Ran Out of Road
Being loyal to your boss doesn’t mean the road to prosperity lasts forever
This past Wednesday, Anonymous and I, along with two of our friends and Okay History subscribers, took in the new Christopher Nolan blockbuster movie – The Odyssey.
Based on Homer’s epic poem that I have never read, Nolan recreated the mythical world of King Odysseus, the Greek ruler of the island kingdom of Ithaca, and his trek back home after conquering the City of Troy. The story details the ten-year journey back to his wife, Penelope, during which he encounters numerous challenges that try to prevent him from succeeding.
A major part of the story is how loyal Odysseus’s men are to him throughout the mission of getting home. Based on what people who have actually read The Odyssey tell me, Odysseus is a prideful and self-absorbed man who makes many mistakes trying to navigate getting home – ones that cost the lives of many of the men whom he leads.
It got me thinking about how many of the vice presidents of the United States tried to display their unwavering loyalty to the president, probably for personal gain, but in the end didn’t succeed and had their political careers cut short. Unlike the Wrong Path Guys, we will look at two men who ran out of road in the long four-year journey of serving as a loyal number two.
Let’s dive in.
40: Schuyler Colfax
17th Vice President
Term – March 4, 1869 – March 4, 1873
Presidential Administration: Ulysses S. Grant’s first term (Okay History 2021 Presidential Ranking: 17)
The Good:
Colfax rose through Indiana state politics as a strong abolitionist, which helped him get elected to Congress and, from there, become the youngest Speaker of the House at 37. He was considered one of those “Radical Republicans,” which, based on his positions, would still make him a Radical Republican today.
Colfax eventually pushed through the highly ranked Thirteenth Constitutional Amendment (OHK #2 in 2023), ending slavery permanently. By the time the 1868 election rolled around, Colfax was as popular as the top of the ticket – Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant.
The Bad:
Why do people in power fall into corruption? I guess there are multiple reasons, and perhaps the biggest motivation is to simply make more money.
Remember back last year when we tried to rank political scandals? Well, Colfax got caught up in the scandal where a railroad company created a fake subsidiary to bribe members of Congress to help them secure the first transatlantic railroad.
Congressman Oakes Ames was the primary villain in this story, but what I found funny was that Colfax was caught depositing $1,200 into his bank account on the same day that Ames testified that he paid Colfax $1,200. The guy didn’t even bother to mix up the payments to at least claim some form of plausible deniability.
When the scandal story broke in 1872, Colfax was finished and replaced on the ticket by Henry Wilson, who managed to squirm his way out of the same mess.
Did he become president?
Nope. It’s great to know that even though you accomplish some great things, when you screw up, you still have to suffer the consequences, and the Credit Mobilier scandal was too much to overcome. He remained a popular lecturer, drumming up business by telling personal stories of Abraham Lincoln to audiences who craved information about the emerging American icon.
This idea that Schuyler became a popular lecturer reminded me of a scene in the movie American President:
Why did I rank him here?
He really fits the theme of running out of the road – Colfax died when trying to catch a train. He traveled a long distance in the middle of a cold Minnesota winter, and when he finally reached the station, five minutes later he collapsed and died of a heart attack and exhaustion.
39: Mike Pence
48th Vice President
Term – January 20, 2017 – January 20, 2021
Presidential Administration: Donald Trump’s first term (Okay History 2021 Presidential Ranking: 44)
The Good:
Your boss is the worst president in history – so you can’t be that bad, unless you are the current vice president and somehow manage to pull it off.
I think the good thing here is that when Pence was governor of Indiana, he was pressured to retract a bill that would legally allow for discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identification. Corporate heavyweight leaders like Tim Cook of Apple got up and protested (Something he stopped doing almost immediately after this) and got Pence to change course. So Mike understands when bending under pressure is a good thing.
The better thing was when he didn’t succumb to that pressure when President Trump sent his supporters on January 6, 2021, to overturn the election he continues to think was stolen from him.
Pence stuck to his guns because he likes guns and certified the election – fulfilling his duty. It’s funny that he called up former VP Quayle for advice, and Dan told him to do his job.
The Bad:
Pence has this weird stance that he will never be alone in a room or elevator, or a taxi, or in a line at Wendy’s with a woman who isn’t his wife.
I don’t really understand the concept here. Are women untrustworthy demons who will conjure up stories of your sexual predatory behavior that will take you down, OR are you an actual sexual predator and have the self-awareness that if let alone with a woman, you will be unable to control yourself?
It’s just funny to me that this man with his “not being alone with a woman” stance paired up with the guy who walked into women’s dressing rooms during the beauty pageants that he owned, and everyone thought “yeah, this makes total sense – a good balance here”.
Did he become president?
No, but he still has time if he can pull off a political miracle. Pence did run for president in the horrific 2024 election cycle, but couldn’t get his campaign on the road and dropped out a year earlier. His demise was mostly due to his lack of loyalty to Donald Trump, and his campaign message was a clunker as well – the idea that Trump was awesome and yet also awful. Even if he ended up picking a lane, Pence didn’t even have enough money for gas. This concludes the car/race analogy.
Why did I rank him here?
You have to hand it to Pence for sticking to his constitutional duties in the face of the president and his loony supporters threatening to kill you unless you broke the law and tried to hand the election to him. But this is as far as I will go.
Here’s my review of The Odyssey: It was Okay. That might seem like a cop out here being on brand and all, but it really was just okay. It’s long. I get the idea that it is a lengthy journey, but I don’t need to spend what felt like ten years watching Good Will Hunting make it back to his Spider-Man kid and Catwoman wife.
And that’s primarily my issue with this film. I couldn’t help but see other characters these actors have played and they were everywhere in this movie. We had the new Batman, the Punisher, and then MJ/Chani, just to name a few. Not a whole lotta range going on here. I told some colleagues that when you watch the movie Lincoln, you actually feel like you are watching Abraham Lincoln; that’s how good Daniel Day-Lewis is as an actor. Not so much in The Odyssey.
I like Matt Damon. Not a huge fan of Anne Hathaway, but there are a few roles she played that I enjoyed – like Catwoman. But a lot of these actors are in the newest Spider-Man movie as well, and I’m just like – sorry, I can’t get into Greek methodology as much as I would like to when current Spider-Man tells new Batman that “My dad is coming home.”
One minor story of loyalty that was left off – at least I think it was left off – that Nolan didn’t include was that of Elpenor – who got drunk while on one of Odysseus’s side tracks, climbed a roof, then fell off and died. Odysseus did go back to get him and properly bury him, but I’m sure that would have added another 45 minutes to the movie. But I would have loved to see that.
Finally, I am a little biased against long stories like this. When I finally finished Cold Mountain, a book that is primarily taken from the plot of The Odyssey, and wrote the review last year, I mentioned how long the prose was, and how the author Charles Frazier: (paid subscribers)
spends pages and pages discussing what these people eat and how they prepare it.
Pick any random page, and I bet there is talk about food. I looked up page 279, and this is from the second paragraph:
They sat for a while without talking, just sipping the laudanum. It was sweet and had thickened up so that it was not much runnier than sorghum, nor much clearer. It tasted some like metheglin, though without the taste of honey, and it clung to the cup with such determination that Inman found himself licking it out.
Holy Mary, Mother of God. What is going on here, Chuck? What the heck is laudanum and sorghum? I’d be interested in looking it up like I did with other books, but those were hundreds of pages shorter.
I ended up giving that novel a 1.5 out of 3 stars. The Odyssey isn’t quite that bad, more like 2 out of 3 stars. Go see it, if you can, on an IMAX screen as we did. But I’m not going to rush to see it again.
Hope that helps!
Have a great rest of your weekend, and I’ll see you on Monday.
Okay,
Chris
