Second Stringers

Do you recognize the names of Daniel Tompkins and John Breckenridge? How about Levi Morton or George Dallas?

Perhaps you've never heard of them, but once upon a time these men were only a heartbeat away from the highest office in the land, for each of them served as Vice President of the United States.

"VP" falls a bit short of "VIP," and many of America's Vice Presidents are relatively unknown. However, their biographies have inspired a website (VicePresidents.com) and a book called Second String: Trivia, Facts, and Lists About the Vice Presidency and Its Vice Presidents.

Do you realize President James Madison had two Vice Presidents die during his administration? Elbridge Gerry signed the Declaration of Independence, and George Clinton became an attorney at an early age, passing his bar exam by the age of 16. Both of these men went on to serve under Madison, and both died while in office.

William King was elected to the vice presidency in 1852 to serve under President Franklin Pierce. He took the oath of office in Cuba where he was attempting to recover from a debilitating illness, but after serving as Vice President for only a few weeks he died in April, 1853.

Some VPs were disgraced by scandals, while others were hailed as heroes. Thomas Marshall, who served under Woodrow Wilson, is best known for saying, "What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar." In 1925, while serving as Vice President under Calvin Coolidge, Charles Dawes won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to restore Europe's economy after World War I.

At the age of 71, Harry Truman's second-in-command, Alben Barkley, married a 38-year-old woman and became the only Vice President to marry while in office. Seven years later he gave a speech at Washington and Lee University and said, "I would rather be a servant in the house of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty," then immediately fell dead of a heart attack.

What kind of personality does it take to serve well as a Vice President? No doubt it requires an extra measure of humility and loyalty, for a VP receives less recognition, enjoys fewer privileges, earns less pay, and wields less power than his boss. (Assistant coaches, associate ministers, and corporate middle managers can relate to the feeling.) Plus, the VP lives with the tantalizing and burdensome possibility that on any given day he might become President himself. (Fourteen of America's 45 Vice Presidents have gone on to become President, nine of them because the President died or resigned from office.)

We all could learn a few lessons from the VPs. To make a difference in our nation, we don't have to be well known. We don't have to see our names in the news every day. We don't have to control everything.

When a citizen obeys the law, goes to work, loves his family, pays his bills, supports his church, and prays for his government leaders, he makes his nation better every day. And he demonstrates that in the eyes of God, there is no second string.