefferson only got paired with because before 1804 the runner-up in Electoral College votes became vice president.)

Come to think of it, funkmaster George Clinton would make an excellent VP candidate in 2008. Imagine, Hillary and George Clinton on the same ticket, with their campaign theme song, “Do Fries Go With That Shake?” A Vice Presidents Day wouldn’t seem so dull then.

Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or 1-800-783-8742, Option 6, Ext. 377.

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