OPINION:
Spiro Agnew today is what he characterized himself as in 1968. Richard Nixon tapped the unknown governor of Maryland to be his Republican vice presidential running mate: “not exactly a household word.”
Forty-three years have passed since “Ted” Agnew, as he liked to be called, resigned the vice presidency over cash kickbacks he received while Baltimore County executive and governor. From his downfall in 1973 until his death in 1996, Agnew almost never granted interviews and was rarely seen. (The former vice president did correspond with reporters he considered friends, including, by way of disclosure, this correspondent).
One is surprised that a scholarly and balanced biography of Agnew now appears. Justin P. Coffey, associate professor of history at Quincy University in Illinois, has done a decade of interviews and research to produce “Spiro Agnew and the Rise of the Republican Right” (published by Praeger).
Why a biography of such a remote political figure? one immediately asks. The answers are several.
The son of a Greek immigrant and diner owner, suburban Maryland lawyer Agnew experienced the most dramatic rise in U.S. politics until Barack Obama: from president of the Loch Raven (Md.) Kiwanis Club in 1961 to a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States seven years later.
His personal story is impressive. An indifferent chemistry major at Johns Hopkins University, the young Agnew developed discipline through his service in the U.S. Army during World War II (when he earned a Bronze Star at the Battle of the Bulge) and marriage to wife Judy. While a young father working days in an insurance company (and without an undergraduate degree), Agnew became a lawyer studying nights at the University of Baltimore, and eventually built a successful practice. Politics came later.
Originally a centrist Republican in the mold of Dwight Eisenhower, Agnew was a fierce civil rights advocate as county executive. He appointed more blacks to office than any previous Maryland governor and worked with Democratic legislators to advance environmental legislation.
Like many others in the mid-’60s, however, Gov. Agnew began to have second thoughts about his worldview after demonstrations and race riots erupted in his state. Convening a summit of black clergy and community leaders, the governor called on them to repudiate black racism “as I have repudiated white racism.” Most walked out and denounced him. But the incident brought him widespread praise from conservatives and nationwide fan mail (including an admiring letter from a young North Carolina TV editorialist named Jesse Helms).
This clash was probably also a major factor in candidate Nixon — who had only met Agnew once — eyeing the governor as a running mate because he was a catalyst for conservative voters. (Mr. Coffey reveals for the first time correspondence between Agnew and University of Maryland President Milton Eisenhower on the need for a “stop Nixon” movement for the Republican nomination; had Nixon ever learned of it, he almost certainly would have selected another running mate).
As vice president, Agnew proved a force for mobilizing what was then called “the great silent majority” — middle-class Americans with white and blue collars, fed up with student demonstrators against the Vietnam War and the left-leaning media they felt mocked their values.
“Nattering nabobs of negativism” is what Agnew branded liberal foes of the administration. In brass-knuckled rhetoric that would foreshadow that of today’s younger Republicans in the House “Freedom Caucus” as well as presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, the vice president denounced “an effete corps of impudent snobs” who encouraged a “national state of masochism.”
Strong medicine, all right, and in large part crafted by two young White House speechwriters who would go on to bigger things: Pat Buchanan and William Safire. The speeches he delivered in 1969-70 would make Agnew the most sought-after Republican speaker as well as a hero of the growing conservative movement in the GOP.
Like his friend Buchanan, Agnew was one of the few true-blue conservatives on foreign policy within the Nixon White House.
From his trips to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, the vice president was moved by the fear that Nixon’s policy of “detente” with the Soviet Union and China “would no longer protect them against Communism.”
By 1971, Nixon concluded Agnew was not up to succeeding him and hoped to replace him on the ticket with Secretary of the Treasury John Connally, the magnetic former Democratic governor of Texas. Had he ever actually asked Agnew to step aside, Mr. Coffey notes, the vice president — increasingly miserable in his job — “would most likely have graciously complied.”
Agnew even told close friend and California Gov. Ronald Reagan of the possibility of his shifting to a judicial or Cabinet appointment. Reagan, like Barry Goldwater and just about every other conservative, warned Nixon that he would have trouble on the right if he replaced Agnew.
Agnew remained on the ticket and, following the Republican landslide of 1972, was shown by polls to be his party’s leading presidential contender for ’76. As the Watergate affair began to metastasize around Nixon’s inner circle, the vice president was relieved he had been kept “out of the loop.”
But an entirely separate probe by the U.S. attorney in Baltimore, George Beall (a Republican but no friend of Agnew’s), unearthed evidence that contractors had given kickbacks to Democratic officials in Baltimore County in return for government business. Two of them revealed to prosecutors that they had given Agnew similar payments while he was county executive, governor and — evidence on this was solid — vice president. (Had Agnew stopped taking the payments after his election as vice president in 1968, he would have been immune from prosecution because the five-year statute of limitations would have been up).
After weeks of proclaiming his innocence, Agnew later insisted he had to be impeached by the House before he could be indicted. Privately, his lawyers negotiated a plea bargain with the Department of Justice — headed by Attorney General Elliot Richardson, an Agnew enemy whom the author blames for leaks in the press. In October 1973, Agnew resigned from office and faded into obscurity.
But the saga of the immigrant’s son whose rapid rise in politics brought him so close to the White House remains inspiring. His equally rapid downfall also serves as a reminder that embrace of a leader one does not truly know well can result in disappointment for those who cheered him and called him “my hero.”
• John Gizzi is chief political correspondent and White House correspondent for Newsmax and Newsmax TV.
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