John Nance Garner
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to the Presidency four times. He had three different Vice Presidents during his Presidency, the first being John Nance Garner. Garner is one of only two individuals who served as both the Speaker of the House of Representatives and Vice President of the United States, the other being Schuyler Colfax. Throughout the two terms he served as Vice President he stood in opposition to Roosevelt on several issues, that Roosevelt kept him on the ticket for the second term is an indication of the little power actually wielded by a sitting Vice President.
Garner was a Texan, first elected to Congress in 1902, remaining there until 1933, when he moved to the other side of the Capitol to preside over the Senate. Despite prohibition being in effect through much of his time in the House, he maintained a bar in his office which he called his “Board of Education” and members of the House from both sides of the aisle were welcomed as guests. Garner paid his wife as a member of his staff and she served as his personal secretary throughout his career in Congress. At the 1932 Democratic National Convention FDR was near the total number of votes needed for the nomination, and Garner, who had been considered for nomination, made a deal with the future President to get on the ticket.
During FDR’s second term Garner began to break ranks on a large number of issues. Likely Garner didn’t expect that FDR would attempt a third term as President and was positioning himself to be the Democratic nominee in 1940. He was sharply critical of the deficit spending which was being forced upon the government by many of the programs of the New Deal, which in his view was unsuccessful. When Roosevelt attempted to pack the Supreme Court by adding additional Judges, which he would then be able to appoint, Garner helped engineer the defeat of the bill in the Senate.
As the 1940 election neared it was evident that the Democratic nomination was Garner’s to lose, assuming the President did not run for a third term. Garner began campaigning for President that summer while Roosevelt remained quiet about his plans. When Roosevelt did announce his plans for a third term Garner continued to run, knowing that he was off FDR’s ticket and had nothing to lose. He based much of his campaigning on the unseemly idea of a President for life, as FDR appeared to consider himself in Garner’s view.
After losing the nomination to Roosevelt and serving the remainder of his term as Vice President Garner retired to Texas. He was 98 years old when he died in 1967, meaning that his life spanned from the first Johnson administration during Reconstruction to the second Johnson administration in the 1960s. He never sought another public office following his time as Vice President but he was consulted often by Democratic Presidents Truman, Kennedy, and fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson.
