35. Hoaxing America’s Most Useless Vice President
Thomas Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, won a second term by joking about the position’s “utter uselessness and frivolity“. He liked telling a story about having two sons, one of whom went to sea and drowned, while the other became vice president. The punch line was that “neither son was ever heard from again” He often referred to himself as “the Wilson administration’s spare tire – to be used only in case of emergency“.
So on the one hand, Marshall was not the type to take himself or his position too seriously. On the other hand, Marshall had zero confidence in himself, and lived down to that self-assessment when the country needed him the most. When Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke in 1919, Marshall became incapacitated by fear of actually taking the reins of government. It was against that backdrop that somebody pulled a cruel prank, by convincing Marshall that the president had died.