Spiro Agnew

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spiro Agnew (1972)
Agnew's signature
Agnew (center right) at his swearing-in in January 1969, behind him the outgoing Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey . Left Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson

Spiro Theodore Agnew (born November 9, 1918 in Baltimore , Maryland , † September 17, 1996 in Berlin , Maryland) was an American politician . He served as the 39th Vice President of the United States from 1969 to 1973 under President Richard Nixon .  

Life

Spiro Agnew was born the son of Theodore Spiros Agnew, a Greek immigrant who abbreviated his original name Anagnostopoulos (Αναγνωστόπουλος), and his wife Margaret Marian, née Akers and widowed Pollard. After schooling Agnew studied at the Johns Hopkins University , first chemistry , and later law . On May 27, 1942 he married Elinor Judefind , called Judy, with whom he had four children. During the Second World War he served in the 10th Armored Division in 1944/45 . He counted himself among the Democrats until 1946 , after which he was considered a Republican . In 1947 he was able to complete his studies with a bachelor's degree and then became assistant to the personnel manager of a large US American food company. In the Korean War Agnew has won several awards.

Agnew then turned as a lawyer of the local politics to. In November 1966, he became governor of Maryland . He took up this position in January 1967. He was initially seen as an advocate of equality for blacks, but after the onset of the unrest of the 1960s he cracked down on the civil rights movement , which earned him fierce criticism and recommended him for an office under the later President Nixon. In the summer of 1968 he was on the Republican National Convention as a running mate chosen by Richard Nixon as vice presidential candidate. The Republican duo then narrowly won the presidential election on November 5, 1968 .

Since January 20, 1969, Agnew was Vice President ( Nixon cabinet ). In August 1972, he was nominated again as a Republican vice-presidential candidate for the November 1972 election. Nixon and Agnew were able to win the subsequent election very clearly. In January 1973 he began his second term. During his time as Vice President, Agnew did not belong to the inner circle around the President. Therefore, he was not closely involved in important government decisions. The most formative events of this time were the Vietnam War and race riots in major American cities .

On October 10, 1973, Agnew resigned from his post. This made him the second vice president in US history to resign (the first was John C. Calhoun , who stepped down in 1832 due to a state crisis). Agnew vigorously protested his innocence before resigning; An investigation had been launched against him - he had accepted bribes before government contracts in 1967, during his tenure as governor of Maryland . He also later pleaded for “ nolo contendere ” when an individual lawsuit accused him of tax evasion . It was not until 1982 that he was sentenced to return the money.

After his resignation, the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution, which came into force in 1967, came into effect for the first time when Richard Nixon appointed Congressman Gerald Ford to succeed him as Vice President. Ford would then move up to president in August 1974 after Nixon had to resign himself in the course of the Watergate affair .

Agnew became famous for his speeches , in which he attacked the opposition and the media with almost poetic expressions. The best known was the alliteration "nattering nabobs of negativism" ("chatting nabobs of negativity"). The author of this and other style blooms was Agnew's ghostwriter William Safire , from whose pen the “an effete corps of impudent snobs” (“effete corps of impudent snobs”) came. Both aimed primarily at the press, which Nixon and Agnew did not like .

Agnew became a lightning rod for public opinion as he aggressively publicly tried to defend US war policy in Vietnam .

After his resignation, Agnew was no longer politically active.

It was not until 2019 that it was announced in a special report on the Rachel Maddow Show that Agnew requested two million US dollars from the Saudi crown prince Fahd ibn Abd al-Aziz in 1980 . Agnew, followers of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories wanted to use the sum to take action against an imagined it poses, namely "against Zionist enemies that my once great nation destroy" ( "against the zionist enemies who are destroying my once great nation"), as Agnew wrote in his petition. In his opinion, Jews control the American media and run an “ organized attack” to prevent him from becoming president after Nixon's impeachment , as he “will never agree to the continuation of the unjust and disastrous favoritism of Israel would " (" would never agree to the continuance of the unfair and disastrous favoring of Israel "). A letter of thanks from Agnew reveals that the Saudi Crown Prince has complied with the request.

He had one of his last public appearances in April 1994 at Richard Nixon's funeral. Agnew developed leukemia and died on September 17, 1996 at the age of 77.

literature

  • Charles J. Holden, Zach Messitte, Jerald E. Podair: Republican Populist: Spiro Agnew and the Origins of Donald Trump's America. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville 2019, ISBN 978-0-8139-4326-8 .
  • Justin P. Coffey: Spiro Agnew and the Rise of the Republican Right. Praeger, Westport 2015, ISBN 978-1-4408-4141-5 .
  • Jules Witcover: The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power. Smithsonian Books, Washington, D. C. 2014, ISBN 978-1-5883-4471-7 , pp. 391-405 (= 39. Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland ).
  • John J. Patrick, Richard M. Pious, Donald A. Ritchie: The Oxford Guide to the United States Government. Oxford University Press, New York 2001, ISBN 978-0-19-514273-0 , p. 16.

Web links

Commons : Spiro Agnew  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Agnew's mother born in Bristol , Daily News, October 12, 1973
  2. ^ Spiro T. Agnew. Curriculum Vitae in the Archives of Maryland (accessed November 24, 2014).
  3. ^ Frank F. White, Jr., The Governors of Maryland 1777-1970 (Annapolis: The Hall of Records Commission, 1970), pp. 301-309. In: The Archives of Maryland (accessed November 24, 2014).
  4. ^ A b Maddow reveals Spiro Agnew's secret deal with Saudis to wage "scorched earth political war on Jews". February 22, 2019, accessed on February 22, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b c d MSNBC: Fmr VP Spiro Agnew Sought Saudi Millions To Fight 'Zionists': Document | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC. February 21, 2019, accessed February 22, 2019 .
  6. ↑ JTA: Former VP Spiro Agnew in 1980 Asked Saudi Leader for Money to Fight US 'Zionists' . In: Haaretz . February 22, 2019 ( Haaretz.com [accessed February 22, 2019]).
  7. ↑ JTA: Nixon's vice president asked Saudis for money to fight US 'Zionists' - MSNBC. Retrieved February 22, 2019 (American English).
personal data
SURNAME Agnew, Spiro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Agnew, Spiro Theodore (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician, US Vice President, Governor of Maryland
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Baltimore , Maryland
DATE OF DEATH 17th September 1996
Place of death Berlin , Maryland