I’m Mr. Beat, and sometimes it seems that Vice Presidents just don’t get any love, they don’t get any respect.
Kimmel: When your Vice President, Dick Cheney. When he shot that guy in the face. (laughter)
How did he tell you? Did he call you? Did he come in and close the door?
Well every time Cheney would come in a lot of people would yell "duck!"
(laughter)
Hahahahaha.
Yep, they’re always the butt of a joke.
The U.S. Constitution says the Vice President has two main jobs.
To cast a vote in the Senate to break a 50-50 tie, which has actually been happening more and more lately, and to certify the official vote count for the Electoral College.
Biden: Of the 115th Congress, the Chair declares the joint session dissolved.
That’s it. Sure, the Vice President is first line to be President if the President dies, but there’s really just an 18% chance of that happening if you look at all of American history.
18%. That seems a little high?
And sure, the Vice President often is involved with a lot of diplomatic work or helps the President with certain projects or issues, but in those cases he is working FOR the President, not independent of him.
But the Vice President position wasn’t even required until the 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967.
That means, before then, if the Vice President died while in office, he didn’t have to be replaced!
Oh and before that, it wasn’t 100 percent clear the Vice President could take the President’s job if HE died, he just sort of did anyway.
Thanks John Tyler.
Speaking of John Tyler, he did not make this list. Here are the top 5 Vice Presidents in American History, in my opinion.
This is yet another opinion video. I apologize for that.
This time, I better reveal that I am judging them based on their actions over their entire adult lives, not just during their time as Veep.
Also, Vice Presidents who also later became President are exempt from this list.
This is probably a good time to mention that this video is made in conjunction with Mr. Betts.
He just released a video counting down his top 5 Presidents who took over not getting elected, but because the previous President died and they were the Veep, so that's how they took over.
Be sure to check out that video after this one is over.
Not right now. No no no, please
Please stick around for this video. Watch his video...AFTER.
Ok? Don't leave.
Ok, so here are my top 5 Vice Presidents in American history.
#5 - Walter Mondale
Mondale, who is still alive and kicking, served as Vice President with President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.
While many historians say Carter was a fairly weak President, at the same time many historians say Mondale was one of the better Vice Presidents the U.S. has ever had.
He certainly brought a lot more power to the position.
Unlike any Veep before, he had a much more hands-on approach within the Carter administration.
Even if I don’t agree with all of Mondale’s political views, I’ve always admired his dedication and life-long service to the country.
The son of a music teacher and minister. He joined the Army during the Korean War to pay for law school.
He later became the Attorney General of Minnesota. While in that position he fought for Gideon and others to have the right to a lawyer in the famous case Gideon v. Wainwright.
He then went on to represent his state in the U.S. Senate for 12 years.
As a Senator, he was known as a champion for civil rights, and one of his biggest accomplishments was helping get the Fair Housing Act passed.
He was a Democrat, but rarely shied away from working with and compromising with Republicans while in office.
He ran for President in 1984 against the very popular Ronald Reagan, and sure, got his butt kicked, but it was pretty cool how he was the first to candidate for a major political party to have a female candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, run with him.
She would have been the first female Vice President in American history had they won.
Overall, he’s a nice guy whose heart always seemed to be in the right place.
#4- Henry Wilson
The Vice President from 1873 to 1875 and who served with President Ulysses Grant.
Radical Republican, a dude way way ahead of his time.
It seemed he was fighting for African American rights and worker rights back before anyone was.
He helped start the Free Soil Party, a political party literally started to stop the expansion of slavery.
I’d argue that no one fought Slave Power more than Wilson.
Later a Republican, he was a Senator for his home state of Massachusetts for 18 years.
As Senator, two different members of Congress challenged him to a duel but he politely declined them.
One of them was Preston Brooks, the dude who beat Charles Sumner almost to death with a cane on the Senate floor.
After Wilson called the caning “brutal, murderous, and cowardly,” which was factually accurate I might add, Brooks then challenged Wilson to a duel.
After Wilson declined the duel, he told journalists "I have sought no controversy, and I seek none, but I shall go where duty requires, uninfluenced by threats of any kind.”
What a dignified son of a gun.
Also, he was really in tune with his constituents.
He constantly traveled around his home state to stay in close touch with their opinions, always taking polls, and long before Gallup existed.
And he was intelligent. He was more about his principles than following any group, and so sometime was at odds with his own political party.
#3- William Wheeler
Well hey, he was the Vice President after Wilson.
Great job, 1870s!
Too bad your ACTUAL presidents weren’t as good as your VPs were.
Yeah Wheeler was Veep with President Rutherford Hayes from 1877 to 1881.
Man did Wheeler have integrity, and the dude was one of the most honest politicians in the history of country.
He was modest, thoughtful, and did not make rash decisions- he was careful to get all sides of an issue before making a decision.
He represented various district in New York in Congress for 10 years, off and on, before becoming one of the most obscure Vice President nominees ever in the crazy election of 1876.
While in Congress, he was another huge advocate for civil rights.
When Congress voted to give itself a pay raise, he voted to not give himself one in protest.
He was low-key. He did more listening than speaking. But when he spoke, he made an impact.
He had the best words. Here’s a sample:
"[W]e owe it to the cause of universal civil liberty, we owe it to the struggling liberalism of the old world,...that every man...of whatever race or color, or however poor, helpless, or lowly he may be, in virtue of his manhood, is entitled to the full employment of every right appertaining to the most exalted citizenship."
He got along with everyone, but that didn’t mean he was easily influenced.
And so morally sound, he even turned down taxpayer money to build a post office in his hometown because he didn’t want it to be seen as special treatment.
#2 - George Clinton
No no no, not THAT George Clinton.
Yes, that George Clinton. Man, we always get those two confused now, don’t we?
Not only was Clinton one of only two Vice Presidents to serve in two different administrations, he also was the first governor of New York, serving a total of 21 years.
Woahness. 21 years?!?
Yes, 21 years! The 2nd-longest tenure in American history.
And he was also a, I don’t know, Founding Freaking Father.
He was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, was actually governor during the American Revolution, even leading forces in the war while he was governor.
After the war, as the new country suffered from some growing pains, Clinton originally supported Alexander Hamilton’s calls for a stronger national government,
but after Hamilton and his supporters called for tariffs, he turned against them.
He wasn’t stupid. He knew that tariffs would greatly hurt New York’s economy.
Later, he became a full-on Anti-Federalist, speaking out against the Constitution after the Constitutional Convention.
With his help, the Framers added the Bill of Rights in 1791 to weakened the federal government.
So thank you George for the Bill of Rights. Thank you.
Sure, he didn’t do much as Vice President for both President Thomas Jefferson and later President James Madison, but most Veeps didn’t for reasons I stated earlier.
The fact is, many Americans really wanted George Clinton to be President due to his legendary status as an important early figure in American history.
That legendary status got him a few electoral votes in those early Presidential elections.
A reminder that I have a series covering ever Presidential election in American history. Check 'em out!
#1- Henry Wallace
What? Two Henrys on this list! Oh Henry!
Henry Wallace was President Franklin Roosevelt’s Vice President from 1941 to 1945, during the World War Two years.
But it’s not that war that he is known for.
Actually, hardly anyone knows about him period, so here are some highlights.
For starters, he hung out with George Washington Carver as a kid, so that’s cool.
He grew up in Iowa, went to Iowa State, where he studied animal breeding and care.
He mixed his passion for statistics and science with agriculture, writing about his findings and later founding a company called the Hi-Bred Corn Company, which eventually made him filthy rich.
He followed in his father’s footsteps after Franklin Roosevelt appointed him Secretary of Agriculture in 1933.
Some say he was one the smartest the US ever had in that position, despite the fact that he told farmers to destroy their crops and kill their pigs to raise prices and get them out of the Depression.
Don’t worry, though, much of those pigs were given to the poor so they could eat.
And it worked. Prices went up.
I know it sounds messed up.
The main reason why I like Wallace is that he was so forward thinking.
He called for universal healthcare, an end to the Cold War, and an end to segregation and imperialism long before almost everyone else.
He called for a humble foreign policy when he later ran for President in 1948.
He got his butt kicked in that election, by the way, and way worse than Mondale got his butt kicked.
In many ways, he was a socialist, which you guys probably already know I am not a big fan of, but
I can forgive his economic beliefs by just looking at the fact that he was such a visionary.
Many historians today call Henry Wallace an ineffective politician, a naive dreamer, and just plain weird.
And he was all three of those things, but I frankly see those things as positives.
So there you have it.
And remember to check out Mr. Betts counting down his top 5 Presidents who used to be Vice Presidents but took over after the President died.
Let's check in on him to see if that video is done.
I'm gonna call him right now.
(phone rings)
Mr. Betts: Hey Mr. Beat
Mr. Betts! I was just checking to see if your video was ready to go.
Mr. Betts: Oh yeah, yeah. The video's almost done.
There's just a couple more clips that I gotta put in.
and just a tweak of the color grading-
Mr. Beat - Great!
Mr. Betts: Hello? Hel-
(frantically typing)
So yeah go check it out and subscribe to MrBettsClass while you’re over there.
Thanks to my newest Patreon supporters John Johnson, Beau Branch, and Kyle Noyes!
Thank you so much for your support. I’ll be back next Friday with a new episode of Compared.
Thanks for watching everybody.
The video's over.
Finally. I kind of dragged on a little bit there. I'm sorry about that.
I'm still dragging on. I should just stop-