Alben William Barkley was a skilled and experienced politician back in the day. Specifically the day between the two world wars.
Born to impoverished tenant tobacco farmers, and rising through the political ranks from a prosecuting attorney in McCracken County, Ky, to a leadership role in the US Senate, riding the wave all the way to the vice presidency.
Barkley was a gifted speaker who knew how to captivate an audience with a well-spun tale. And he would soon end up being the main character in an unbelievable story.
If you’ve seen the TV show Veep, we have Alben Barkley to thank for that word. Veep was Barkley’s nickname, given to him by his ten-year-old grandson.
Being the vice president has generally been a job that people throughout history have found boring and inconsequential. It didn’t help that the job was almost an afterthought, created near the very end of the Constitutional Convention by what was literally called the “Leftover Business Committee.”
It also didn’t help that for the first fifteen years of the Constitution, the vice presidency went to the candidate with the second highest number of votes, meaning the president and VP were political rivals.
Perhaps no one hated the role more than John Adams, who served under George Washington. Adams said, “my country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office ... ever in the invention of man.”
Woodrow Wilson’s VP, Thomas R. Marshall, joked: "Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected Vice President of the United States. And nothing was heard of either of them again."
Calvin Coolidge, who, under President Warren Harding, was known as “Silent Cal” and was so unnoticed that when a major league baseball team sent him free passes, they misspelled his name.
Then came John Nance Garner, who served under FDR during his first two terms, who famously said said that the vice presidency “isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.” (No, really.)
He really showed his disdain for the job when he (unsuccessfully) ran against FDR in his bid for a third term, and the party moved to add Henry Wallace to the Democratic ticket with FDR.
The conservative wing of the party was not a great fan of Wallace, and they refused to keep him on the ticket again for what would be FDR’s fourth term. To prevent a conservative revolt, FDR reluctantly accepted Harry Truman as a consensus VP candidate, and they won in 1944.
Unhappy with this forced marriage, so to speak, FDR kept his third vice president at arms length; Truman was not briefed on the progress of the war, including the plan to drop the atomic bomb, or on the state of FDRs health, which was declining.
“As useful as a cow’s fifth teat,” was how Truman described his role, and he was a farm boy from Missouri, so he knew his way around a cow.
That meant that when FDR died 82 days into his fourth term, Truman was ill-prepared and ill-equipped to do his one job — stepping into the presidency.
Did Truman learn from FDR’s mistake and include his own vice president in the inner circle? Not at first, because Truman did not have a vice president when he served out FDRs term; the constitution said nothing about replacing a vacant seat, and so it remained empty. In fact, it was not until 1967 that the constitution was changed to allow the President to appoint himself a replacement.
But when Truman ran for re-election he did get to choose a running mate. He picked Alben Barkley, who was popular with other Democrats. The duo won a close and grueling race, and, at age 71, Barkley became the oldest man ever sworn in as vice president.
Then, a year later, another first — he married Jane Hadley and became the only Veep to marry while in office. His new wife was 37.
When Truman decided not to run again in 1952, Barkley threw his hat into the ring for the nomination. But his candidacy didn’t last long. He was 75 by then, and withdrew after widespread criticism that he was just too old, and that the party needed someone fresher and younger. Sound familiar?
Rather than sit back and enjoy his new wife and his retirement years, other Democratic leaders begged Barkley to run for office again, saying that if he didn’t represent Kentucky in the Senate, the party would surely lose the seat. Barkley acknowledged that he was an older candidate, but said, “I don’t expect to die on the vine. I am just as strong now as I have ever been, and I hope and believe that my mind is just as alert.”
Barkley won reelection, and was welcomed back by his colleagues with an offer of a front row desk in the Senate chamber, one reserved for senior lawmakers. But Barkley insisted on sitting in the back, as a freshman would, despite his 42 years in politics.
On April 30, 1956, Barkley was nearing 80. He’d been back in the Senate for a year. And he was still the kind of speaker who knew how to whip up a crowd, despite his advanced age. He took the stage at Washington and Lee University, speaking confidently into the bank of microphones, some of which were broadcasting live on the radio.
The audience laughs at his jokes. They clap. They cheer. Someone tried to heckle him, and Barkley used his razor-sharp wit to shut him down.
Barkley said, “I have served my country and my people for half a century as a Democrat. I went to the House of Representatives in 1913 and served fourteen years. I was a junior Congressman, then I became a senior Congressman, then I went to the Senate and became a junior Senator, and then I became a senior Senator; and then a Majority Leader in the Senate, and then Vice President of the United States, and now I am back again as a junior Senator.”
The audience chuckled and applauded.
“And I am willing to be a junior.”
“I'm glad to sit in the back row,” Barkley said, his voice growing louder, like a Sunday preacher. “For I would rather be a servant in the house of the Lord than sit in the seats of the mighty!”
The huge audience roared. That’s right, they thought. You tell, ‘em, Alben.
If you listen to the audio recording now, you can hear the crowd going wild, and then their applause starts to die down, as you would expect. But then, instead of the voice of Alben Barkley finishing up his speech, what you hear is a thud that sounds like a bowling ball hitting the pins.
The crowd begins to murmur, and you hear someone in the distance say, “Get a doctor.” The audience is horrified, and then you hear the radio announcer telling the listeners, “Senator Barkley just collapsed.”
And that was it. Barkley was dead. Dead on the stage in front of a crowd of 1,700 people, including his wife. Dead while live on the radio.
It was as though Barkley said, “I would rather be a servant in the house of the Lord than sit in the seats of the mighty,” and the Lord said:
“Bet.”
And that’s the story of just one of many vice presidents of the United States that you’ve probably never heard of. You can listen to the audio of Barkley’s final speech here.
What do you think? Do you want to hear more vice presidential stories? Tell me in the comments!