In happier days, Vice President John Nance Garner hosts President Franklin D. Roosevelt (second from right) at a 1936 dinner. (Library of Congress)

By Frederic J. Frommer

A blockbuster account in Jonathan Karl’s new book describes how then-outgoing President Donald Trump called his vice president Mike Pence a “wimp” on Jan. 6, 2021.

That’s probably the biggest falling out between a president and his No. 2 in 80 years, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s vice president, John Nance Garner, made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination in the 1940 presidential election. Democratic delegates chose FDR over Garner, and the president went on to win an unprecedented third term in office—with a new running mate, of course.

In his book, “Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign that Changed America,” Karl quotes from handwritten notes that Pence took from his contentious Jan. 6 call with Trump:

In those notes, Pence writes how Trump berated him as a “wimp” and said he “made a big mistake 5 years ago” when he picked him to be his running mate because Pence was refusing to use his ceremonial role presiding over the certification of the election later that day to overturn the election.

The split between FDR and Garner didn’t come in a dramatic showdown like that, but the implications were certainly striking. How did things get so bad between the two Democrats?

It was a combination of an ideological mismatch and a building resentment on the part of Garner about how FDR had governed in his first two terms.

In the 1932 election, Roosevelt, then governor of New York, tapped Garner, the House speaker and a conservative Texas Democrat, to balance the ticket. As the New York Times observed later—in what could also describe the dynamics of the 2016 GOP ticket between Trump and Pence—“Mr. Garner’s homespun manner and conservative fiscal views added strength to Mr. Roosevelt’s appeal among those who regarded the New Yorker with skepticism.”

Initially, Garner served a useful purpose in the FDR administration by building support for the New Deal among his former colleagues on the Hill. But as an anti-labor conservative at heart, he soon soured on the president’s liberal agenda and his expansive use of presidential power.

In 1937, for example, after winning re-election for the first time and frustrated at the Supreme Court for declaring much of his agenda unconstitutional, FDR tried to “pack” the court with new justices. The ill-fated plan would have allowed him to add a new justice for every justice who turned 70.

“Despite his popularity, and the overwhelming control of Congress by Democrats, the proposal became the first political defeat of FDR’s presidency—and came at the hands of his own party,” political analyst Jeff Greenfield wrote in 2020. “His own vice president, John Garner, fought it.”

In 1939, Garner would recall later, a poll showed him leading potential Democratic candidates in a field that didn’t include FDR. After that, Garner wrote, Roosevelt “quit inviting me for luncheons at his desk.”

Garner was convinced that FDR would seek a third term in 1940, so, in late 1939, the VP said that he would seek the Democratic nomination for president.

A few months earlier, labor leader John L. Lewis had described Garner as a “labor-baiting, poker playing, whiskey drinking, evil old man,” and, after Garner announced his candidacy, FDR offered a Trumpian putdown. “I see that the vice president has thrown his bottle – I mean his hat – into the ring,” the president quipped at a Cabinet meeting. (Can’t you just see that in an all-caps Truth Social post?)

FDR biographer Jean Edward Smith characterized Garner’s candidacy as a “protest against the New Deal, FDR, and a third term rolled into one.”

In a story at the time, the Times predicted—incorrectly, of course—that Garner’s candidacy would preclude FDR from seeking a third term:

Having arrived, the consequences of the event are plainer than any forecast could have made them. Unless the president is willing to split his party in 1940 and turn the forthcoming session of Congress into a cockpit where useful things must perish and only destruction survive, he cannot become an active candidate against Mr. Garner. The spectacle of the two chiefs of the American State, the two outstanding leaders of the party, engaged in a struggle for delegates would disperse every factor of cooperation and harmony at a time when outside conditions require their presence as much as possible.

“By his declaration,” the paper added, “the Vice President has ranged himself against a third term for a President with whom he has served two terms.”

But FDR did run, of course, and easily defeated his No. 2, winning 946 delegates at the 1940 Democratic National Convention to Garner’s 61. The liberal Agriculture secretary, Henry A. Wallace, became Roosevelt’s new running mate. Four years later, Harry Truman would replace Wallace on the ticket.

Roosevelt watches Garner swear in his successor as vice president.

Today, Garner is most remembered for his famous gripe that “the vice presidency is not worth a bucket of warm piss.” Not surprisingly, he would express buyer’s remorse for taking on that gig.

“Worst damn-fool mistake I ever made,” he said after leaving office, “was letting myself get elected vice president of the United States. Should have stuck with my old chores as speaker of the House. I gave up the second-most important job in the government for one that didn’t amount to a hill of beans.”

Frederic J. Frommer, a writer and sports and politics historian, has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, History.com and other national publications. A former Associated Press reporter, Frommer is the author of several books, including “You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals.” Follow him on X.

80 years before the Trump-Pence fallout…