Which OTL Vice-President Would Have Made The Worst President?

with Nixon dead (and smeared) and Agnew doing jailable things, and Albert drunkenly stepping down after a few weeks, there'd be a need from uniting leadership, if Albert cared (big if) maybe picking Warren E. Burger?

The only way that Albert could have been president is if Nixon dies right after Agnew resigns. I would assume that he pick a Democrat for Vice President. if he rose to the office of Speaker of the House, he couldn"t have had that bad of drinking problem. i also think that he would fire Kissenger and replace him with Cyrus Vance.
 
Burger would never trade the life position of Chief Justice for a powerless vice presidency, and wasn't really a politician. Ike briefly contemplated picking Earl Warren in '56 and that also fell through. It's also rather strange to move an impartial judge (and improper IMO) so blatantly into the political arena.
 
The only way that Albert could have been president is if Nixon dies right after Agnew resigns. I would assume that he pick a Democrat for Vice President. if he rose to the office of Speaker of the House, he couldn"t have had that bad of drinking problem. i also think that he would fire Kissenger and replace him with Cyrus Vance.

Albert was a serious alcoholic who crashed his car into Georgetown homes on a couple of occasions. You're wrong about picking a Democrat: one of the reasons Albert didn't want to become President was because the 1972 results clearly showed the country wanted a Republican White House. IIRC his plan was that he would pick a Republican VP, probably Rocky as the one with the most experience, and then resign once the VP was confirmed.
 
I think he gets public support,although he wouldn"t enjoy the same degree of public support that Ford did

It's not public support I'm worried about, it's Operation Nickel Grass. Nixon had to call in some serious favors just to get Portugal to let us refuel in the Azores; nobody else in Europe would even let us overfly. By Oct. 10th, Israeli forces had lost 500 tanks, were nearly out of artillery rounds then, and had no antitank missiles at all; while the Arabs were getting unlimited resupply of tanks and ammo from the Soviets.

If Rocky can't orchestrate the airlift by, say, the 20th, Israel may end up using nuclear weapons against Egyptian tank formations, for lack of anything else to throw at them. My shadow probably gets burnt into the driveway slab of my parent's house, a couple of hours later.

That's why I'd vote [Any of Nixon's Likely Replacements in 1973] as Worst President of all time (with President Bilbo in a distant second-place).
 
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Truman was the one who started a terror with the loyalty oaths that helped to lead to McCarthyism.

What does that have to do with anything? The point is that good intentions don't matter if you don't have good policies or good implementations. If I may, look at Communism. It's a highly utopian social idea, clearly developed from liberalism. You could hardly fault its founders or many of its followers for having "bad intentions". Yet, it has obviously, and badly, failed every time it was tried.

Brezhnev and Gorbachev were not Joseph Stalin - they actually wanted to avoid conflict, unlike Stalin, who just flat out didn't care.

Stalin wasn't an idiot--he knew perfectly well after the end of World War II that the USSR was (comparatively) weak and the US was strong, even discounting the nukes. He certainly didn't want to start a war--otherwise, he would have sent the Red Army west after the US demobilized. It is hard to see a plausible series of events after 1945 that lead to war between the US and USSR before the development of MAD. Russia was too bloodied and broken, the US was too unwilling to throw away lives on a crusade to eliminate Communism (not that that was a bad thing, mind you).
 
True - at least until the Soviet Union rearmed and rebuilt. My point is that a foreign policy aimed at placating Soviet demands and expansionism would only serve to encourage more demands and expansionism. For starters, there's no way Wallace would have threatened war to get the Soviets out of Northern Iran. I also imagine the Soviets would have been much more active in supporting communist movements in France, Italy, and Greece, and Wallace would have done little concrete to stop it.
 
Burger would never trade the life position of Chief Justice for a powerless vice presidency, and wasn't really a politician. Ike briefly contemplated picking Earl Warren in '56 and that also fell through. It's also rather strange to move an impartial judge (and improper IMO) so blatantly into the political arena.

in OTL in 1970 Nixon asked Burger to run in 1972 if the Cambodia invasion blow up on him, and Burger was on Nixon's short list of vice-presidential replacements in 1973 along with John Connally, Ronald Reagan, and Nelson Rockefeller.
 
Burger probably wouldn't accept though: no recently active member of the judiciary has ever been nominated for the vice presidency or the presidency in the 20th century. He certainly wouldn't respond to an offhand Nixon comment about Cambodia.
 
Charles Evan Hughes resigned from the Supreme Court in 1916, to run for President as the Republican nominee. That said an idea of a Berger Presidency is interesting although he been involved in politics and served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Eisenhower Administration that limited political experience would have hurt him. In 1976, he would have had run for his first office.
 
I forgot about Hughes, :eek: but I count him as an exception because he served as Governor of New York first and later served as Secretary of State. Burger had no experience of elected office, nor was he a professional politician.
 
So a few words about Wallace.

Though I agree his presidency would have been disastrous, I have to point out that he was a far better man than much of this board seems to believe.

Wallace's views about the Soviet Union were shared by much of the American political elite during the Second World War, and even FDR had a fairly sanguine view of Stalin. There wasn't any doubt that Stalin was a dictator, but many took a fairly benign view of him, believing that rising living standards would ultimately bring the Soviet Union a more democratic government, and that central planning innovations could have use in the West.

Wrong? Sure. But it wasn't an uncommon view in those days.

Moreover, on domestic policy, Wallace was basically a Great Society liberal who came around two decades too early.

I suspect a Wallace presidency would have been disastrous, as, yes, many of the people he appointed would have turned out to have Soviet ties or Soviet agents. Wallace was no fool, and though he would likely have ultimately seen Stalin's duplicity, the cost of the delay to his political reputation would have been disastrous.

But again, Wallace was no fool. He himself repudiated the Progressive Party in 1950, wrote a book declaring he had been wrong about the Soviets, and then endorsed Ike in '52 and '56.
 
What does that have to do with anything? The point is that good intentions don't matter if you don't have good policies or good implementations. If I may, look at Communism. It's a highly utopian social idea, clearly developed from liberalism. You could hardly fault its founders or many of its followers for having "bad intentions". Yet, it has obviously, and badly, failed every time it was tried.

I was replying to your comment comparing Wallace to the Jacobins.
 
I was replying to your comment comparing Wallace to the Jacobins.

That's still missing the point, though. I wasn't saying Wallace was going to start a Terror; I was merely saying that good intentions are no proof against bad outcomes, and making an analogy to the well-intentioned but failed Jacobins.
 
So a few words about Wallace.


Wallace's views about the Soviet Union were shared by much of the American political elite during the Second World War, and even FDR had a fairly sanguine view of Stalin. There wasn't any doubt that Stalin was a dictator, but many took a fairly benign view of him, believing that rising living standards would ultimately bring the Soviet Union a more democratic government, and that central planning innovations could have use in the West.

Wrong? Sure. But it wasn't an uncommon view in those days.

How was that wrong?
 
There wasn't any doubt that Stalin was a dictator, but many took a fairly benign view of him,

Well, yes. It isn't wrong to say that Stalin was a dictator, and that many, including Wallace, thought he was benign. It was the "benign" part that was wrong.

believing that rising living standards would ultimately bring the Soviet Union a more democratic government,

Clearly, that was wrong. Although living standards didn't really rise, so maybe it's a bad comparison. Soviet GNP and industrialization certainly improved, which should have greatly increased living standards - although that didn't happen, nor did it lead to democratic government

and that central planning innovations could have use in the West.

False comparison. Soviet-style central planning epically failed. Whether aspects of central planning succeeded in the West is irrelevant to the fact that taking central planning to the Soviet/Stalinist conclusion was a complete failure.

So, Sean, what do you mean when you ask "How was that wrong?"?
 
Clearly, that was wrong. Although living standards didn't really rise, so maybe it's a bad comparison. Soviet GNP and industrialization certainly improved, which should have greatly increased living standards - although that didn't happen, nor did it lead to democratic government

What do you mean living standards didn't rise? Between 1945-1990 the per capita income in the Soviet Union increased greatly and the ownership of appliances such as tv's and telephones greatly increased. The education levels rose and health care improved with a decrease in the infant mortality rate. The amount of housing also increased.
 
Thomas A. Hendricks (Veep for Grover Cleveland in his First term)
- He was in poor health for several years, and he only served from March 4, 1885, until his death a few months later. A very lousy pick by the Dems especially considering the fact that the VP is only a heart beat away.

John C. Calhoun
- I'm not a big fan of Andrew Jackson, but I do agree with Old Prickery about his only regret. Although I have to say I kinda like Henry Clay so I only agree with him on one of his regrets. ;)

Dan Quayle
- If there had ever been a time to bring in Colin Powell for a future run for the Presidency it would've been in 88 or 92. George H.W. Bush would've been much better off, with Powell as his running mate. Not to mention what kind of an idiot attacks a fictional character on T.V.?
 
If you're referring to Murphy Brown, someone who thinks the show is glamorizing very bad decisions (like having children out of wedlock).

How was she glamorizing it?:confused:
If anything she made me never wanna have kids, or drink for that matter.

In any case it was a T.V. Show, if you don't like it don't watch it. It's not the Government's job to tell me who my role models are, or to worry about what shows I'm watching.
 
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