This Week in History
December 5, 1782, America’s 8 th Vice President, Martin Van Buren, was born in Kinderhook, New York. Widely distrusted by his enemies, “The Little Magician” gained a reputation as a master manipulator, and calculatingly insinuated himself with President Andrew Jackson to foment discord between Jackson and his first Vice President, John Calhoun. His machinations helped coax Calhoun into using his tie-breaking capacity as President of the Senate to quash Van Buren’s nomination as Minister of the Court of St. James. Tickled at killing Van Buren’s appointment, a more dispassionate observer, Senator Thomas Hart Benton, deflated Calhoun when he noted, “You may have broken a minister, but you have created a Vice President.” Calhoun’s fate was sealed, and Van Buren joined Jackson in the Executive Branch on Inaguration Day 1833. Despite his political prowess, Van Buren’s foppish nature won him no friends among the more hardscrabble members of his country’s government, with Congressman Daniel Boone memorably referring to him as “that damned woman.”
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November 25: On this day in 1885, one of America's least remembered Vice Presidents passed away after less than nine months in office His seat would remain vacant until Inaguration Day 1889.
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November 21: On this day in 1899, America lost its 24 th Vice President, Garret Augustus Hobart, to heart failure. While medically unverifiable, a convincing argument could be made that Hobart was the first Vice President to work himself to death. Hobart was President McKinley’s tireless liaison to Congress, and was so deeply involved in the President’s affairs from the weightiest matters of state to McKinley’s personal investments that he earned the unofficial title, “Assistant to the President.” Of the six Presidents who have had multiple VPs, Team McKinley was far and away the burliest: Hobart’s second-term successor was New York Governor Teddy Roosevelt.
"The Cradle Of Insignificance"
Being single much of my adult life, my vacations have always been more untraditional from that of most people. I wasn’t much for the Fort Lauderdale/Lake Havasu Spring Break set in college, opting instead to work as much as possible to support what was then a complicated and expensive affinity for canned beer.
After college, long solo road trips to visit friends and family were typical. These became increasingly dreary treks as they moved further away to less inviting locales. I spent many vacations lost in the bowels of a housing project miles from where I needed to be or having my safety imperiled by bored locals. (A note to young travelers: A sticker with the image of Stymie from the Little Rascals is an ill-advised decoration to have on one’s rear window when driving the lonely back roads outside Hayden Lake, Idaho.)
In my later 20s and 30s, when I’d be inevitably forced to take my vacation time, it wasn’t uncommon for me to wind up in a Motel 6 in a remote town of 6,000 people where 45 years earlier a nationally-famous murder had occurred or an industrial disaster had killed scores.
In the thick of middle age, while my friends are regularly visiting Hawaii and Epcot Center with their families, my journeys are as contrary to the quotidian as they’ve ever been.
VICE PRESIDENT'S DAY
There is no holiday honoring America's executive understudies.
Contact your Congressional Representatives about making this long overdue holiday a reality. Demand National Vice Presidents Day on July 4!
On sale everywhere! 
"Veeps: Profiles in Insignificance"
by Bill Kelter & Wayne Shellabarger
"I never found anything funny about our Vice Presidents, until I read Veeps, a welcome, often hilarious respite from the tedium of national politics."
--Howard Zinn, historian and author of A People's History Of The United States
About Bill and Wayne
(Reprinted from the Cedar Rapids [Iowa] Gazette - 1/2/2008)
A Shared 'Vice'
by Merle Stickney
It's their boyish enthusiasm that engages you first. Despite being nearly into middle age, they have a youthful zeal that's infectious--no matter how oddly directed it turns out to be.
Keltner and Schellaberger are self-proclaimed "Vice Presidential groupies"—hardcore wonks, VP obsessives, Veep "foamers" (an apparent reference to train aficionados whose hypnotic passion often makes them appear, slack- jawed, to be "foaming" at the mouth).
Veep of the Week
Chester Alan Arthur
Republican
New York
With James Garfield
1881
A former protégé of New York kingmaker Senator Roscoe Conkling, Chester Arthur broke from his patron and accepted the Republican nomination for the Vice Presidency in 1880. Arthur attempted to make amends and use his new office to help his erstwhile benefactor, but after a series of public rebellions and rebuffed power plays by the Republican party he had previously wielded so much control over, Conkling’s power was now diminished to the extent that not even the aid of a sitting Vice President could help him. Arthur paid dearly for his efforts, though, and was portrayed in the press as a Conkling errand boy who skipped through the statehouse halls in Albany, forever trying to pull strings and open doors for his former mentor.
“THE DELEGATE FROM NEPTUNE CASTS HIS VOTE FOR…” Arthur’s image problems were only exacerbated on July 2, 1881, when mentally ill attorney Charles J. Guiteau shot Garfield in the back at a Washington D.C. rail station, proclaiming, “I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts! Arthur is President now!” Naturally, this didn’t play well with anyone who might already have been suspicious of the Stalwart Vice President’s ambitions. In truth, though, Guiteau’s own train had left the station long ago. He’d taken an old speech he’d written in support of Ulysses S. Grant’s bid for the Presidency, entitled “Grant v. Hancock,” and changed its title to “Garfield v. Hancock” after Garfield won the 1880 Republican nomination (Guiteau changed only Grant’s name in the body of the speech, however, thus nonsensically ascribing Grant’s cited achievements to Garfield).
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