The universal consensus seems to be that Palin is a bad running mate. But it's hardly the first time that's happened. There have been a whole host of times that running mates have backfired, gone bad, and just plain sucked. And both parties are occasionally guilty. So with that in mind, I bring you, in no particular order, the 11 worst presidential running mates. Edited to include Thomas Eagleton by popular demand. I feel almost dumb to have forgotten him
11. Thomas Eagleton (Democrat - 1972)
George McGovern was having both a good and bad year. He had outmaneuvered Humphrey and Muskie for the Democratic nomination, but Nixon was widely popular and McGovern's positions were widely perceived as being "far-left." So his VP pick had to try to appeal to the groups that felt left out by the McGovern candidacy. McGovern offered the VP spot to Muskie, Birch Bayh, Ruben Askew, and Walter Mondale, but all declined. Sen. Eagleton of Missouri, however, accepted. Almost too quickly, in fact. McGovern's wife thought the speed of Eagleton's acceptance and enthusiasm seemed suspicious. In fact, there was good reason to worry; Eagleton had been treated for depression with electro-shock therapy, a fact that he had kept hidden from McGovern during the vetting process. McGovern was forced to dump Eagleton from the ticket when his lie was exposed, and an already unlikely campaign became a little more so.
10. John Sparkman (Democrat - 1952)
After the Dixiecrat revolt by southern Democrats in 1948, the national party was determined to get the sough back aboard the train. Eisenhower had already been picked by the GOP, and the Democrats were worried about his crossover appeal. So when Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson let the convention pick his running mate, they chose Sparkman, a conservative Alabama Senator mostly notable for the fact that he had remained loyal to the Truman ticket in 1948. But Sparkman failed to bring anything really useful to the ticket. While he let the Democrats hold on to the Deep South, his precense seemed to count for almost nothing in the outer south, and blacks that had backed Truman were wary of Sparkman. Also, Stevenson and Sparkman barely knew each other, and their personal styles clashed. A true case of "Running mate by committee," Sparkman was designed to please everyone and pleased nobody much.
9.John Logan (Republican - 1884)
When James Blaine was nominated for president by the GOP in 1884, it was from the start a controversial choice. The main problem was that he was corrupt; he had crooked dealings with railroad companies that he had apparently given sweet deals to when he was Speaker of the House. But he had also roused the ire of Catholics with the famous Blaine Amendment, which prohibited the use of public funds to parochial schools. The rule applied across the board, but Catholics of the time believed that this was aimed primarily at them, since most parochial schools of the day were Catholic. So one would think that he would have gone out of his way to pick a soothing, well-liked running mate. But it would not be. Instead he picked a hyper-partisan, John Logan of Illinois, mainly due to pressure of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans' lobby that supported the former General Logan. But Logan ALSO had suspicious railroad dealings, and this seemed to confirm in the minds of independents the idea that Blaine was crooked. Logan was also known for long, abrasive, ranting speeches against the opposition, which frequently got him into faux pas. Logan also had a creepy obsession with preventing the reversal of a court-martial against Gen. FitzJohn Porter for retreating at 2nd Manassas. Blaine could have done better.
8. Henry Davis (Democrat - 1904)
The Democrats were depressed in 1904. Teddy Roosevelt's election seemed a sure thing. William Jennings Bryan was so sure of it he and most of the other party heavyweights sat out the 1904 race. This left the Chief Justice on the New York Court of Appeals, Alton Parker, to step into the Presidential slot (yeah, there were that many heavyweights sitting it out). Because losing seemed preordained, the man they picked for VP was one of the most forgettable and obscure in history: Henry Davis of West Virginia, who was 80 years old at the time of his nomination, and was picked mainly because he was filthy rich, and was expected to contribute his largesse to the party coffers (which apparently he did, financing almost 1/3 of party expenses that year). And before anyone asks, Davis actually lived to be 92, so he would have survived 2 terms, amazingly.
7. Dan Quayle (Republican - 1988)
You know you made a bad mistake when, even before the election is over, your VP nominee has become a punch line. And when there is serious talk of dumping your VP choice from the ticket, both before he is elcted and when he is up for re-election, you know you've got a serious problem. Not that Dan Quayle probably minded much. He was handed the Vice-Presidency the same way he got everything in life: by hitching his wagon to the star of a conservative old white man, and hoping nobody noticed his collosal ignorance. So when Dan, whose father got him into law school after he almost failed his major's final exam, who got handed a Senate seat by attaching himself at the hip to Reagan's 1980 race, was given the VP slot by Bush the Elder in 1988, it probably seemed only natural. But the jokes were immediate and unrelenting. He couldn't spell. He didn't know basic geographic or historical facts that grade schoolers were supposed to know. Even phlegmatic Mike Dukakis couldn't resist an easy jab at the empty-headed Hoosier. Dan Quayle basically proved that the GOP doesn't give a damn about who is VP anymore.
6. George Pendleton (Democrat - 1864)
Alright, here's a scenario for you. Your nation is in a sectional civil war. You're in the minority, and your party is diveded 50/50 on whether prosecuting the war is a good thing, since the rebelling faction has a lot ideologically in common with you. But your dream presidential candidate, the only one with a prayer of winning, is pro-war. He wins the nomination. At the convention, do you: A) Let him pick the running mate, or B) Pick a peace-at-any-cost type at a time when "peace" is synonymous with "treason" and force him to run with your pro-war leading man. Well, if you picked B, you did was the Democrats to the 1864 Convention did when they saddled George McClellan with George Pendleton. Not only were McClellan and Pendleton incompatible one the great, burning issue of the day, but Pendleton had a bad habit of talking loudly and proudly about his desire to end the war, even if it meant recognizing Confederate independence. This made the Democratic campaign look schizophrenic, and while Sherman and Grant's victories were really the final nail in McClellan's campaign coffin, the Pendleton pick was surely worth at least another few nails.
5. William Miller (Republican - 1964)
Barry Goldwater, in his usual breathtakingly insnane honesty, admitted that the only reason he chose Miller, an obscure congressman fron New York's Southern Tier, is that he "drives Johnson nuts." Apparently trying to get LBJ's goat was more important than actually picking a future potential vice-president. It also didn't help that Miller had earlier lied that he had been an assistant prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, a lie that was exposed shortly before his nomination. Of course, it may have been all a joke anyway, since Miller admitted to the reporters following him on the campaign trail that he had "no chance at all" of being Vice-President (although he asked them not to tell anyone he'd said so). The only time you hear him mentioned today is on Trivial Pursuit, and occasionally from the observation that liberal commentator Stephanie Miller is his daughter.
4. Curtis LeMay (American Independent - 1968)
George Wallace thought he'd hit paydirt when he persuaded former Air Force General Curtis LeMay to be his running mate. He believed that he would now win veterans' votes, as LeMay was a respected authority on military matters, having been Chief of Staff of the Air Force for many years before. But LeMay had one fatal flaw: he was terrible on the stump. He once blithely declared that Americans were too squeamish about using nuclear weapons, and declared Nixon's plan for peace "too soft." Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic nominee, called Wallace and LeMay "The Bombsy Twins," and called LeMay "Bombs Away LeMay." It was a huge distraction and embarassment for the Wallace campaign, who lost support in every poll from LeMay's selection to election day.
3. Arthur Sewall (Democrat - 1896)
William Jennings Bryan was a presidential nominee after my own heart in many ways. He was pro-worker at a time when that was a politically dangerous position, he was a man of the people at a time when few nominees were (Bryan actively campaigned in 1896, which was considered "unseemly" by many), and he was by all accounts a spellbinding orator. But his populist positions on economic issues upset a lot of the conservative old guard of the party, who demanded a running mate from their own quarters. So while Bryan preferred a southerner, he instead got a Maine shipbuilder who disagree with him on nearly every issue. Bryan almost never talked to his running mate during the campaign, and many of the Bryan electors cast their votes for populist Thomas Watson of GEorgia for Vice-President, feeling betrayed by the Sewall choice. Sewall was also unable to keep large numbers of Bourbon Democrats from defecting, costing Bryan votes in the critical midwest.
2. Spiro Agnew (Republican - 1968)
As bizzare as it sounds now, Agnew was actually considered a moderate before his candidacy for Vice-President. Nixon did not want to nominate Nelson Rockefeller or George Romney, the favorites of the delegates, and he was worried that Strom Thurmond might turn off northern centrists. But he also wanted someone who would not outshine him, and that definitely thinned the list. Outside of Agnew's native Maryland, almost nobody knew who he was. He had become Governor of Maryland only two years before, when a divided Democratic primary produced a segregationist ticket and caused many liberals to vote Agnew. But although he ran on a message of tolerance in 1966, by 1968 he was spouting ethnic slurs with apalling regularity, once declaring that he didn't care to see Baltimore because "once you've seen one slum, you've seen them all." And it didn't end there. Agnew was later forced to resign after revelations that he had evaded over $200,000 in taxes while Governor of Maryland. After his resignation, and thanks mostly to Frank Zappa, Agnew became a punchline.
1. Francis P. Blair (Democrat - 1868)
Perhaps it's best not to draft a presidential candidate. Doing so seems to leave them uninterested in picking a running mate. When New York Governor Horatio Seymour was drafted to be the Democrats' nomine in 1868 against Ulysses S. Grant, he left the decision for the running mate up to the convention, which picked Francis P. Blair of Missouri. Blair, a former Republican who had spent his entire fortune to prevent Missouri from seceding, had defected to the Democrats over Reconstruction, and frequently gave long, ranting speeches denouncing Radical Reconstruction at a time when the policy was popular. Worse still, he had a propensity for drunkenness, and his rhetoric often grew more heated as his BAC rose. Seymour found himself frequently having to visit places Blair had campaigned and undo the damage. Also, the drinking issue meant that Grant's drinking was effectively neutralized for the Democrats as a campaign issue.