Thomas Riley Marshall is a rarely remembered politician, despite (or because of) his legendarily wry sense of humor, often acting as the perfect antithesis to the icy, academician, President Woodrow Wilson. Marshall learned a lesson in American politics and while he has been forgotten, and perhaps even the lesson has been too, the influence is still evident today. During Marshall’s tenor as the nation’s Vice-President, politicians gambled (sometimes losing White House decorations), smoked (everything), drank courageous amount of alcohol (or in Roosevelt’s case, coffee). Politicians slept with mistresses, made racial slights, dodged military service, employed cronies, took bribes and in every other way acted like how politicians in pretty much any time have acted. But as Marshall flippantly discovered, nothing is more fatal in politics than a keen sense of wit.
Generally popular as a young man, Marshall was told he should go into politics, though Marshall countered such support by saying that he didn’t want to run for Congress because he was afraid that he’d get elected. Without any real effort on his part, Marshall was elected governor of Indiana and there ended up on the right side of history in almost every heated debate at the time, including child labor laws, popular election of Senators and overhauling the state’s bloated auditing agency. More stunningly, he mustered the courage to be against eugenics bills, sterilization bills and capital punishment—perhaps becoming the first governor to get disgustingly labeled by his critics as “weak on crime.” Political cartoons noted this and mocked Marshall for commuting the sentences of would-be executed criminals. True to form, Marshall got a kick of the cartoons and referenced their jokes in his own speeches.
Despite Wilson’s divergent temperament and Marshall’s own absence from the Democratic National Convention, Marshall was picked as the vice-presidential nominee, and granted a lot more time to shoot off one liners such as: “I do not talk politics between campaigns and afterward I regret what I said in them.” After winning office, Marshall reflected on the campaign noting that he couldn’t remember if he had made “169 speeches or one speech 169 times.” Shortly after taking his real oath of office, Marshall proposed a second one, vowing to “acknowledge the insignificant influence of the office, and to take it in a good-natured way.”
Most famously, during a very long and drab, laundry list, speech from Sen. Joseph Bristow (R-KS) on what the country needed in order to improve itself, VP Marshall leaned over to one of his clerks and whispered loud enough for the whole Senate chamber to hear, “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.” That several Senators laughed would prove this moment to be Marshall’s political high point in Washington.
As vice-president, Marshall mostly stayed in his office at the Senate, noting that it was not unlike “a monkey cage, except the visitors do not offer me any peanuts.” When appointed to the board of executives for the Smithsonian Museum, Marshall dryly noted the convenience of now being able to compare his “fossilized life with the fossils of all ages.” Marshall would go on to hone his self-depreciation, saying, “The only business of the vice-president is to ring the White House bell every morning and ask what is the state of health of the president.” As the years went on, Marshall’s increasingly unappreciated wit drifted to more depressing sentiments, such as, “Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea, the other was elected Vice-President and nothing was ever heard from either of them again.” More depressing, while on a speaking tour, the Vice-President was given a single, local police officer as protection; which Marshall thought was outrageous, saying, “No one was ever crazy enough to shoot at a vice-president.” Apparently, Marshall was not a student of history as Aaron Burr had been in a gun duel while in office and Andrew Johnson was saved at the last moment when his would-be assassin got drunk and lost his nerve. Incredibly, Marshall had also vastly underestimated the crazies in America; as shortly after the quip, somebody was actually too crazy to shoot the vice-president, preferring instead to BLOW HIM UP.
Meet Eric Muenter. (Fair warning: this is a helluva story.) Muenter was a German-teaching, Harvard professor who, in 1906, poisoned his own wife with arsenic for unknown reasons (bad cooking?) and escaped Boston police custody by shaving his freaking beard. He moved to Texas, changed his named to Frank Holt and became a German language instructor, again. Incomprehensibly, the man was promoted several times and eventually became a professor at (I swear to God) Cornell University. There, he became frustrated with America’s commercial support of the Allied forces in the first World War. So, like any crazy person, he bought a bunch of dynamite, rigged a timer that involved dipping acid onto a cork, got into the Senate chambers late one night and put the bomb at the door of Thomas Riley Marshall as if it was a sack of poop on fire.
Not content with this display of insanity, Muenter/Holt decided to go to the house of industrialist/philanthropist J.P. Morgan, Jr.—where he planned to hold Morgan’s family hostage until America stopped selling munitions to France and England. On the train to Morgan’s house, the Senate bomb exploded before anyone had gotten close enough to be harmed, though one security guard was reportedly knocked out of his chair by the blast. When Holt broke into Morgan’s house, the multi-millionaire rushed the would-be assassin and was shot in the groin (but not killed). Hilariously, Holt had not counted on J.P. Morgan’s servants—who also rushed the intruder and subdued him until police could take him away. In prison, the Cornell professor Holt was identified as the former Harvard professor Muenter. Embarrassed, Muenter tried to kill himself with a pencil but failed. Proving he could be as determined as he was crazy, Muenter then climbed his prison cell bars and managed to dive headfirst onto the concrete floor, crushing his skull. Wit makes enemies indeed.
This all starts to come back to Marshall when people disputed who was the original target in the Senate chambers, if anybody at all. Marshall, to his end, continued to alienate colleagues, popularly noting that “wise men remain at home and discuss public questions on the end of street cars and around barber shops.” The heavily liberal Woodrow Wilson became frustrated with Marshall’s politically moderate stances and briefly tried to remove him from the reelection ticket in 1916. The only real effect then was that President Wilson was not spared Marshall’s rapier wit. For instance, when Marshall inscribed in a book to Wilson, “From your only vice.”
Get the President some Aloe Vera--because he just got burned! Ah snap!
This is not to say VP Marshall was at any point antagonistic toward the President; though it might have helped when Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919. At first, Marshall did not entertain thoughts of taking over as ‘acting President’ because he did not want to be called a usurper or otherwise potentially split the country. As Wilson’s condition worsened, Marshall still fended off his own supporters--including the Secretary of the State--saying that Wilson’s only hope for recovery was maintaining a reason to live. Moreover, Edith Wilson, essentially the ‘acting President,’ did everything in her power (and way beyond) to ensure Marshall stayed on the sidelines. During an out-of-town speaking engagement, Marshall was informed President Wilson had died and Marshall resolved to go to D.C. and assume the Presidency. However, Marshall was correctly informed at his hotel that the President had not died. Eventually Wilson (mostly) recovered and Marshall’s tenor as Vice-President was only made notable by being the first VP to serve a full eight years in almost a century.
"I have sometimes thought that great men are the bane of civilization, they are the real cause of all the bitterness and contention which amounts to anything in the world.”
--Thomas Riley Marshall (vice-president to Woodrow Wilson)
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