Tag Archives: John Nance Garner

The Most Compelling Race Is For the Least Compelling Prize

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With all due respect to John Nance Garner, seen above conducting one of the essential duties of the Vice Presidency, the #2 spot in an executive branch is the appendix of the American political system. Garner called accepting the VP nomination “the worst damn fool mistake I ever made.” Harry Truman said the vice president “is about as useful as a cow’s fifth teat.” Our first VP, John Adams, called it “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

And yet, here in Vermont, we’re seeing a relative land rush for our equivalent of the vice presidency. There will be, mirabile dictu, contested primaries for lieutenant governor on the Democratic and Republican ballots in August. Despite the hollowness of the actual office, the two primaries and the general election to follow offer a rare hint of intrigue in what promises to be a suspense-free campaign season as far as the statewide ballot is concerned.

I’ve covered the Democratic contest previously. But now we have two announced candidates on the Republican side, an embarrassment of riches for a party that has given multiple nominations to H. Brooke Paige in recent years. Rutland accountant, January 6 field trip organizer, and multiple-time loser Gregory Thayer has been in the race for months, not that anyone has noticed. He has now been joined by former Democratic state senator John Rodgers, last seen biffing his re-election bid to the Senate by failing to get his nominating petitions in on time.

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Bedazzling the bucket

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The three contenders for lieutenant governor in the Democratic primary got together Tuesday night to talk about the job and how they might make it a little more useful. Or a little less useless, perhaps.

The relatively powerless second-in-command is, as far as I know, an oddity of American politics. (Do other countries’ governments sport institutionalized appendices?) A heartbeat away from executive power, but trapped in an unglamorous treadmill of boredom famously dubbed “a bucket of warm piss” by one of its occupants.

You could say the lieutenant governorship is what you make it, but it’d be more accurate to say that it’s what other people let you make it. Peter Shumlin gave Phil Scott a seat in his Cabinet, a generous gesture that Scott has repaid by strenuously denouncing anyone who calls attention to it.

Still, at the very least, the office can be used as a bully pulpit. You can advocate for your causes. You can engage in backroom politics in the Senate, where you do wield a bit of authority. Or you can set off on a gimmicky, photo-op-friendly Jobs Tour.

Oh wait, that one’s been taken.

The three candidates’ images of the job, to a large extent, mirror their separate capabilities and interests.

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