Second Fiddle: The Strange, Sick, Silly, Sad and Soused Men We Elected Vice President

by Tim Pearson

Only 32 American vice presidents were too unlucky or too incompetent or too crooked or too drunk or just plain too weird to ascend to the presidency. Too unlucky? George Clinton might have been elected president if he'd bothered to move out of his moldy boardinghouse. Too incompetent? The insightful Abigail Adams wrote of Elbridge Gerry, "Poor Gerry always had a wrong kink in his head." Too crooked? Aaron Burr got arrested for treason when he tried to start his own country. Too drunk? Daniel Tompkins happily wrote an essay called "On Drunkenness" and was said to never be "perfectly sober." Too weird? William Wheeler spent most of his life convinced he was about to keel over dead and left most of his savings to his housemaid. From the misguided dimwits of America's early years to the shotgun-toting Dick Cheney, the fib-telling Al Gore and the potatoe-spelling Dan Quayle, we as a nation have to hang our heads in embarrassment at the individuals we've elected to the office once described as "not worth a bucket of warm spit." Thirty-two odd fellows. Thirty-two untold stories. Thirty-two vice presidents as you've never seen them before. Second The Strange, Sick, Silly, Sad and Soused Men We Elected Vice President is Tim Pearson's light-hearted and wickedly funny look at the misguided collection of simpletons, thieves, philanderers, failures, hypochondriacs, thugs, misanthropes and oddballs who (thankfully!) never made it to the top of the political ladder.

376 pages, Paperback

Published July 21, 2017