#vice president garner

[deadpresidents]

Hi there!

Quick question - who was the tallest of FDR's VPs?

I think Henry Wallace was slightly taller than Truman, who I believe was 5'9". It definitely wasn't Cactus Jack Garner, who was only like 5'6".

It's hard to tell in photos where they are together. Here's Speaker Sam Rayburn, former President Harry S. Truman, former Vice President John Nance Garner, and Senate Majority Leader LBJ celebrating Garner's 90th birthday in 1958:

And here's a photo of James F. Byrnes (who would become Secretary of State a few weeks later), President Truman, and former Vice President Wallace at FDR's funeral in April 1945:

Interestingly, that photo of Byrnes, Truman, and Wallace captures the three main contenders (along with Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas) to be FDR's running mate in 1944. Wallace was being pushed out, but Byrnes, Truman, and Douglas (not pictured) were who FDR was considering to replace Wallace on the ticket. Any of them could have ended up succeeding Roosevelt as President on the day that this photo was taken if they had been the VP nominee.

[deadpresidents]

2 and a half weeks until JC passes Cactus Jack!

It took me a little bit to figure out what you were referencing, but yes, Jimmy Carter will pass John Nance Garner as the longest-living President or Vice President in American history on September 18th. And if he is still with us on October 1st, Carter will be the first President or Vice President in American history to celebrate their 99th birthday.

And since I'm a huge dork who finds this stuff interesting, here's the big, complete list of longest-living to shortest-living Presidents and Vice Presidents in American history: (Presidents are in bold text, Vice Presidents are in italics, and those who served as both POTUS and VP are in bold italics.) John Nance Garner: 98 years, 351 days Jimmy Carter: 98 years, 337 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Levi P. Morton: 96 years, 0 days George H.W. Bush: 94 years, 171 days Gerald R. Ford: 93 years, 165 days Ronald Reagan: 93 years, 120 days Walter Mondale: 93 years, 81 days John Adams: 90 years, 247 days Herbert Hoover: 90 years, 71 days Harry S. Truman: 88 years, 232 days Charles G. Dawes: 85 years, 239 days James Madison: 85 years, 104 days Thomas Jefferson: 83 years, 82 days Dick Cheney: 82 years, 216 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Hannibal Hamlin: 81 years, 311 days Richard Nixon: 81 years, 104 days Joe Biden: 80 years, 287 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) John Quincy Adams: 80 years, 227 days Aaron Burr: 80 years, 220 days Martin Van Buren: 79 years, 231 days Adlai E. Stevenson: 78 years, 234 days Dwight D. Eisenhower: 78 years, 165 days Alben W. Barkley: 78 years, 157 days Andrew Jackson: 78 years, 85 days Spiro Agnew: 77 years, 261 days Donald Trump: 77 years, 81 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) George W. Bush: 77 years, 59 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Henry A. Wallace: 77 years, 42 days James Buchanan: 77 years, 39 days Bill Clinton: 77 years, 15 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Dan Quayle: 76 years, 211 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Charles Curtis: 76 years, 14 days Al Gore: 75 years, 156 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Millard Fillmore: 74 years, 60 days James Monroe: 73 years, 67 days George Clinton: 72 years, 268 days George M. Dallas: 72 years, 174 days William Howard Taft: 72 years, 174 days John Tyler: 71 years, 295 days Grover Cleveland: 71 years, 98 days Thomas R. Marshall: 71 years, 79 days Nelson Rockefeller: 70 years, 202 days Elbridge Gerry: 70 years, 129 days Rutherford B. Hayes: 70 years, 105 days Richard M. Johnson: 70 years, 33 days William Henry Harrison: 68 years, 54 days John C. Calhoun: 68 years, 13 days William A. Wheeler: 67 years, 339 days George Washington: 67 years, 295 days Benjamin Harrison: 67 years, 205 days Woodrow Wilson: 67 years, 36 days William R. King: 67 years, 11 days Hubert H. Humphrey: 66 years, 231 days Andrew Johnson: 66 years, 214 days Thomas A. Hendricks: 66 years, 79 days Charles W. Fairbanks: 66 years, 24 days Zachary Taylor: 65 years, 227 days Franklin Pierce: 64 years, 319 days Lyndon B. Johnson: 64 years, 148 days Mike Pence: 64 years, 88 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Henry Wilson: 63 years, 279 days Ulysses S. Grant: 63 years, 87 days Franklin D. Roosevelt: 63 years, 72 days Barack Obama: 62 years, 30 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Schuyler Colfax: 61 years, 296 days Calvin Coolidge: 60 years, 185 days Theodore Roosevelt: 60 years, 71 days Kamala Harris: 58 years, 318 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) William McKinley: 58 years, 228 days Warren G. Harding: 57 years, 273 days Chester A. Arthur: 57 years, 44 days James S. Sherman: 57 years, 6 days Abraham Lincoln: 56 years, 62 days Garret A. Hobart: 55 years, 171 days John C. Breckinridge: 54 years, 116 days James K. Polk: 53 years, 225 days Daniel D. Tompkins: 50 years, 355 days James Garfield: 49 years, 304 days John F. Kennedy: 46 years, 177 days

[deadpresidents]

Carter has passed Garner! He now holds ALL the records for anyone who has ever been President or VP! Only Alf Landon's still stands and he was never President!

Yes, you are correct! Jimmy Carter has now passed John Nance Garner on the list of longest-living Presidents or Vice Presidents (here was that list at the beginning of September). And we are 10 days away from President Carter becoming the first President or Vice President to ever celebrate their 99th birthday. Not bad for a guy who has been in hospice care since February.

And, yes, Alf Landon is the longest-living major party nominee for President or Vice President. Landon was the 1936 Republican Presidential nominee and lost the general election to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Landon was 100 years, 33 days old when he died in 1987. Think about that for a second: Alf Landon was the Republican Presidential nominee when FDR ran for his second term as President, and Landon died when Ronald Reagan had a little over a year left in his Presidency!

BUT, it's worth nothing that while Alf Landon is undoubtedly the longest-living Presidential or Vice Presidential nominee by a major party, he is NOT the longest-living person to ever win Electoral votes as President or Vice President.

In 1948, many Southern Democrats opposed to support for civil rights in the party's platform at the Democratic National Convention bolted from the party and formed the States' Rights or "Dixiecrat" party to run against incumbent Democratic President Harry S. Truman and Republican nominee Thomas Dewey. The Dixiecrats nominated South Carolina Governor (and future longtime Senator) Strom Thurmond as their Presidential nominee. Despite not being a major party nominee, Thurmond and the Dixiecrats, relying on voters in former Confederate strongholds in the South, performed better in the general election than just about any third-party Presidential candidate of the 20th Century.

Thurmond and the Dixiecrats won 4 states and 39 Electoral votes in 1948. In 1936, Republican nominee Alf Landon won two states and just 8 Electoral votes. So Thurmond's racist, third-party challenge performed far better than the GOP nominee had done twelve years earlier.

So, unfortunately, while we're talking about longest-living President or Vice Presidential nominees, we have to throw Strom Thurmond in the conversation considering the fact that he won far more Electoral votes in 1948 than Alf Landon did in 1936. And Thurmond lived longer, as well. Thurmond was 100 years, 203 days old when he died in 2003 -- he lived 170 days longer than Alf Landon did.

Thurmond is also almost certainly the oldest person to ever be one of the top officials in the Presidential line of succession. As I mentioned, Thurmond eventually served in the U.S. Senate from South Carolina -- a seat that he held from 1954-2003 (except for a period of about 7 months in 1956) -- where he eventually became the first (and only, so far) person to serve in Congress after their 100th birthday. Due to his lengthy tenure in office, Thurmond was president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate for several years when his party was in control of the Senate.

As president pro tem, Thurmond was third in the Presidential line of succession, behind the Vice President and Speaker of the House. This meant that, Thurmond was third in the line of succession well after turning 98 years old. In June 2001, Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords announced that he would begin caucusing with the Democrats in the Senate, which gave the Democrats a narrow majority and control in the Senate, However, if Jeffords had not made that decision when he did, Strom Thurmond would have been president pro tempore on September 11, 2001. That means a nearly 99-year-old man would have been third in the Presidential succession at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

[deadpresidents]

The one record left for Carter to pass is "Longest lived President OR Vice President of the United States". John Nance Garner (Franklin Roosevelt's first VP) also lived to be 98 but died only a couple of weeks before he would have turned 99.

Yes, that's the one longevity record for Presidents or Vice Presidents that Jimmy Carter hasn't reached yet, and with the news that he's elected to receive hospice care it may be one that he doesn't reach.

John Nance Garner was 98 years, 351 days old when he died in 1967. So, for Carter to pass that mark and surpass Garner as the longest-living President or Vice President ever, he would have to make it to September 18th of this year.

From what I've read, it sounds as if the odds are low, but it usually turns out to be a bad idea to bet against Jimmy Carter. If you guys remember, in 2015, President Carter announced that he was battling cancer. He was 91 years old at the time, and his cancer had spread to his brain and liver. Four or five months later, he announced that his treatment was successful and that he was cancer-free. He beat brain and liver cancer in just a few months despite being in his 90s! He may still end up outlasting all of us and breaking Cactus Jack Garner's record.

[deadpresidents]

Who do you think would’ve been the Democratic nominee in 1940 if FDR decided against a third term?

FDR's two-term Vice President (and former Speaker of the House) John Nance Garner really wanted the Democratic nomination in 1940 and openly spoke out against the idea of FDR running for a third term. Garner actually launched a campaign for the nomination in 1940. Roosevelt and Garner had disagreed on policy a lot by that point, but that was still a unique moment in which an incumbent President was being challenged for his party's nomination by his own sitting Vice President. Now, FDR tried to make it appear as if he was being drafted for a third term and that he wasn't intentionally seeking re-election in 1940, but he absolutely was pulling the strings behind-the-scenes and working to make sure that he ended up with the nomination.

But even if Roosevelt hadn't run again in 1940, I don't think Garner would have been the nominee. He was popular with Democrats, but he was 71 years old (back when that seemed to be too old to be President!) and he was from Texas and the Civil War was fresh enough in memory that the country still wasn't all that open to electing a President from the Deep South. Plus, FDR and his New Dealers would have still controlled the party mechanisms and Garner was far too conservative of a Democrat for their tastes. If Roosevelt hadn't run, Postmaster General James Farley, who desperately wanted to be President and had long been a power in Democratic politics in New York probably would have grabbed the nomination. As it was, Farley did make a bid for the nomination in 1940 because he was under the impression that FDR was not going to seek a third term and that Roosevelt had given him the blessing to run, but he lost out to FDR on the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention.

If FDR hadn't run and Farley had been the nominee in 1940, it's interesting to think about whether he could have beaten the eventual Republican nominee, Wendell Willkie. Farley would have backed all of FDR's New Deal programs, was much more liberal than Roosevelt, and an early and enthusiastic advocate for civil rights. But he was also a Catholic and anti-Catholic sentiment was still a very real thing, as it was even when JFK was nominated 20 years later. A Farley-Willkie matchup would have been much closer than an FDR-Willkie matchup because Farley wouldn't have had the advantage of being FDR and Willkie was an energetic candidate on the campaign trail. Ideologically, there wasn't much distance between Farley's politics and Willkie's, just as there wasn't much difference between FDR and Willkie politically.

In fact, if FDR had made it clear ahead of time that he absolutely wasn't running in 1940, one of the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination actually probably would have been Wendell Willkie himself. Willkie was a Democrat for most of his life and even talked about as a potential future Democratic Presidential candidate in the late-1930s. When it became obvious that Roosevelt wasn't going to definitively refuse a third term, Willkie changed his voter registration to Republican -- in late 1939! That made him available as a compromise candidate for Republicans at the 1940 Republican Convention, but he probably would have been a contender for the 1940 Democratic nomination if FDR had dropped out. And after the Willkie lost to FDR in the 1940 election, he became a vocal supporter of Roosevelt's wartime leadership and acted as an unofficial diplomat for FDR on a couple of occasions.

[deadpresidents]

Is George Schultz the longest lived cabinet member ever?

That’s a good question. I’m pretty sure he is. If we’re counting Vice Presidents – most modern Vice Presidents are considered members of the Cabinet – then FDR’s first Vice President, John Nance Garner (who served from 1933-1941 and did attend President Roosevelt’s Cabinet meetings), holds the record as longest-living Cabinet member as of this moment. George Shultz is currently 98 years old and will turn 99 in December. Vice President Garner was two weeks short of his 99th birthday when he died in November 1967.

In addition to Shultz, there are actually quite a few former Cabinet members in their 90s who are still living in 2019, including two members of LBJ’s Cabinet who are still alive – former Attorney General Ramsey Clark (91 years old) and Alan S. Boyd, who was the first Secretary of Transportation in American history and is currently 96 years old.

[deadpresidents]

Your post on vice presidents made me curious about who was the oldest vp was it also Ford?

Gerald Ford is in third place on the list of longest-living Vice Presidents in American history:

LONGEST-LIVING VICE PRESIDENTSAge at Death: VP (POTUS served under)•98 years, 351 days: John Nance Garner (FDR’s 1st VP)•96 years, 0 days: Levi P. Morton (B. Harrison)•93 years, 165 days: Gerald Ford (Nixon’s 2nd)•92 years+: George H.W. Bush (Reagan) [Still living]•90 years, 247 days: John Adams (Washington)•89 years+: Walter Mondale (Carter) [Still living]•88 years, 232 days: Harry S. Truman (FDR’s 3rd)•85 years, 239 days: Charles G. Dawes (Coolidge)•83 years, 82 days: Thomas Jefferson (John Adams)•81 years, 311 days: Hannibal Hamlin (Lincoln’s 1st)•81 years, 104 days: Richard Nixon (Eisenhower)•80 years, 220 days: Aaron Burr (Jefferson’s 1st)•79 years, 231 days: Martin Van Buren (Jackson’s 2nd)•78 years, 234 days: Adlai E. Stevenson (Cleveland’s 2nd)•78 years, 157 days: Alben W. Barkley (Truman)•77 years, 261 days: Spiro Agnew (Nixon’s 1st)•77 years, 42 days: Henry A. Wallace (FDR’s 2nd)•76 years+: Dick Cheney (G.W. Bush) [Still living]•76 years, 14 days: Charles Curtis (Hoover)•74 years+: Joe Biden (Obama) [Still living]•74 years, 60 days: Millard Fillmore (Taylor)•72 years, 268 days: George Clinton (Jefferson’s 2nd/Madison’s 1st)•72 years, 174 days: George M. Dallas (Polk)•71 years, 295 days: John Tyler (W.H. Harrison)•71 years, 79 days: Thomas Riley Marshall (Wilson)•70 years+: Dan Quayle (G.H.W. Bush) [Still living]•70 years, 202 days: Nelson Rockefeller (Ford)•70 years, 129 days: Elbridge Gerry (Madison’s 2nd)•70 years, 33 days: Richard M. Johnson (Van Buren)•69 years+: Al Gore (Clinton) [Still living]•68 years, 13 days: John C. Calhoun (J.Q. Adams/Jackson’s 1st)•67 years, 339 days: William A. Wheeler (Hayes)•67 years, 11 days: William R. D. King (Pierce)•66 years, 231 days: Hubert H. Humphrey (LBJ)•66 years, 214 days: Andrew Johnson (Lincoln’s 2nd)•66 years, 79 days: Thomas A. Hendricks (Cleveland’s 1st)•66 years, 24 days: Charles W. Fairbanks (T. Roosevelt)•64 years, 148 days: Lyndon B. Johnson (JFK)•63 years, 279 days: Henry Wilson (Grant’s 2nd)•61 years, 296 days: Schuyler Colfax (Grant’s 1st)•60 years, 185 days: Calvin Coolidge (Harding)•60 years, 71 days: Theodore Roosevelt (McKinley’s 2nd)•57 years+: Mike Pence (Trump) [Still living]•57 years, 44 days: Chester A. Arthur (Garfield)•57 years, 6 days: James S. Sherman (Taft)•55 years, 171 days: Garret A. Hobart (McKinley’s 1st)•54 years, 116 days: John C. Breckinridge (Buchanan)•50 years, 355 days: Daniel D. Tompkins (Monroe)