34. Fear of Taking Charge
Thomas Marshall was a well-liked man, but not a highly respected one. He did not mind, and seemed to revel in his irrelevance, telling those passing his White House office: “If you look on me as a wild animal, be kind enough to throw peanuts at me“. As a contemporary described him: “Marshall made friends, not enemies. But they looked on him as jester“. Wilson put it more succinctly, dismissing Marshall as “a very small caliber man“.
On September 25th, 1919, Marshall’s low stature became a problem. Wilson, exhausted from his travels to Europe to negotiate the Versailles Peace Treaty, followed by weeks of crisscrossing the country to drum up support for America’s joining the League of Nations, collapsed. Within a week, he was felled by a stroke. Wilson’s wife Edith stepped in and took the reins, secretly running the government until the end of his term. While admirable on her part, that should have been the vice president’s job – but he was paralyzed by fear of stepping up to the plate.
