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Madam President: The GOP’s Real Existential Nightmare
Over the past few decades, my favorite trivia question to stump people under forty is this one: who is the only person to have ascended to the presidency without ever have been elected to national office? I suspect a fair number of my readers can sort that one out either because they are over fifty, or because my hardcore followers are — by and large — very literate on political history. But over the years I have only ever met one person born after 1980 who answered that question immediately, without hesitation.
When Richard Nixon was elected in 1968, then re-elected in 1972, his vice presidential running mate was Spiro T, Agnew, the Governor of Maryland. Agnew had made the unlikely leap from Baltimore County Executive to Governor in 1966 and, after only two years was enlisted to run with Nixon. Nixon didn’t know Agnew at all, he’d only been reassured that the prospective Vice President was a committed establishment Republican. Agnew was a virtual unknown on the national political stage but was an entrenched — and wildly corrupt — Republican operative. And without even a hint of self-consciousness, Agnew dragged his extortion racket right into the office of the Vice President. Literally. Rachel Maddow’s podcast, Bagman, illuminates brilliantly just how much more brazenly and systemically corrupt Agnew was than Nixon ever thought of being. In 1973 Spiro…
