Nomen between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have chosen their vice presidential candidates, and pundits and amateur analysts alike will be watching closely to see whether JD Vance and Tim Walz can be effective campaigners. This reflects the role of modern vice presidents. As Jonathan Alter recently noted in the New York Times, Just“Vice presidential candidates are supposed to be attack dogs.”
But that wasn’t always the case. The running mate as an “attack dog” is a modern invention that only became widespread in the late 1980s and 1990s. But it quickly became a must for successful election campaigns. Even today, when presidential candidates themselves throw a lot of dirt, the ability to hit is a crucial qualification for a running mate. Anything else would be one-sidedly disarming.
Throughout the 20th century, the role of the running mate varied depending on the campaign. In 1900, Teddy Roosevelt, to no one’s surprise, campaigned vigorously – even tirelessly – for Republican William McKinley. In contrast, in 1932, Democratic running mate John Nance Garner told reporters that Franklin Roosevelt was doing well on the campaign trail and did not need his help. In fact, Garner stayed in Washington, DC, for the entire campaign, spending part of his victorious election day fishing at home in Texas.
That didn’t mean that some vice presidential candidates couldn’t get into the fray. Richard Nixon, who ran as Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate in 1952, leveled corruption charges against the Truman administration and sneered, “Let’s call for the axe.” But Nixon was an anomaly. His opponent in 1956, Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, “vowed never to become ‘the political sharpshooter for his party.'”
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Nixon’s own vice presidential candidate in 1960, Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., exuded dignity and no gutter fighting, making him a secret “hero” to those who wanted a candidate who seemed “serious” and whose voice sounded “sincere.” In 1968, Nixon tried a different strategy, choosing Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew as his number two. Agnew quickly made a name for himself by going on the offensive against liberals, antiwar protesters, the counterculture and the press.
Yet before the 1970s, no one considered even the most aggressive vice presidential candidate an “attack dog.” The term itself did not exist before World War II and did not become part of the political vocabulary until after Agnew’s vice presidency. In an era of urban decay and rising crime – when security firms began to regularly hire attack dogs – this imagery seems to have resonated with some media, which began using it to describe electoral politics.
The first reference to a vice presidential candidate as the candidate’s “attack dog” is believed to have come from legendary columnist Mary McGrory in 1976, who used the phrase to criticize Gerald Ford’s choice of Bob Dole. Dole, McGrory wrote, was a “rabid partisan.” Therefore, she believed, Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter would do well to recognize Dole as “an attack dog you can ignore.”
Commentators like McGrory seemed to be calling for a more dignified politics in the face of the corruption of the Nixon-Agnew years. But she remained concerned that political rhetoric, especially among conservatives, was becoming increasingly aggressive. Dole, she wrote, was “a bone thrown to the smoldering right.” McGrory’s correct prediction was that the 1976 defeat would not stop the advance of the emerging far right into the Republican Party. “No matter how many times you feed the right,” they remained, in McGrory’s words, “hungry.”
And indeed, within a few years, strategists began to consider a fighting dog as a running mate as a potential asset for presidential campaigns. As Jerry Gray of the New York Times It is a way to “enable the presidential candidate to stay out of the tough fight and be safe from possible public backlash,” he wrote. Newsday agreed with “the theory that a presidential candidate who throws mud runs the risk of mudslinging himself.”
This was the case when George H.W. Bush chose the younger, more ebullient Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana as his nominee in 1988. After a rocky start to his vice presidential campaign, Quayle finally found his rhythm in his “assigned role as (Bush’s) attack dog in chief.” While Bush himself threw some rhetorical punches at Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, Quayle was content to deflect some of the criticism away from Bush himself. As he later recalled, “From a political perspective, it would be OK if they … wanted to spend all their energy attacking the vice president, because then they would give the president more of a free pass.”
Still, it was not a given that the running mate would take on the role of attack dog. In fact, Dole chose Jack Kemp as his running mate in 1996, and the former quarterback refused to play along. Late in the campaign, Kemp spent valuable time defending his political style, repeating in interviews, “I’m not an attack dog.” Instead, he preferred to present positive arguments for a Dole presidency. Four years later, Democrat Joe Lieberman insisted that a presidential campaign “doesn’t have to be evil” and that he would not play “the traditional role of … attack dog.”
Yet both Kemp and Lieberman lost the election—a fact that should not have escaped the attention of campaign strategists in both parties. As a result, in 2008, both Barack Obama and John McCain chose their running mates—Joe Biden and Sarah Palin—partly based on their ability to blend with the other side. Liz Sidoti of the Associate PresidentHe described the inexperienced Obama’s decision to choose the experienced Biden as the message: “Don’t worry, the Vice President’s attack dog is here – and he’s hungry for a fight.”
While Palin is best remembered for her spectacular failure, which may have hurt McCain’s chances, she was initially extremely successful in mobilizing Republican support behind her candidate. In her speech at the Republican National Convention, she described herself as a new kind of attack dog: “You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick.” The crowd went wild, and for a few days McCain was tied with Obama in the polls.
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By 2012, the division of labor between presidential and vice presidential candidates was so widespread that the Dallas Morning news had “Be the Fighting Dog” at the top of the list of nots for Republican Mitt Romney before his first debate with Obama. That was the task of vice-candidate Paul Ryan. John Dickerson, then a writer for slatenoted that Ryan’s political skills had seemingly disappeared as he was busy “playing the role of the vice president’s attack dog.” Biden, on the other hand, “remains content in the role of attack dog,” the Associated Press noted before his debate with Ryan.
Given the way Donald Trump has upended American politics, it is perhaps not surprising that the 2016 campaign ended the notion that the presidential candidate should stay out of the fray and leave the dirty work to his vice president. As Trump’s campaign stalled in mid-October, Maggie Haberman of the New York Times noted that he had begun “launching attacks himself rather than leaving them to his aides or proxies.” Just the headline of Haberman’s article was “Donald Trump Recalls His Primaries Attack Dog: Donald Trump,” signaling this final shift in campaign expectations. And it wasn’t just Trump. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton was, in the words of Fred Kaplan in slate“suitable to be their own fighting dog.”
This did not mean that the vice presidential candidates would return to the roles Kemp and Lieberman had envisioned. Rather, it meant that both parties on the ballot would now be dragging the ballot through the mud.
Today, they are attack dogs all over the ballot box. Kamala Harris’ first two weeks as the presumptive Democratic nominee have shown that she has no intention of letting her new running mate do the heavy lifting when it comes to attacking Trump. And she shouldn’t. That would be unilateral disarmament, and today there is simply too much at stake.
Charles J. Holden is a professor of history at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. His books include Republican Populist: Spiro Agnew and the Origins of Donald Trump’s America (University of Virginia Press, 2019), co-authored with Zach Messitte and Jerald Podair.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME hereThe opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors..
