Al Gore: MIA at the National Portrait Gallery's 'Presidents in Waiting'

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon by James Ormsbee Chapin/Time

By The Queen of Free

The Web says Al Gore's schedule prevented his participation in the exhibit, "Presidents in Waiting" now showing at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery .  Come on!  He could not/would not find time for an  interview for this show like all the other living former vice presidents did?

Get real.  What's the real reason?  We can guess.

Anyway, the four others(quick!  Name them) consented to interviews which you can hear and see in two of  the exhibits' four galleries.   (All you have to do is press a screen.) 

It is not a large exhibit, but if you have any interest in presidential history, this is not to miss.

In his interview, Dan Quayle, President George H.W. Bush's VP (1989 - 1993), says he "clearly had a plan to run" for the ultimate.  "I had a lot of confidence," he says, and had no hesitation whatsoever when tapped for the position by President Bush who says Quayle "had attributes I didn't have."

President Bush laments the "huge outcry" by doubters which greeted his selection of Quayle which Bush thought, "very unfair."     

John Tyler by James Reid Lambdin/The White House

About the spelling of the renowned "potato," Quayle says, "I just went by the teacher's card." Today he laughs about the public's memory of his spelling prowess and says he doesn't know if "potato," "tomato" or "Idaho" has an "e" on the end.

Ronald Reagan's selection of George Bush to be his VP (1981 -1989) was a surprise, Bush says:  "I was kind of the last man standing....I didn't know [Reagan] well.…we got along fine," but Bush says he thinks many of Reagan's "people" were "suspicious of me, but he [Reagan] wasn't."

"The worst thing a vice president can do is make his own agenda," Bush says. "The power the vice president gets comes from the president, that's all."
 

Martin Van Buren by Henry Inman/New York Historical Society

 Walter Mondale served as vice president under Jimmy Carter (1977 - 1981) and they were together sometimes six to seven hours a day.  Before their inauguration in December 1976 they worked out a "fundamental agreement" about their relationship which Vice President Dick Cheney praises.

When Mondale ran for the presidency in 1984 versus Reagan, Mondale deemed he needed to do "something dramatic" to enliven his campaign, and in a "bold and different" statement picked Geraldine Ferraro to be his running mate, the first woman to run in the veep slot. 

Thanks to the Ford Motor Company Fund (it has money for this?) for sponsoring the exhibit and providing handsome four-color literature available at no charge to visitors. 

In addition to President Bush and others pictured here, other vice presidents who went on to become president were:  John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Johnson, Millard Filmore, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Gerald Ford.  A brochure identifies Andrew Johnson and John Tyler as the only 19th century successors to the presidency who did not serve "their terms with competence" like the others.