Vice President Coach
We look at rematches and what a potential vice president would look like
I had this grand plan to rank the next two elections high on the list because the circumstances surrounding them were similar to our upcoming election.
These elections featured a former president running again against the opponent that defeated him four years earlier. One of the presidents sought nonconsecutive terms.
You can’t set this up any better.
Then President Joe Biden decided he wasn’t going to run, and now I have two unranked elections, and I’m thrown into a spiral I was unprepared for.
Instead of ranting about the change in the election like one candidate is doing, I will move forward to provide you with the insight that you didn’t ask for but deserve.
This new plan was helped by Vice President Kamala Harris, who named her new running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. You know Walz as the guy who taught you geometry, pushed you to play football better, and is someone who says hi to you as you pass each other on the street.
So, I will add a little VP flavor to the details again this week because maybe this position isn’t as unessential as I may have thought.
Let's dive in.
15: The Presidential Election of 1888
Election Date: November 6, 1888
The Candidates:
The Democrats unanimously nominated their incumbent president, Grover Cleveland, becoming the first person to achieve this status in the party since Martin Van Buren fifty years earlier.
Cleveland’s vice president died in office, so the party had to nominate a new guy. They chose Allen Thurman, the former Senator from Ohio. They also spelled his name Allan. If you can’t settle on how to spell someone’s name, it tells you this person isn’t that important. Trump spells the current Vice President’s name incorrectly, but that’s because his default button is to be a racist jerk.
The Republicans and their wealthy backers were itching to regain the White House, so they looked for presidential bloodlines and found them in Indiana Senator Benjamin Harrison, whose grandfather was president for about an hour, and great-grandfather who signed the Declaration of Independence.
For the VP pick, the GOP convention looked to former Minister to France and future Governor of New York, Levi Morton, which sounds like a place that serves delicious steaks or maybe someone who has been doing your family’s taxes for decades.
Major Issue of the Day:
During his last term, President Cleveland married the daughter of a friend who was twenty years younger and once called him Uncle Cleve. So, there was an idea that the president was a creep.
Tariffs that were once high came down, but workers still hadn’t felt the economic windfall. So there was a lot of talk about tariffs, a subject I have no deep knowledge of.
The Winner:
Complications.
The electoral college is a complicated, frustrating system that leads to unpopular presidents with unpopular terms. Five men became president by winning the electoral vote but losing the popular vote, and only one, George W. Bush, went on to win reelection.
Harrison pulled out a victory based on how the convoluted system works, and that’s how it goes.
The States in the Electoral College:
38. We will see an increase in states after this election.
The Electoral College had 401 members, and the winner needed 201 votes.
Harrison won the White House despite Cleveland winning on the slimmest of margins of the popular vote. Ben took 20 states to the president’s 18, flipping Indiana and Democratically controlled New York, where Cleveland was once governor.
Levi Morton could have been the name of your mailman because he delivered.
The 2021 OKH Presidential Ranking:
Harrison begins the second tier of presidents, coming in at 29. He passed the Sherman Act but then created both Dakotas for political gain and treated our Indigenous friends poorly.
Why Did I Rank it Here:
Harrison's win in New York was a huge upset. There was a lot of shady stuff surrounding securing the state of New York, but the choice of Morton, even if Harrison wasn’t a fan, worked out. So, sure, it's a top-15 election of all time.
Not too long ago, the narrative of the 2024 election was frustration that the country couldn’t come up with better candidates, and instead, we were given the same two old white guys squaring off again.
The same frustration was in place in 1892, when we experienced a rematch and a third-party candidate that would shake the two-party system.
Let’s dive in.
14: The Presidential Election of 1892
Election Date: November 8, 1892
The Candidates:
The roles of each candidate flipped, and the Republicans needed to fend off a strong challenger in the former president, who didn’t look as bad as people thought he was four years later.
Harrison was challenged at his party’s convention, but not seriously enough. Morton decided he didn’t want to be vice president anymore, which aligned with Harrison's feelings about him. Instead, the party gave its VP nod to Whitelaw Reid, another one of these Ambassador to France guys.
Whitelaw Reid is an awesome name for a vice president, don’t you think? It sounds like a personal injury law firm that advertises on the side of a bus.
Were you injured at work? Call Whitelaw Reid today and get what you deserve!
Cleveland was the easy choice for Democrats, and Allen or Allan was dropped from the ticket and replaced with Adlai Stevenson. Not the guy who kept losing to Dwight Eisenhower, but the grandfather and patriarch of the family.
The 1892 election had the added twist of a strong third party. It was the People’s Party, the precursor to the Populists, which we should fear. They nominated James Weaver, a Congressman from Iowa. They paired him with Virginia Attorney General James Field, who enlisted in the Virginia 13th Infantry in 1861, which tells you where his loyalties were at the time.
The ticket of James & James sounds like a law firm that competes with Whitelaw Reid.
Major Issue of the Day:
We were trying to figure out how to back our currency—should it be gold, silver, or both? I don’t have any money—it all goes to Anonymous—so I have no idea what any of that means. I did write about how we took ourselves off the gold standard a few years ago.
The Winner:
Retribution.
Cleveland didn’t run on this idea like Trump is currently doing in 2024. But there was a strong appeal to return to Cleveland. Something I do not have as an adult because I enjoy living in Washington, DC.
You could also see retribution in the eyes of the third party that came away with surprising results.
The States in the Electoral College:
44. Six states joined the Union in 1888 and 1889. Both Dakotas, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming came online, showing how the country was shifting west.
The Electoral College had 444 members, and the winner needed 223 votes.
Cleveland beat Harrison handily this time, taking 46% of the vote to 43% and 23 states to 16. Weaver earned over a million votes and won five states, all west of the Mississippi River.
The 2021 OKH Presidential Ranking:
I think of Cleveland more highly than your average, more knowledgeable historian. Grover comes in at 19, compared to 25, the average in polls taken of people who get paid to know this stuff.
Why Did I Rank it Here:
I guess I can say that James Weaver's candidacy makes this an important election. Had my original plan stayed in place, I would have written something about hoping the outcome doesn’t repeat itself, where the former president returns to power.
I was surprised by Kamala Harris's selection of Tim Walz as a running mate. I didn’t know much about him, and of the three publicly known finalists, I liked Arizona Senator Mark Kelly because he was an astronaut, and everyone loves astronauts.
But the Governor of Minnesota made a name for himself when he called the Republicans weird, which is a charitable way of describing people who aren’t inspiring in any sense and instead tell you how everything is going to hell.
Picking a vice president is the first glimpse of how you can judge the potential presidential candidate if they were to win the election. It’s debatable that vice president nominees help carry a particular state, but there is a perception that they motivate a specific demographic and balance out the ticket.
Over the last few days, I have come to absolutely love the pick of Walz. The Harris-Walz ticket doesn’t have an Ivy League pedigree or long legacies of national government service. It’s two people with two different backgrounds who show what is possible in the United States.
How could you not be fired up about a political figure called Coach? I saw this the other day when the Vice President introduced him and kept calling him Coach.
Coach and I will fight for you! Coach and I share your values. Coach will make sure you get to school on time and have breakfast and lunch while you are there.
Walz is easily the most inspiring pick I have experienced in my lifetime. What is hilarious is that if you had told me his name a month ago, I would have shrugged my shoulders about who he was.
You run through walls for people who go by Coach. You feel bad when you let Coach down. You tell your parents how important Coach is in your life, and your parents shake his hand when they see him.
Think of how Vice President Coach would carry himself.
He’ll stay after a cabinet meeting and help you through some policy stuff you got wrong because he wants to see you succeed.
Vice President Coach will ask you how your mother is doing and pat you on the back as you tell him you got assigned to the embassy in some random third-world country.
Vice President Coach will be radically candid with you if he hears that you don’t think the Supreme Court is that bad. Vice President Coach wants to be sure you are okay. If you need anything, he is over in the Naval Observatory, drawing up plays to bring down inflation.
Vice President Coach will deliver an administration based on hugs and laughter.
I’ve never been this fired up about a number two since I won my last election back in college.
Let’s win this.
Birthday week continues. Last night, I took Anonymous to see Back to the Future—not the movie, but the musical. I love how we turn random movies into musicals. The show was excellent, and I stayed awake the entire time. There is lots of winning going on right now.
Have a great weekend. I’ll see you on Monday.
Okay,
Chris
Grover Cleveland is, so far, the only President to have served two non-consecutive terms in office.
Great appreciation of Walz. A breath of fresh air.