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Accidental Presidents and the Vice Presidency 1 Presented to the Department O 1 The Inadvertent Inheritors of the Moon and Stars: Accidental Presidents and the Vice Presidency 1 Presented to the Department of Government in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree with honors of Bachelor of Arts Harvard College March 2013 1This title is inspired by Vice President Harry S. Truman’s statement upon hearing the news of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death: “I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.” 2 Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction ................................................................................. 3 Research and Methodology ................................................................................................. 8 Thesis Statement ................................................................................................................... 8 Significance .......................................................................................................................... 13 Overview.............................................................................................................................. 16 Chapter Two: Theoretical Discussion and Literature Review ....................... 17 Literature Review ................................................................................................................ 17 Theory Building and Discussion of Variables ................................................................ 21 Theory Summation ............................................................................................................. 30 Chapter Three: The Rogues ............................................................................. 33 John Tyler .......................................................................................................................... 33 Millard Fillmore ................................................................................................................ 48 Andrew Johnson .............................................................................................................. 62 Chester Arthur ................................................................................................................. 75 Theodore Roosevelt......................................................................................................... 90 Chapter Four: The Emulators ........................................................................ 102 Calvin Coolidge ............................................................................................................... 102 Harry Truman ................................................................................................................. 115 Lyndon B. Johnson ........................................................................................................ 131 Gerald Ford ..................................................................................................................... 147 Chapter Five: Concluding Remarks and Thoughts ....................................... 160 References and Bibliography ......................................................................... 165 3 Chapter One: The Most Insignificant Office Ever Contrived “Once there were two brothers; one ran away to sea, the other was elected vice president – and nothing was ever heard from either of them again.” – Vice President Thomas Marshall Introduction to the Problem: The Development of an After-thought Henry Clay was livid. For the second time in nine years, God had failed to save the Whig Party from an uncontrollable vice president. It had first happened in 1841 with the death of President Harrison and the arrival of “His Accidency” John Tyler. Determined to dismantle Clay’s Congressional agenda, Tyler spent his three years and eleven months in the Executive Mansion forsaking the principles of President Harrison and enacting programs that undermined core Whig beliefs. And now, in 1850, history was repeating itself as Vice President Millard Fillmore seemingly repudiated his predecessor’s policies…. It was not intended to happen this way. The notion of a disobedient vice president had not entered the minds of the Constitution’s framers. In fact, the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 did not discuss the Office of the Vice President until ten days prior to the Convention’s adjournment.2 Even then, very little was debated. In truth, the vice presidency did not attract much debate or contention during the Constitution’s ratification wars. Within “Federalist No. 68,” Publius argued that the office resolved the problem of presidential succession and ensured that an impartial individual would preside over Senate proceedings and 2 Gordon Lloyd, “The Constitutional Convention: Day by Day Summary,” TeachingAmericanHistory.org, 2012, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/summary.html. 4 serve as a tie-breaker vote if needed.3 Yet aside from these two explicit provisions, the subject of vice presidential duties and responsibilities remained one of the great mysteries of the Early Republic. Although prominent Americans such as John Adams (1789-1797) and Thomas Jefferson (1797-1801) served as the nation’s first vice presidents, the office failed to attain prestige. As Vice President, a frustrated John Adams bickered with the Senate over the amount of discretion he would have as the chamber’s presiding officer. Adams sparked a constitutional crisis when he attempted to propose legislation as “President of the Senate.” Guarding their power with jealousy, Senate leaders retaliated by relegating Adams’ role to a procedural one and prevented him from introducing bills.4 This fallout with the Senate limited the purview of the vice presidency. Not only did the Senate spurn the office but also the executive branch largely ignored the position. Vice President Jefferson’s refusal to assist with President Adams’ policies (due to theoretical and partisan concerns) alienated the Office of the Vice President from the White House.5 The executive branch further distrusted the vice presidency because it deemed it a creature of the legislature. The vice president’s physical office was maintained at the Capitol and not within any executive departments. By the onset of President Jefferson’s second term in 1805, the vice presidency had become an institutional no-man’s land – neither part of the legislative branch nor an active component of the presidency. 3 The Office of the Vice President is only mentioned twice in all of The Federalist essays. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist Papers, Clinton Rossiter, ed., (New York, Signet Classic, 1999), 418. 4 Jeremy Lott, The Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice Presidency, (Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 2007), 17. 5 Irving Williams, The Rise of the Vice Presidency, (Washington D.C., Public Affairs Press, 1956), 25. 5 Following the tenures of Adams and Jefferson, the nineteenth century occupants of the vice presidency wallowed in obscurity and powerlessness. Due to the ramifications of the 12th Amendment, the runner-up in the presidential election no longer assumed the vice presidency. As a result, rather than have the second-best man for the presidency occupy the Office of the Vice President, the position, for most of the 1800s, was filled by second-rate men. However, Vice President John Tyler’s sudden ascendancy to Commander- in-Chief in 1841 changed everything. While the nation mourned the passing of the beloved President Harrison, Tyler quickly assumed the reins of power, asserting his authority as the new President of the United States. President Tyler rejected almost every major legislative program advanced by the Whig-dominated Congress, which the late Harrison had intended to pass. Tyler’s precedent of ignoring the policies of his predecessor was followed by accidental Presidents Millard Fillmore (1850-1853), Andrew Johnson (1865-1869), Chester A. Arthur (1881-1885), and Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909). Although these “accidental presidents” executed different policies from those of their predecessors, this phenomenon has been largely ignored by vice presidential and presidential scholars. What is more intriguing is that this “going rogue” behavior is mainly confined to the nineteenth century.6 The 1800s provide several examples of accidental presidents unabashedly pursuing agendas that run counter to those of their immediate predecessors. John Tyler “killed” attempts to resurrect the National Bank despite support for the institution from his 6 Although Theodore Roosevelt inherited the presidency in 1901, after extensive research, I have determined that his accidental presidency falls under the going rogue category. A further exploration of Roosevelt is provided at the end of Chapter Three. 6 predecessor and a vast majority of the Whig Party. Chester Arthur reversed his stance on party patronage and pushed for civil service reform under the auspices of the Pendleton Act. Although he entered the presidency in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt’s completion of William McKinley’s term closely followed the model of a rogue accidental president. Shortly after McKinley’s death, Theodore Roosevelt declared, “I want you to understand at the start – I feel myself just as much a constitutionally elected President…as McKinley was.”7 The New York cowboy then upended the ideology and programs of the late President McKinley, bringing grief to Mark Hanna and other Old Guard Republicans. However, by the time Calvin Coolidge took the Oath of Office
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