Presidential Trivia - VP Becoming Pres Edition

With the election coming up & a lot of discussion about various things in relation to the qualifications of the candidates, I decided to do an occasional bit on some aspect of the process.

Governor Palin's selection as McCain's running mate has brought up the question of presidential succession as well as its role as a stepping stone to the presidency.

In checking the list of Presidents of the United States I discovered that 14 of the 46 VPs went on to become president. The way they became President is what is interesting. 8 of the VPs became presidents as a result of the death of the president. Of the other 6 only 5 were elected of their own right. The last VP in this list became President as a result of the lone presidential resignation.

In case you haven't figured out who that last VP is, I am refering to Gerald Ford who became president as a result of Richard Nixon resigning due to the Watergate scandal. Ford is doubly unique due to the fact that he was the only VP who became president that wasn't elected to the office of VP. Because of the 25th Amendment he was the 1st person appointed to fill a vacancy in the office.

Of the 8 VPs who became President due to the death of their predecessor 4 came into office as a result of an assassination. The 8 VPs are (with the President they succeeded & the cause of death):

1. John Tyler - William Henry Harrison (common cold)

2. Millard Fillmore - Zachary Taylor (gastroenteritis)

3. Andrew Johnson - Abraham Lincoln (assassinated)

4. Chester Alan Arthur - James A. Garfield (assassinated)

5. Teddy Roosevelt - William McKinley (assassinated)

6. Calvin Coolidge - Warren G. Harding (food poisoning/apoplexy?)

7. Harry Truman - Franklin Delano Roosevelt (cerebral hemorrhage)

8. Lyndon Baynes Johnson - John Kennedy (assassinated)

The 5 VPs who were elected in their own right fit into 3 groups. The 1st group includes John Adams & Thomas Jefferson. John Adams was VP under George Washington & suceeded him as president. Jefferson was VP under Adams. This group is different because of the way the Constitutional process was set up at the time.

At that time, the VP was 1 of the candidates for president. They became the VP because they got the 2nd largest number of votes in the Electoral College. By the time John Adams was elected president, parties had developed. Adams did have a running mate for VP. But because of the way the Constitution was written the VP was technically a candidate for President. That is why Jefferson, who was the Democratic-Republican candidate for president, became VP, he beat out Adams running mate Thomas Pinckney. Then 4 years later when he was elected, it was actually by the House of Representatives due to his running mate, Aaron Burr, getting the same number of votes in the Electoral College as he did. The 12th Amendment (1804) changed it to the system we have today.

The other 3 VPs who became president fit into 2 groups. 2 of them were elected as successors to the president they were serving under. The 3rd was elected president 8 years after he left the office of VP.

Richard Nixon has an interesting place on the VP to president road. Obviously there is the Gerald Ford connection. He 1st ran in 1960 while serving under Ike. He lost to JFK. Then he was elected 8 years later by beating Hubert Humphrey, the sitting VP at the time. Nixon is the only VP to win after losing the 1st time he ran.

The other 2 VPs were elected to the presidency as successor to the president they served under. The 1st was Martin Van Buren who was elected in 1836 to suceed Andrew Jackson. It wasn't until 1988, 132 years later, when George H. W. Bush was elected to succeed Ronald Reagan that it happenned again.

1 VP, George Clinton, has an interesting story. He was VP under Jefferson. When Madison got the nomination by the Democratic-Republicans to succeed Jefferson in 1808, he again got the nod for VP. He didn't want to run for president but was nominated that same year by a wing of the Democratic-Republican party. He got 8 electoral college votes for president as well as being reelected VP. (He is only 1 of 2 VPs to be reelected to a 2nd term under a different president.)

9 other VPs ran for president. 1, Iowa's own Henry Wallace, was nominated by a different party (Progressive) than the 1 he served as VP for (Democratic). Of the other 8 that tried, 4 got their party's nomination (Gore, Mondale, HHH & Stevenson twice). None of them won. Given the view of the office of VP during the time that most of the 8 who became president due to a death, it is unlikely that most of them would have been nominated let alone elected.

So, it seems that the office of VP isn't as much of a stepping stone as it would seem to be.