October 12, 2023: Vice President Studying: John C. Calhoun and Spiro Agnew

[50 yearsago this week, VicePresident Spiro Agnew resigned. That striking political moment was not onlypart of the deepeningWatergate scandal, but one of the few times when an American Vice Presidenthas made major news. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Agnew and other noteworthyVeeps, leading up a weekend post on our current VP!]

On asignificant difference between the two VPs who resigned, and a linking thread.

When Agnewtendered his resignation, he became (and remains to this day) just the secondVice President ever to resign the office. The first, President Andrew Jackson’sfirst VicePresident John C. Calhoun (who had also served as President John QuincyAdams’ Vice President, making Calhoun the secondof two figures to date to serve as VP for two different Presidents),resigned in a significantly less consequential way: Jackson had already won asecond term in the 1832election with a new Vice Presidential nominee, Martin Van Buren; and soCalhoun was a lame-duck Vice President (not a phrase we often use, but anaccurate one in this case) when he resignedthe office in late 1832. He did so in order to replace outgoing SouthCarolina Senator RobertY. Hayne, who had resigned that position to become the state’s Governor; inthe resulting special election Calhoun was unanimously elected by the SouthCarolina legislature (as was the plan to which all these parties had apparentlyagreed) to fill Hayne’s Senate seat.

WhileCalhoun’s resignation itself was thus largely symbolic (and strategic vis-á-visthese other positions), the reasoning behind it was nonetheless quitesignificant, and represents a key distinction between Calhoun and Spiro Agnew. Toput it simply: Agnew resigned in large part because he was too closelyassociated with his President and akey scandal engulfing the administration (although the public explanationfor the resignation was a series of smallerdifferences between the two men, as well as Agnew’s ownprior bad behavior); while Calhoun resigned because of a scandal of his ownmaking that divided him from his President. That scandal was the South Carolinanullification debate that I wrote about in thisearly post and that was a hugely important step on the multi-decade movetoward secession (for which Calhounbecame a direct inspiration) and Civil War. With all due respect to Monday’ssubject and a close contender for this title, Aaron Burr, I’m pretty sure aVice President was never more overtly at odds with their President than Calhounwas with Jackson over nullification, and certainly Agnew and Nixon were neveranywhere close to so antagonistic.

Despitethose significant differences in their administration relationships andresignations, however, there’s at least one way in which I would link Calhounand Agnew (and through which both men foreshadowed certain key elements of thecontemporary American Right). Calhoun’s racist support for the system ofslavery (which he called “agood—a positive good”) led him to advance a mythic patriotic, blatantlywhite supremacist vision of American identity and history, one that as I arguein OfThee I Sing the Confederacy would later take up as a central foundingnarrative. In his critique of journalists who opposed the Vietnam War as “natteringnabobs of negativity” (among many other attacks, as that article traces), Agnewbecame one of the 20th century’s most overt proponents of a mythicpatriotic narrative, one in which critics of an administration and its policiesbecame nothing less than enemies of the state. A white supremacist vision ofthe nation and a narrative that critiques of America are treasonous are notidentical positions, but what they are, as I’ve arguedin many places for thelast few years, are two essential elements of mythic patriotism—a divisive anddestructive form that was embodied by both John C. Calhoun and Spiro Agnew.

LastVeepStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Vice Presidents you’d highlight?