This Day in Vice-Presidential History (Agnew Resigns in Disgrace)

Oct. 10, 1973—Less than two weeks after defiantly vowing that he would not resign as Vice-President even if he was indicted, Spiro Agnew did exactly that, pleading no contest to a charge of federal income tax evasion in exchange for the dropping of charges of political corruption.

John C. Calhoun had resigned as Andrew Jackson’s Veep over policy differences, but Agnew was the first to leave the office in disgrace.

The investigation that brought him down, though separate and distinct from the Watergate scandal involving his boss, Richard Nixon, furthered the growing national impression of an administration reeking with corruption, and fed the possibility that, if one of the two highest elected officials in the land could be forced out, so could the other.

Perhaps because he largely faded out of the spotlight after his time in office, perhaps because he increasingly became viewed as a useless occupant of a once-useless office, Agnew and his crimes have been largely forgotten.

Outside of The Baltimore Sun—in effect, during his days as governor of Maryland, his hometown newspaper—hardly any major newspaper has observed the anniversary of the departure of a politician once the proverbial “heartbeat away” from the Presidency.

I am writing this blog post partly to fill this informational gap. 

Fundamentally shallow, ill-informed, unscrupulous, and unworthy of high office, Agnew demands our attention because he tapped into what has become apparent in the years since as some of the worst instincts of the American people: zenophobia, resentment, and alarming credulity about the greatest canards about the press and dissenters.

Only in his second year as governor of Maryland in 1968, Agnew received Nixon’s backing as Vice President after having swerved from a relative racial moderate to an uncompromising champion of “law and order” who requested and used the National Guard after unrest following the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

He could facilitate Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” to peel white voters away from their traditional Democratic voting patterns—yet did not command conservative allegiance the way that California Governor Ronald Reagan did.

To Nixon’s chagrin, Agnew increasingly built a base in that very voting bloc, largely because he gleefully seized the attack dog role that the President assigned him, in speeches featuring alliterative phrases crafted by speechwriters William Safire and Patrick Buchanan. 

The right-wing contingent of the GOP ignored Agnew’s gaffes and racial/ethnic slurs (e.g., “fat Jap,” If you’ve seen one slum, you’ve seen them all”) and embraced him as its champion.

Even though he had become disenchanted with Agnew’s poor management skills, his predilection for hitting the golf course rather than learning policy, and his lack of seriousness and temperamental steadiness, Nixon ironically found in 1972 that he could not dump the Veep from the ticket without alienating the conservative wing of the party.

Only a couple of months into the following year, just when Agnew had emerged as a strong contender to succeed Nixon at the end of his term, the Vice-President picked up the first hints that he was being investigated for extorting money from contractors while governor of Maryland. Amazingly, he continued to carry out the scheme while Vice President.

Following a script that Donald Trump would follow far more successfully more than 40 years later, Agnew demonized reporters and sought to quash the investigation as a witch hunt (even, as Rachel Maddow revealed in her podcast and book Bag Man, enlisting George Bush—then head of the Republican National Committee—in the effort).

It all came to naught. Agnew’s call for his impeachment before the Senate—where, he calculated, he stood a better chance of surviving than in a court of law—led Nixon to decide that this was a threat to his own political future.

Moreover, Attorney General Elliot Richardson regarded as untenable any scenario in which Nixon, if impeached, could be succeeded by Agnew, himself a crook.

The path was paved for a deal that, even at the time, many (including the young prosecutors investigating Agnew) regarded as what UPI’s Mike Feinsilber called at the time “two standards of justice, one for the powerless and one for the strong.” 

“Accused in 40 detailed pages of having pocketed well over $85,000 in kickbacks," Feinsilber explained, “Agnew was given lighter punishment than others get for stealing a car.” That “punishment” turned out to be a $10,000 fine, a three-years probation sentence, and disbarment by the Maryland court of appeals.

After saying goodbye to Nixon, Agnew never spoke to the President again. When the Veep showed up at his old boss’s funeral in 1994, many in Nixon’s family and inner circle may well have welcomed him as much as a skunk slipping into a perfume factory.

After all, he had charged, in a memoir published seven years after leaving office, Nixon’s chief of staff, Alexander Haig, had urged him strongly to resign: “The President has a lot of power—don’t forget that.”

“I interpreted it as an innuendo that anything could happen to me,” Agnew recalled. “I might have a convenient ‘accident.’”

By the way, that memoir was titled Go Quietly…Or Else—a title more appropriate about an encounter with the Mafia than about service to the American people. Altogether in keeping with the undignified, unsavory liar and crook who produced it.

Quote of the Day (Agnew, on the Government He Tried to Outrun)

“The government at Washington does live. It lives in the pages of our Constitution and in the hearts of our citizens and there it will always be safe.”—Spiro T. Agnew, in a televised address resigning the office of Vice-President of the United States, October 10, 1973, after pleading no contest to one count of income-tax evasion

Yes, the American government even survived Agnew and the man who chose him as a running mate, Richard Nixon—a pair who share the dubious distinction of being the only President and Vice-President to step down from office because of corruption charges.

Perhaps nothing demonstrates the shallowness and intellectual bankruptcy of American conservatives in the 1960s and 1970s more than their fervent embrace of Agnew. You have to ask—what did they see in him?

Given enough time, even if you don't agree with or particularly like them, you can understand the qualities in other past and present Republicans that struck a chord with the right-wing faithful: Buckley’s zest for ideological combat, Goldwater’s extreme candor, Reagan’s grandfatherly affability, Quayle’s puppy-dug peppiness, Palin’s cheerleader vibe, even Cheney’s 30-plus-years of experience in the executive and legislative branches, not to mention business. But Agnew?

Nixon’s D.H. (Designated Hitman) had only his multiple resentments, usually voiced in alliterations created by someone far more creative, speechwriter (later New York Times columnist) William Safire.

Anyone who got to know him well enough couldn’t stand the guy. Capitol Hill lawmakers resented his attempts to influence their votes. Nixon aides groaned every time he requested more office space, more face time with the boss, more responsibilities that he could later retail to the public to show he really was effective, in the event he ever decided to succeed the President.

Even Nixon, more often than not, didn’t have much use for “Ted.” As he looked nervously at his second-term prospects, he thought seriously of giving his Veep the ol’ heave-ho in favor of John Connolly, the Tory from Texas he lured away from the Democrats as his Secretary of the Treasury.

And then, Nixon noticed how well Agnew’s attacks on the media played with conservatives. This was a group that didn’t quite embrace Nixon as their own boy. 

Oh, Nixon wasn’t Nelson Rockefeller, but with his turn toward wage-and-price controls, his lip service to hot-button social issues such as abortion, even his creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (you can just hear them—another regulatory body?), he didn’t really have their hearts, the way Goldwater or Reagan did. Agnew could be his sop to this group.

Tricky Dick might have chafed at how Dwight D. Eisenhower had used him during his Vice-Presidency and how he had even tried to throw him overboard, but now he had to give it to the old man: Using the Vice-President to brush back liberals allowed the occupant of the Oval Office to stay seemingly above the fray while someone else did his dirty work. So Agnew stayed.

Until, that is, the long arm of the law began to catch up with him, and it was discovered that he had been involved in kickback schemes dating back to when he was a county executive and governor. Living dangerously, he’d continued the practice even after becoming Vice-President. 

Me, I never understood this: by this time, hadn’t Agnew been collecting so much money that people would begin to see he was developing a permanent stoop to bend down to pick up all that stray moolah that contractors were throwing at him?

In the end, Agnew decided to call it a day and plea bargain his way out of office—but not before delivering a speech that did him no favors. 

Glutton for punishment that I am, I read his resignation speech so that I could spare you the bother, faithful reader. Boy, what a trip, as they used to say in Agnew’s time.

He started the speech claiming he wasn’t going to resort to “a paroxysm of bitterness,” then fell immediately into that. He claimed that he’d been undone by individuals whose accusations hadn’t been “independently corroborated or tested by cross-examination,” but his own nolo contendere (no contest) plea negated that possibility. 

That plea, he said, was made to “still the raging storm” blowing at a time of war in the Mideast and Watergate at home – though any perception that he had committed this kind of selfless, patriotic act was not going to dissipate the second that prosecutors released a 40-page document describing his corruption.

Agnew lived out his remaining two decades with the same lack of dignity he had exhibited during the Vice-Presidency and while leaving it. He’s the only Executive Branch official whose memoir reads like the title of a Mario Puzo novel (Go Quietly…Or Else). 

Ten years after resigning, the state of Maryland made him cough up $268,000 as reimbursement and penalty for his actions while governor. 

That, plus his disbarment, made it imperative that he find other employment—which he did a year later, by teaming up with John Mitchell and other Nixon honchos to sell military uniforms to Saddam Hussein. 

For two decades, he refused to speak to Richard Nixon, then showed up at his funeral—perhaps gloating that he’d outlasted his political master.

Once out of office, it seems, nobody had any use for him anymore—nobody, that is, except Frank Sinatra. The only reason I can see why the most significant American entertainer of the 20th century offered friendship to the Vice-President of the United States was that the singer, too, resented the media and the liberal Democrats (especially the Kennedys) who no longer had any use for him.

Now, the Chairman of the Board could sometimes, in his interpersonal relations, be a bit rough around the edges, but you could also not ask for a more loyal and generous friend. 

Only weeks before the resignation, when Agnew was ready to throw in the towel, the singer stiffened his spine so much that the Veep gave a thunderous speech to the effect that no way was he going. 

And now, when the evidence of his crimes was so overwhelming that nobody would give Agnew the time of day anymore, Sinatra not only helped pay off his legal bills, but made him a part of his entourage.

For a neat little vignette on this stage of the ex-Veep’s life, I recommend that you get your hands on All in Good Time, by Jonathan Schwartz. The great DJ of the American Songbook relates at one point in his elegant memoir how he met Agnew while out with the Chairman of the Board. 

Schwartz quickly noticed how the disgraced politico did nothing to disguise his visible appreciation for the DJ’s attractive girlfriend, coveting the woman, perhaps, almost as much even as he'd craved bullion in public life.

How characteristic—even out of the spotlight, Agnew retained his creepiness.

This Day in Presidential History (Nixon Accepts GOP Nod)

August 8, 1968—In Miami Beach, Fla., six years to the day that he would announce his resignation because his “political base” had collapsed in the wake of Watergate, Richard M. Nixon kicked off his successful campaign for the Oval Office with his speech accepting the Republican Party nomination for President.

One reason why I like researching this blog is what I find in going back to original sources—in this case, Nixon’s acceptance speech. No, “Tricky Dick” didn’t deliver an electrifying address a la Barack Obama four years ago at the Democratic Convention. But speeches like his not only plunge you back into the mood of the times, but also contain hints of the future and manifold ironies not apparent then to either the public or the cynical press.

Let’s focus on that last phrase first: “cynical press.” They were bored silly by the entire GOP spectacle—and really, who could blame them?

It was bad enough that they were waiting for The Main Event in Chicago a few weeks hence—the Democratic Convention. Sure, they didn’t know just how bad it was going to get, but with Eugene McCarthy’s forces feeling aggrieved, with Bobby Kennedy’s delegates not completely nailed down yet for Hubert Humphrey, and with so much roiling unrest that year, reporters sensed that something, anything could happen there.

No, the press was also bored because the Republicans had spoiled them rotten with their “Cow Palace” dustup in San Francisco four years before—the way Barry Goldwater’s shock troops had dissed Nelson Rockefeller (and he’d dissed them in turn), the way the press itself became a story (roundly derided by the same conservatives), the way, in short, that major splits had opened up between conservatives and liberals and conservatives and the press—all preceding an electoral train wreck that November.

You think the GOP top brass—especially Richard Nixon’s crew, including former ad man H.R. Haldeman, who would become the future President’s Chief of State—wanted a repeat of that? No way. And so you had one of the most stage-managed conventions in history up to that point.

It was only 20 years after the raucous conventions that produced Harry S. Truman’s clarion call to fight back against the Republicans, as well as two splinter parties (Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats and Henry A. Wallace’s Progressives), but it was much closer to the kind of event that David Frum blasted recently in The Wall Street Journal for creating “a cult of personality around the ultimate nominee that would be almost sinister if it did not so often absurdly backfire.”

The 1,500 reporters at the convention were dying for a gaudy, blood-on-the-floor convention the way an alcoholic is dying for a drink. When they didn’t get it, they couldn’t help but express their annoyance.

According to The New York Times’ Russell Baker, the Republican National Convention had been "planned weeks in advance by six bores and a sadist." The predictable result: things such as the "presentation of the orangewood gavel to the chairman of the Republican National Committee by O. D. Huff Jr., chairman of the Florida Citrus Commission," or Tony Martin singing a "few hit tunes of the Alf Landon era."

Meanwhile, the control-freak candidate at the heart of all this strategically induced boredom was sweating it out. You could tell from the subtext of what he said. For instance, virtually the first thing he told the convention, after relating how he’d been their candidate back in 1960, was: “This time we are going to win.”

The candidate had, implicitly, acknowledged his heartbreaking squeaker to John F. Kennedy. Left unsaid, though, was his 1962 loss to Edmund (Pat) Brown for governor of California, which had so angered the ex-Vice President that his outburst to the press—“You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore”—had been widely viewed as his political obituary.

Now, here he was, reviewing for the delegates the chaos the Democrats had produced the last eight years—divisions not only at home and abroad, but within the party. For Nixon, it was a virtual godsend, like General McClellan being given Robert E. Lee’s “lost orders” on the eve of the Battle of Antietam. You can practically hear the candidate singing a tune from Cabaret to himself: “Maybe this time, I’ll be lucky…” He was reassuring himself as well as his listeners that it would all be different, that for once, victory would be theirs.

Why else did he think he’d win? Now, here is where it really gets funny: “because you have nominated as my running mate a statesman of the first rank who will be a great campaigner and one who is fully qualified to undertake the new responsibilities that I shall give to the next Vice President of the United States.”

Ah, Spiro Agnew, future attack dog spitting alliteration written by someone else (“hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history"), abuser of minorities, great rightwing hope, income tax cheat, first Vice President forced to resign on corruption charges. Outside of Frank Sinatra and Saddam Hussein (to whom he sold military uniforms), did anyone have a nice word about this “statesman of the first rank” after he was unceremoniously drummed out of office? (Even his old boss called him, in his last days, “my insurance policy” in the face of impeachment charges.)

Much of the rest of the speech was given over to predictable partisan shots or the kinds of populist pablum that no national politician can do without, such as this gem: “America is great because her people are great.” According to Jim Sage, one of Nixon's filmmakers, quoted in young journalist Joe McGinniss’s The Selling of the President 1968: "Nixon has not only developed the use of the platitude, he's raised it to an art form. It's mashed potatoes. It appeals to the lowest common denominator of American taste."

The ironies don’t end there. There’s this one: “I say the time has come for other nations in the Free World to bear their fair share of the burden of defending peace and freedom around this world.” A guaranteed applause-winner, appealing to those who wanted limited government, fewer strains on the federal treasury, a withdrawal from being the world’s policeman, and more responsibility from those governments rolling their eyes at America but running for us as soon as the Russian Bear started bellowing.

So what happened with that? Certainly nothing in Vietnam. As for the current war on terror, let’s hear what German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would tell Barack Obama about his idea of committing more German troops in Afghanistan: “I will make it clear that Germany is not shirking deeper involvement but also make very clear our limits in the same way as I do with the current president."

In other words: Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Got it.

And yet, there’s an idea in Nixon's mass of verbiage, struggling for a context. An adept poker player while on naval assignment in WWII, he was revealing he wanted to deal internationally from a fresh deck of cards: “And now to the leaders of the Communist world, we say: After an era of confrontation, the time has come for an era of negotiation.”

If you were a reporter listening at the time, you probably couldn’t keep yourself from yawning when you heard this—especially when you heard this follow-up: “Because this will be a period of negotiation, we shall restore the strength of America so that we shall always negotiate from strength and never from weakness.”

What they—what we—were missing, in embryonic form, was Nixon’s new approach to China and the U.S.S.R.—one that, he hoped, would not only lead to nuclear arms treaties, but, just as important, to the two Communist superpowers leaning on North Vietnam to come to the negotiating table. But, to his way of thinking, Mao, Brezhnev and the North Vietnamese wouldn’t talk if they thought he was like the Stevensonian figure of President Merkin Muffley figure in Dr. Strangelove; rather, they needed to be persuaded he would try anything—Nixon’s “mad bomber” theory.

Nixon almost lost the election he thought was finally his. In the end, however, he lost something far more agonizing because of Watergate: not just his office, but also his reputation.

Nixon was obsessed with history's judgment just as Pete Rose (another liar and gambler, not so coincidentally) was and is obsessed with Cooperstown. In the final hours leading up to his resignation speech on August 8, 1974, I think the President's mind must have flashed back to his hour of triumph exactly six years before in Miami Beach. The recognition must have pained and angered him to no end.