John Nance Garner

John Nance Garner

John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner (* 22. November 1868 in Detroit , Texas ; † 7. November 1967 in Uvalde , Uvalde County , Texas) was an American politician of the Democratic Party . From 1933 to 1941 he was the 32nd Vice President of the United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt . Before that, he had been a member of the US House of Representatives since 1903 and was its spokesman since 1931 .

Life

Education and political advancement

Garner in his earlier years as a Congressman (picture date unknown)

John Nance Garner was born in Detroit , Texas in 1868 . In Clarksville Garner studied law and practiced since 1890 in Uvalde as a lawyer and editor of the Uvalde Leader . Soon Garner, who joined the Democratic Party , was elected district judge in Uvalde County . He held this position until 1896, when he successfully ran for the Texas House of Representatives . After two re-elections in 1898 and 1900, he was a member until early 1903. At that time, the Democrats had no political counterparty because, unlike today, they almost completely dominated the entire southern state , the so-called Solid South . For candidates, the internal party primaries were therefore of considerably more importance than the actual election. In contrast to the northern states , the party here was significantly more conservative . During Garner's time as a member of the Texas House of Representatives, deliberations took place on what should be the official plant of the state. Garner suggested (in vain) the cacti Opuntia . This earned him the permanent nickname "Cactus Jack".

In 1895 he married Mariette Elizabeth Rheiner . Mariette stood unsuccessfully as district judge against Garner in 1893, before women in Texas were given the right to vote. From the marriage the son Tully Charles Garner (1896–1968) emerged.

In November 1902, Garner ran for the new 15th  Congressional constituency in Texas. After his electoral success, he was able to move into the US House of Representatives from March 1903 . Since then, Garner has been re-elected every two years up to and including 1932. His wife was also his secretary while he was a member of parliament. In 1913, he supported the passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution to introduce a national income tax that was previously only levied by states and counties . In 1929 Garner rose to the position of leader of the Democrats and was thus a minority leader (chairman of the minority group). After the mid-term elections in 1930, Republicans, whose popularity waned due to the Great Depression , could only maintain a slim majority in the Congress Chamber. In October 1931 there was a change in the majority structure due to the loss of seats and by-elections in individual constituencies. The Democrats initially secured a thin majority of one seat, which increased slightly by autumn 1932. As chairman of his parliamentary group, Garner was therefore elected speaker of the house , i.e. chairman, at the end of 1931 .

Vice President of the United States

Garner (right) with Franklin D. Roosevelt (left) and Kansas Governor Harry Hines Woodring (center) during the 1932 election campaign

Vice President Garner (right) with Senator and later Vice President Alben W. Barkley in July 1937

In 1940, Garner (left) turned down a third application by Roosevelt for the presidency in 1940, but was unsuccessful in his internal party opposition. This shot shows the two of them meeting in 1942

Garner's official portrait as Vice President

In the run-up to the 1932 presidential election , Garner ran for the candidacy of the Democrats. Due to the economic crisis , the party expected a good chance of replacing incumbent Herbert Hoover . At the nomination party congress in July of that year, however, he was unable to extend his support beyond the conservative wing of the party from the south. The strongest candidate was Franklin D. Roosevelt , the then governor of New York . However, he was still missing about 100 delegate votes to be placed. Garner withdrew his application because he had no chance. An agreement was reached with Roosevelt: Garner would vote for the New York governor and propose his delegates to him; in return, he became a candidate for the vice-presidency himself . To the left-liberal and progressive Roosevelt from a northern state, the conservative Garner from the south appeared as a running mate, both geographically and ideologically, to be a sensible addition to enable a broad mass of people to identify with the democratic team. The presidential election on November 8, 1932, then won the two very clearly with 57.4% of the vote and 472 of 531 electors. While Roosevelt was taking the oath of president on March 4, 1933, Garner took up his new post as vice president. On the same day, he also resigned his parliamentary seat. Since he was also President of the Senate by virtue of his office , he was one of only two people who presided over both chambers of Congress on the same day (the other was Schuyler Colfax on March 4, 1869, who was also the Speaker of the House in the vice-presidency changed).

With the New Deal policy of President Garner could never get used properly. Like other vice presidents at the time, Garner was not part of the president's inner circle of power. Therefore, despite his position as the second highest official in the government, he was de facto without any significant political influence; although Roosevelt made it a rule to allow the Vice President to attend cabinet meetings regularly. Garner's saying that the post of Vice President is no more than "a warm bucket of spit" is legendary (recent research suggests, however, that the original saying was "a bucket of piss") .

For the 1936 presidential election , Garner was again elected at Roosevelt's side. The two of them won this election with 60.8% of the vote and 523 of a possible 531 votes in the Electoral College like a landslide. On January 20, 1937, both were reinstated. It was the first President and Vice President swearing in on January 20th (four years earlier, the 20th Amendment changed the date from March 4th to January 20th after the election). During Garner's second term in office in 1937 there was a break with President Roosevelt, with whom he had so far been on good terms despite some differences of opinion. Above all, Garner and his conservative party friends from the South and the Republicans firmly rejected the judicial reform sought by Roosevelt . The background to this was that the Supreme Court , which was mostly made up of conservative judges, appointed by the previous Republican presidents, had repealed a number of Roosevelt's New Deal laws as unconstitutional . The president, strengthened by his clear election victory in 1936 and the large democratic majority in Congress, then proposed an increase in the number of judges in order to influence the proportion of votes in the Supreme Court by appointing further judges with a left-wing liberal worldview. Due to strong resistance, this plan was unsuccessful. Garner actively worked in the background against the president and helped to let the proposal fail in Congress. From the 1938 congressional elections, the opposition Republicans emerged stronger; Roosevelt made no further announcements of reforms.

The final break with the president came in 1940. Due to the tense world political situation (outbreak of the Second World War in Europe ) Roosevelt decided to break with the previous tradition in the presidential election in 1940 and to run for a third term. Many Southern Democrats, including Garner, opposed it. Therefore, the Vice President decided to run an internal party candidate. However, his chances of winning against Roosevelt, who is still popular with the population, at the Democratic nomination party convention in July 1940 were rather slim. As expected, Garner lost very clearly in the end: only 61 delegates spoke out in favor of him as presidential candidate; 946 voted for incumbent Roosevelt. The conservative Democrat Garner failed mainly because, as in 1932, he was barely able to extend his support beyond the southern states; his candidacy was openly opposed by the trade unionists in the major cities of the north. Marked John L. Lewis , president of the trade union federation CIO , Garner publicly as "anti-worker, poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, evil old man."

President Roosevelt then decided to campaign with a new vice-presidential candidate. He chose the left-wing liberal Henry A. Wallace , who had previously held the post of Minister of Agriculture . After Roosevelt's renewed election victory, Wallace took over the rotating presidency on January 20, 1941.

Later years of life

With the end of his vice-presidency, Garner's political career ended and the now 71-year-old retired to Texas for his private life. Despite domestic political differences, he had a good personal relationship with Roosevelt's successor Harry S. Truman , president from 1945 to 1953. The two Democrats got along well during Garner's vice presidency when Truman was a senator. After the death of his wife in 1948, Garner lived mostly withdrawn in Texas. November 22, 1963, he received phone congratulations on his 95th birthday of President John F. Kennedy , only hours before it in Dallas an assassination attempt fell victim. Garner died on November 7, 1967, a few weeks before his 99th birthday. He thus reached the highest age of any American vice president. He found his final resting place in the city cemetery in Uvalde, Texas, where he had last lived.

literature

• Jules Witcover: The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power. Smithsonian Books, Washington, D. C. 2014, ISBN 978-1-58834-471-7 , pp. 298-310 (= 32. John Nance Garner of Texas ).
• Elliot A. Rosen: “Not Worth a Pitcher of Warm Piss”: John Nance Garner as Vice President. In Timothy Walch (Ed.): At the President's Side: The Vice Presidency in the Twentieth Century. University of Missouri, Columbia 1997, ISBN 0-8262-1133-X , pp. 45-53.
• Timmons, Bascom N. Garner of Texas. A personal history . New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ In the original: "labor-baiting, poker-playing, whiskey-drinking evil old man" zit. n. Charles Peters: Five Days in Philadelphia . Public Affairs Books, New York 2005 ISBN 978-1-58648-450-7 p. 15

Web links

Commons : John Nance Garner  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• John Nance Garner in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• John Nance Garner in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• John Nance Garner in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)