Many Indians in particular and South Asians in general are quite enthused by Joe Biden's vice presidential pick in the United States. The child of Jamaican and Indian parents, Senator Kamala Harris is now the focus of discussion in our part of the world as also in Jamaica.
Given Biden's age, one wonders if Harris can ignite the Democratic campaign enough to propel the Biden-Harris team to victory in November. There are too those who think Biden, if elected, will serve a single term and will be followed into the White House at the 2024 election by Harris.
It is of course yet speculation, but it does provoke interesting reflections on the recent history of American vice presidential nominees and the reality of how many of them made it to the White House on their own. By the way, Harris is not the first woman to be a vice presidential aspirant in an election year. There was Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, who was Walter Mondale's running mate in 1984.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who served the longest in the White House --- twelve years in fact --- had three vice presidents, in that order, as part of his administration. The first was John Nance Garner, followed by Henry Wallace, who in turn was followed by Harry Truman. Of the three, only Truman made it to the presidency when Roosevelt died soon after his fourth inauguration in 1945. Truman, elected in his own right in 1948, had for his vice president Alben Barkley. Another vice president who similarly succeeded his predecessor to the White House was Lyndon Baines Johnson, who took over when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963. In 1964, the Johnson-Humphrey team won in a landslide against the Republicans' Senator Barry Goldwater and Congressman William Miller.
Senator Richard Nixon, chosen as the vice presidential nominee on the Republican ticket with Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, almost lost that place over a scandal during the campaign. It was his famous 'Checkers Speech' which saved him, but eight years later, in his own race for the White House, he narrowly lost to John F. Kennedy. In 1968, a comeback Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey by a whisker, who was at the time vice president under President Lyndon Johnson.
Back in 1956, when Adlai Stevenson received the Democratic nomination for the presidency a second time, John F. Kennedy was anxious to be his vice presidential running mate. In the event, Stevenson selected Senator Estes Kefauver. They were defeated by the Eisenhower-Nixon team. In 1968, Humphrey chose Senator Edmund Muskie as his running mate. Muskie certainly energized the Democratic ticket, to a point where after the election he was touted as the man who would take on Nixon in 1972. Muskie's hopes were dashed, however, when he was observed weeping in public over media attacks on his wife. His stock went down and the party nomination went to Senator George McGovern, who then lost badly to President Nixon.
Nixon's vice president Spiro Agnew was forced to resign over a milk scandal in 1973, to be succeeded by Congressman Gerald Ford. When Ford succeeded Nixon as president in the aftermath of the Watergate crisis in August 1974, he appointed Nelson Rockefeller, who himself had sought the Republican presidential nomination a number of times, as his vice president. At the presidential election in 1976, Ford had Bob Dole on the ticket as his vice presidential candidate. The two men lost to the Jimmy Carter-Walter Mondale ticket in November.
As the election of 1980 approached, former president Ford was quite desperate about becoming Ronald Reagan's running mate on the Republican ticket. His ambitions went awry when Reagan selected George H.W. Bush, who had been his rival for the nomination and who had scoffed at his economic plans as voodoo economics, as the vice presidential nominee. In 1988, Vice President Bush secured the presidential nomination, with Senator Dan Quayle as his vice-presidential running mate. On the Democratic ticket were Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis and Senator Lloyd Bentsen.
The Bush-Quayle team served a single term in office, for in 1992 they lost the election to former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and Senator Al Gore, who spent two terms in office. In 2000, Gore, as the Democrats' presidential candidate, was prevented from assuming the presidency when the US Supreme Court put a stop to the counting of votes in Florida. Suspicions persist about the Republican Governor of the state, Jeb Bush, and his administration's maneouvres to have George W. Bush elected president.
Some vice presidential candidates have not done much good to the ticket they have shared with their presidential nominees. Tim Kaine, as Hillary Clinton's running mate in 2016, is one. In 1972, George McGovern's running mate Thomas Eagleton was revealed to have received treatment for clinical depression earlier. He was soon out of the team, to be replaced by Sargent Shriver, a brother-in-law of the late President John Kennedy.
Given such mixed history of American vice presidential nominees and vice presidents, it will be interesting to observe how Senator Kamala Harris operates between now and November this year. Who knows? She just could be the one drawing the crowds better than Joe Biden. The Democratic coffers have been pulling in a lot of funds for the campaign since Harris was anointed as Biden's running mate.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a senior journalist and writer.
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