Who are the most forgettable presidential/vice presidential candidates?
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  Who are the most forgettable presidential/vice presidential candidates?
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Author Topic: Who are the most forgettable presidential/vice presidential candidates?  (Read 2229 times)
Crane
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« on: October 20, 2020, 06:43:42 AM »

I was reading through some old results and saw that Barry Goldwater's VP candidate was a man named William E. Miller, who I realized I had never heard of or thought about before then.  I think presidential candidates who have a lot of attention on themselves will naturally have a second half of the ticket most people won't care about. For that reason, I think Tim Kaine will also end up being a pretty forgotten figure as far as presidential tickets are concerned.
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Battista Minola 1616
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« Reply #1 on: October 20, 2020, 07:01:46 AM »

The only memorable thing ever about William E. Miller is probably that he was the first papist Purple heart major party VP candidate. Well, he was also RNC Chair but that isn't exactly a job that makes people famous per se. Otherwise he was just some random House member from New York.

"Here's a riddle, it's a killer / Who the hell is William Miller?"
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sparkey
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« Reply #2 on: October 20, 2020, 09:13:12 AM »

Helpful list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_major_party_candidates_for_Vice_President_of_the_United_States

Lots of forgettables in the late 1800s, and a few in the early 1900s.
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Lincoln Republican
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« Reply #3 on: October 20, 2020, 11:53:26 AM »

The only memorable thing ever about William E. Miller is probably that he was the first papist Purple heart major party VP candidate. Well, he was also RNC Chair but that isn't exactly a job that makes people famous per se. Otherwise he was just some random House member from New York.

"Here's a riddle, it's a killer / Who the hell is William Miller?"

1945-1946 Miller served as an Assistant prosecutor of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, Germany.
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Battista Minola 1616
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« Reply #4 on: October 20, 2020, 12:38:05 PM »

The only memorable thing ever about William E. Miller is probably that he was the first papist Purple heart major party VP candidate. Well, he was also RNC Chair but that isn't exactly a job that makes people famous per se. Otherwise he was just some random House member from New York.

"Here's a riddle, it's a killer / Who the hell is William Miller?"

1945-1946 Miller served as an Assistant prosecutor of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, Germany.


Interesting. I didn't know that. However it doesn't change that he was (and still is) a pretty obscure figure
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Del Tachi
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« Reply #5 on: October 20, 2020, 02:02:33 PM »

I always forget that Nelson Rockefeller was VP to Ford.  His tenure as New York governor is just a lot more memorable than his short stint as VP.
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TheElectoralBoobyPrize
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« Reply #6 on: October 20, 2020, 02:05:27 PM »

I read somewhere that Alton Parker is the only major party presidential nominee not to have a biography written on him.
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Statilius the Epicurean
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« Reply #7 on: October 20, 2020, 02:08:51 PM »

Alton B. Parker and his running mate Henry Gassaway Davis, who I had never even heard of before.
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« Reply #8 on: October 21, 2020, 03:51:11 AM »

With losing Veeps, I think the prize has to go to the most recent (as well as Miller). Will anyone remember Tim Kaine in twenty years, unless he does something with the rest of his career?

As for forgettable VPs, probably those that were sidelined by their own VPs, like Teddy Roosevelt's conservative VP Fairbanks.
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Continential
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« Reply #9 on: October 21, 2020, 07:37:03 AM »

John Edwards should be on there for the forgettable.
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Agonized-Statism
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« Reply #10 on: October 22, 2020, 08:50:03 AM »

Charles Curtis seems to have been lost to time.
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Samof94
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« Reply #11 on: October 23, 2020, 05:53:24 AM »
« Edited: October 29, 2020, 06:08:02 AM by Samof94 »

Admiral Stockdale, who was a deaf Vietnam War veteran who was on Perot’s ticket in 1992.
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Orwell
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« Reply #12 on: October 23, 2020, 07:17:58 AM »

I read somewhere that Alton Parker is the only major party presidential nominee not to have a biography written on him.

You may have read that on his wikipedia, but it is sourced from Irving Stones "They also ran" which details the lives of failed Presidential candidates up until 1948 with Dewey but there is a later edition that has Nixon and Stevenson.
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Orser67
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« Reply #13 on: October 27, 2020, 05:10:14 PM »

For presidential candidates, Alton Parker is certainly a good choice; as far as I can tell, he was basically nominated because he had some powerful allies and had the highest stature of any elected Democrat in New York. James M. Cox is another particularly obscure candidate, imo. 

I think one weirdly-obscure presidential candidate Charles Pinckney, who seems to have been largely forgotten despite the fact that he was the Federalist Party's presidential candidate twice, fought in the Revolutionary War, attended the Constitutional Convention, had a role in the XYZ Affair, and was the guy Alexander Hamilton was trying to elect in 1800 (when he served as Adams's quasi-running mate).
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Orser67
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« Reply #14 on: October 27, 2020, 11:08:18 PM »

For VP candidates, hard to argue with Miller in the post-WW2 category. Some others I view as particularly obscure are Arthur Sewall, who was basically just a rich guy the Dems nominated so he'd help finance the ticket, and Jared Ingersoll, who was the attorney general of Pennsylvania (at the time an appointed position) and was nominated basically in the hope of swinging his home state.

Honorable mention to William Wheeler, the 19th VPOTUS; when his running mate, Rutherford B. Hayes, learned of Wheeler's nomination, Hayes supposedly wrote to his wife: "I am ashamed to say: Who is Wheeler?"
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #15 on: October 28, 2020, 05:34:19 AM »

I forgot.
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TheTide
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« Reply #16 on: October 28, 2020, 06:09:42 AM »

Presumably we are talking about major party candidates only, and maybe the impactful third-party candidates like La Follette, Perot, Weaver etc. For this, I'm imagining myself as an alien nerd who has just arrived on Earth and spends the next six months researching this topic, and is then thoroughly grilled on it. Who would they be most likely to forget?

Well, all of the females can be ruled out as there has been so few of them and thus are quite novel. Similarly those who took part in the most interesting elections can be too, thus one can exclude the running mates of Tilden and Hayes eveb though I can't name them without Googling. Also, those who went onto bigger things (Earl Warren might be a half-decent shout if not for becoming one of the more consequential CJs) can't count either.

Kefauver, Kemp and Miller seem like the best bets from the post-WWII era. Shriver would be helped by the researcher in question being fascinated/baffled by the whole fiasco involving Eagleton in that election, and Bentsen had the legendary quip to Dan Quayle.

The overall answer, though, would probably be someone (well, one of the VP candidates) from the 1880-1892 period. Some of those elections were kind of interesting but it was perhaps the dullest period, and it became sandwiched in between the Civil War/Reconstruction period and the dawn of the American century (which the WJB/McKinley battle was the starting gun for).

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StateBoiler
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« Reply #17 on: October 28, 2020, 02:11:43 PM »
« Edited: October 28, 2020, 02:24:50 PM by StateBoiler »

I was reading through some old results and saw that Barry Goldwater's VP candidate was a man named William E. Miller, who I realized I had never heard of or thought about before then.  I think presidential candidates who have a lot of attention on themselves will naturally have a second half of the ticket most people won't care about. For that reason, I think Tim Kaine will also end up being a pretty forgotten figure as far as presidential tickets are concerned.

For recent timeframe looking backward, you can probably add on Dan Quayle because he completely left politics after his presidential bid flustered. The only thing anyone will remember about John Edwards is the scandal with his cancer-stricken wife and fathering a baby, and likewise completely left politics. (Quayle lives in Arizona and is on a bunch of boards. Edwards has gone back to ambulance-chasing.)
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StateBoiler
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« Reply #18 on: October 28, 2020, 02:22:12 PM »
« Edited: October 28, 2020, 02:34:59 PM by StateBoiler »

Admiral Stockdale, who was a deaf Korean War veteran who was on Perot’s ticket in 1992.

Vietnam, not Korea.

Stockdale will be remember for his debate performance and also (at least should be) remembered for Dennis Miller's excellent defense of him in the middle of his comedy act.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-RBYRpydXk&list=PLGzxQLLsdUu7qZuSYXcXZ6UHhU9TJiq_1&index=8

Quote
Now I know (Stockdale's name has) become a buzzword in this culture for doddering old man, but let's look at the record, folks. The guy was the first guy in and the last guy out of Vietnam, a war that many Americans, including our present President, did not want to dirty their hands with. The reason he had to turn his hearing aid on at that debate is because those F*#%ing animals knocked his eardrums out when he wouldn't spill his guts. He teaches philosophy at Stanford University, he's a brilliant, sensitive, courageous man. And yet he committed the one unpardonable sin in our culture: he was bad on television.

Watch the video because he also gets in digs at Quayle and Gore after that.

If going for a Perot veep for being forgettable, it should be Pat Choate, a Reform Party Perot loyalist in 1996.
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TDAS04
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« Reply #19 on: October 28, 2020, 02:35:50 PM »

Alton B. Parker and his running mate Henry Gassaway Davis, who I had never even heard of before.

There is one thing noteworthy about Henry Davis.  He would have been 81 on Inauguration Day, 1905.
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Statilius the Epicurean
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« Reply #20 on: October 28, 2020, 07:13:54 PM »

Alton B. Parker and his running mate Henry Gassaway Davis, who I had never even heard of before.

There is one thing noteworthy about Henry Davis.  He would have been 81 on Inauguration Day, 1905.

An 80-year old coal magnate from West Virginia who had last held elected office 20 years ago, nominated solely because the campaign had no money. And the running mate of a nationally unknown state judge! Definitely the weirdest major party ticket in Presidential history.
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Samof94
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« Reply #21 on: October 29, 2020, 06:08:56 AM »

Admiral Stockdale, who was a deaf Korean War veteran who was on Perot’s ticket in 1992.

Vietnam, not Korea.

Stockdale will be remember for his debate performance and also (at least should be) remembered for Dennis Miller's excellent defense of him in the middle of his comedy act.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-RBYRpydXk&list=PLGzxQLLsdUu7qZuSYXcXZ6UHhU9TJiq_1&index=8

Quote
Now I know (Stockdale's name has) become a buzzword in this culture for doddering old man, but let's look at the record, folks. The guy was the first guy in and the last guy out of Vietnam, a war that many Americans, including our present President, did not want to dirty their hands with. The reason he had to turn his hearing aid on at that debate is because those F*#%ing animals knocked his eardrums out when he wouldn't spill his guts. He teaches philosophy at Stanford University, he's a brilliant, sensitive, courageous man. And yet he committed the one unpardonable sin in our culture: he was bad on television.

Watch the video because he also gets in digs at Quayle and Gore after that.

If going for a Perot veep for being forgettable, it should be Pat Choate, a Reform Party Perot loyalist in 1996.
SNL parodied them too.
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Orser67
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« Reply #22 on: October 31, 2020, 10:22:55 AM »

Ten most forgettable tickets:

1804 & 1808 (F): Charles Pinckney and Rufus King
1816 (F): Rufus King and John E. Howard (not even really a ticket)
1848 (D): Lewis Cass and William O. Butler
1868 (D): Horatio Seymour and Francis Blair
1872 (LR/D): Horace Greeley and Benjamin Brown
1904 (D): Alton Parker and Henry Davis
1924 (D): John W. Davis and Charles W. Bryan
1936 (R): Alf Landon and Frank Knox
1952 (D): Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman
1988 (D): Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen

I could probably throw in a few more D tickets between the Civil War and the Great Depression, but I was trying to spread around the selections a bit.
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buritobr
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« Reply #23 on: October 31, 2020, 06:51:07 PM »

Jack Kemp 1996?
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StateBoiler
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« Reply #24 on: November 02, 2020, 07:57:35 AM »


Ran for president in '88 and was a former American football player. But I think he'd probably qualify for future generations.
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