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According to Newsweek, the hot Washington word now is
gravitas,
which does not appear in any of the
unabridged dictionaries around my house. The influential
say that gravitas
is the presence of intellectual
substance; it is the opposite of airhead.
The concern among insiders is that Vice President Dan
Quayle just doesn't have enough of this gravitas
stuff.
Maybe they're right, and Quayle is an intellectual lightweight with no more gravitas than you could find in the executive conference room of the Colorado Department of Education. So what?
John Adams, the first to hold Quayle's office, said of
it that My country has in its wisdom contrived for me
the most insignificant office that ever the invention of
man contrived or his imagination conceived.
John Nance Garner, vice-president during the first two
of FDR's terms, said the office was not worth a pitcher
of warm spit.
(Spit is most likely a reporter's
substitution for what we now call a urine
sample.
)
The office is meaningless, and the memorable accomplishments of American vice-presidents are as few as the lasting results of Operation Desert Storm.
Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson's vice-president, did
not say What this country needs is a good five-cent
cigar,
though it is often attributed to him.
Some vice-presidents -- Schuyler Colfax (eponym of Colfax Avenue), Lyndon Johnson, Spiro Agnew -- enlivened dull Washington afternoons by accepting envelopes of cash. But there is no evidence that this rewarding hobby was enjoyed by anything like a majority of the 44 men who have held the office, and there is certainly no reason to believe that Quayle practices it.
Have you ever heard of George Clinton, Hannibal Hamlin, Daniel D. Tompkins, William Wheeler, or Levi Morton? They all sat a heartbeat away, and they can be found only in the fine print of thick reference books.
In short, Quayle's alleged lack of gravitas is utterly irrelevant to his ability to serve as vice-president. For that matter, the vice-presidency has been vacant for about 38 years -- almost one-fifth of the period since the founding of the Republic in 1789 -- and the nation survived. Even if Quayle were as physically vacuous as he is reputed to be mentally vacuous, it wouldn't matter.
Vice-presidents are supposed to be first in line at the
next election, but in all of American history since the
parties began, this has happened only twice: Martin Van
Buren in 1836 and George Bush in 1988. Quayle '96
is
a major non-issue.
However, as the life-insurance salesmen put it, What
if, God forbid, something unthinkable happens?
Find any evidence that a first-rate intellect is required for an effective presidency. The two presidents who were certifiable intellectuals -- Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson -- both suffered troubled presidencies. But FDR had the early reputation of a scatterbrained playboy, and Abraham Lincoln was widely regarded as an unlettered baboon.
Where we live, people worry about keeping food on the
table and a roof over their heads. In Washington, they fret
about gravitas.
No wonder most Americans don't
vote.
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