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Authors: Jeffrey Sackett
Tags: Humor
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conceived." He also said (using the Latin infinitive verb forms esse , to be, and posse, to have potential), "In posse, I am everything. In esse , I am nothing."
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Probably the most famous, or infamous, story about a vice-president involves Jefferson 's first VP, Aaron Burr.
The election of 1800 yielded no winner, for no one gained a majority of votes in the Electoral College. Jefferson received 73 votes, Burr 73 votes, and the incumbent president, John Adams, 68. In accordance with the Constitution, it was up to the House of Representatives to elect a president from these three men. Also in accordance with the Constitution as then written, whoever came in second would become vice-president.
Ex-Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton was a New Yorker like Burr, and the two men detested each other. Hamilton lobbied actively for the House to elect Jefferson, which it did, and Burr thus became vice-president. Burr, angry at Hamilton, then challenged him to a duel.
The etiquette of dueling back then allowed for a peaceful resolution to the argument, if both participants desired it. The challenger presumably had at least a plausible justification for issuing the challenge, and his opponent presumably owed him at least some sort of an apology. Thus if the person challenged wished to apologize without actually saying the words, he would not aim at his challenger, but would intentionally and dramatically miss. (The person challenged got the first shot, the challenger the second.)
Burr and Hamilton and their seconds met at dawn on the Palisades on the coast of New Jersey. The two contestants then retired to a nearby bluff, leaving their seconds behind. A few moments later a shot rang out, followed shortly thereafter by a second shot, and a scream of pain. The seconds ran to the bluff to find Burr standing, a severed tree branch beside him, while Hamilton lay writhing in agony on the ground.
Hamilton died the next day, having said nothing about the duel, and Burr never discussed it. But the sequence of shots and the severed branch tell the story. What had happened, presumably, was that Hamilton had deliberately missed Burr by shooting up at a tree and severing the branch. By dueling custom, this constituted an apology. Burr apparently would not accept it, because he then took aim and shot Hamilton in the chest.
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When Harry Truman was first elected to the Senate in 1934, he was very, very nervous about taking his place among what he regarded as an august and magisterial fraternity of legislators. But his qualms were put to rest when one of the senior members of the Senate took him aside and told him, "Harry, for the next six months you're gonna wonder what the hell you're doing here. After that, you're gonna wonder what the hell the rest of us are doing here."
Truman was elected FDR's vice-president in the 1944 election, and met with the president soon thereafter for tea in the White House garden soon thereafter. After leaving FDR, another person present at the lunch said something to the effect that the president was dying. "I know," Truman said, "and it scares the hell out of me."
On April 12, 1945, Truman was having a drink with some friends in the Senate lounge when an urgent message summoned him to the White House. He ran over and was greeted by Eleanor Roosevelt, who informed him that Roosevelt had died earlier that day in Warm Springs, Georgia.
Ever the solicitous gentleman, Truman asked, "Mrs. Roosevelt, is there anything I can do for you?"
"Harry," Eleanor replied, "is there anything I can do for you? You are the one in trouble."
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Richard Nixon was not known for his sense of humor, but he did have a few amusing moments.
When he was Eisenhower's vice-president he engaged in a series of debates, public and private, with Soviet Communist Party head Nikita Khrushchev. Nixon always researched the background of foreign leaders he was to encounter (and his book about them, Leaders, is still fascinating
Â
Probably the most famous, or infamous, story about a vice-president involves Jefferson 's first VP, Aaron Burr.
The election of 1800 yielded no winner, for no one gained a majority of votes in the Electoral College. Jefferson received 73 votes, Burr 73 votes, and the incumbent president, John Adams, 68. In accordance with the Constitution, it was up to the House of Representatives to elect a president from these three men. Also in accordance with the Constitution as then written, whoever came in second would become vice-president.
Ex-Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton was a New Yorker like Burr, and the two men detested each other. Hamilton lobbied actively for the House to elect Jefferson, which it did, and Burr thus became vice-president. Burr, angry at Hamilton, then challenged him to a duel.
The etiquette of dueling back then allowed for a peaceful resolution to the argument, if both participants desired it. The challenger presumably had at least a plausible justification for issuing the challenge, and his opponent presumably owed him at least some sort of an apology. Thus if the person challenged wished to apologize without actually saying the words, he would not aim at his challenger, but would intentionally and dramatically miss. (The person challenged got the first shot, the challenger the second.)
Burr and Hamilton and their seconds met at dawn on the Palisades on the coast of New Jersey. The two contestants then retired to a nearby bluff, leaving their seconds behind. A few moments later a shot rang out, followed shortly thereafter by a second shot, and a scream of pain. The seconds ran to the bluff to find Burr standing, a severed tree branch beside him, while Hamilton lay writhing in agony on the ground.
Hamilton died the next day, having said nothing about the duel, and Burr never discussed it. But the sequence of shots and the severed branch tell the story. What had happened, presumably, was that Hamilton had deliberately missed Burr by shooting up at a tree and severing the branch. By dueling custom, this constituted an apology. Burr apparently would not accept it, because he then took aim and shot Hamilton in the chest.
Â
When Harry Truman was first elected to the Senate in 1934, he was very, very nervous about taking his place among what he regarded as an august and magisterial fraternity of legislators. But his qualms were put to rest when one of the senior members of the Senate took him aside and told him, "Harry, for the next six months you're gonna wonder what the hell you're doing here. After that, you're gonna wonder what the hell the rest of us are doing here."
Truman was elected FDR's vice-president in the 1944 election, and met with the president soon thereafter for tea in the White House garden soon thereafter. After leaving FDR, another person present at the lunch said something to the effect that the president was dying. "I know," Truman said, "and it scares the hell out of me."
On April 12, 1945, Truman was having a drink with some friends in the Senate lounge when an urgent message summoned him to the White House. He ran over and was greeted by Eleanor Roosevelt, who informed him that Roosevelt had died earlier that day in Warm Springs, Georgia.
Ever the solicitous gentleman, Truman asked, "Mrs. Roosevelt, is there anything I can do for you?"
"Harry," Eleanor replied, "is there anything I can do for you? You are the one in trouble."
Â
Richard Nixon was not known for his sense of humor, but he did have a few amusing moments.
When he was Eisenhower's vice-president he engaged in a series of debates, public and private, with Soviet Communist Party head Nikita Khrushchev. Nixon always researched the background of foreign leaders he was to encounter (and his book about them, Leaders, is still fascinating
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