by Tom Brennan
It is forgotten now, but Granite State press lord William Loeb was angry with President Richard Nixon in 1972, and thought he should be replaced with his Vice President, Spiro T. Agnew. Agnew is mostly forgotten too, half a century after he resigned as Vice President of the United States, a step ahead of the sheriff, but his story is important, and has profound relevance to today.
Nixon was reelected crafting a large conservative majority. Bill Loeb had always supported Dick Nixon, but thought he’d gone soft. Suspicious of Nixon’s national security advisor, who he called “Kissinger the Kike,” Loeb disliked the opening to China, and arms treaties with the Soviets. Loeb even backed a right fringe GOP alternative to Nixon in the NH primary, but urged voters to “hold their noses” and support Nixon in November. George McGovern was the alternative. The Vice President was Agnew, voice of the “Silent Majority.” Nixon wanted to dump Agnew in 1972, replacing him with John Connally, but Agnew was so popular with GOP conservatives, Nixon didn’t dare. As 1973 dawned, an irresistible slogan was making the rounds for the next election: The Spiro of ’76.
Fifty years ago October 10th, as another dangerous Middle East war escalated, and another president was at the center of a constitutional crisis, the bombastic VP slunk off stage, clutching a plea deal to avoid jail for “taking envelopes” stuffed with cash bribes — as county executive, governor, and vice president. He had taken these bribes since the start of his career in elected office, and rose in politics so fast he outpaced the statute of limitations.
Agnew’s fall had nothing to do with Watergate. A national figure for just five years, Vice President Agnew’s brief career and petty corruption were eclipsed by the grand corruption that climaxed his President’s long and operatic career.
Spiro has enjoyed a bit of a comeback of late. A masterful podcast by Rachel Maddow in 2019 strained to offer hope that current national level corruption would resolve itself as it did almost half a century earlier. But it is a different time, and among other things, a different media landscape. And back then, people were capable of at least some shame.
The Spiro Agnew story is still worth recalling. He was our first national level suburban politician. His fall made possible the Ford, Carter, and Reagan presidencies. He pioneered the politics of modern cultural resentment, colorfully expressed, dressed up as straight shooting, and ultimately exposed as a cynical ploy masking banal venality.
While the MAGA moment has it’s clowns, they are about as funny as John Wayne Gacy. Nixon and Agnew, on the other hand, were masters of unconscious humor. Nixon crawled with Freudian clues. He was forever insisting that he “never resented” something or other he clearly resented. Never comfortable in his own skin, Nixon famously tried to be “one of the boys” by asking the worldly journalist David Frost “so, did you get any fornicating in this weekend?” In humid DC summers, The Trickster would blast the AC while using the fireplace. In his final days in office, he commiserated with the paintings of past presidents, hanging on the White House walls. We forgive some rascality in our public officials so long as they entertain us. The slow witted nihilism of today’s MAGA thugs is simply not funny. It is not even interesting.
As for Agnew’s comedic gifts, his body of work in this area is impressive. Shortly after the obscure Maryland Governor became Nixon’s running mate in 1968, the opposition ran a TV ad that simply featured the sound of laughter, as the words “Agnew for Vice President” appeared on the screen. There were reasons this ad resonated.
Fondness for ethnic humor first gained Spiro widespread notice that autumn. A wave of urban ethnics left the cities for the booming suburbs after the Second World War. Spiro Theodore Agnew’s father was an immigrant from Greece, ran a restaurant in the gritty city of Baltimore, changing the family name from Anagnostopoulous to Agnew. Spiro Agnew began going by Ted Agnew, cutting his political teeth in the Kiwanis, PTA, and Loch Raven neighborhood association. Wounded by harsh reaction to his casual references to “pollacks” and “Fat Japs,” Agnew lamented loss of the “the camaraderie that allowed men to insult one another’s ethnicity in friendly fashion.” I’d like to teach the world to sing.
An avid golfer, Agnew often beaned spectators. Pat Buchanan and William Safire wrote many of the speeches that made Agnew famous, skewering the “liberal media” and counter culture with over the top alliteration about “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless hypochondriacs of history.” He found something suspicious about the children’s song Puff the Magic Dragon. Touted by Nixon as an expert on urban problems, Agnew, whose municipal experience was entirely suburban, helpfully explained his failure to campaign in cities by saying “if you’ve seen once city slum you’ve seen them all.”
He was a cartoonist’s delight. He had a thick neck, and looked like a bullet draped in shark skin suits that never lost the crease (his secret was to never lean back in a chair). He had a prominent nose, and hooded eyes that seemed smaller when he was angry. His short, carefully barbered, greying hair was heralded by the Men’s Hair Style and Barber’s Journal as “good grooming leadership,” at a time when half the country thought the other half needed nothing so much as a good haircut.
Of the longhaired protesters of his era, Vice President Agnew said “They can’t drive a bus, they can’t operate a lathe or run a business, all they can do is sleep in the park and kick policemen with razor blades.” In conversation Agnew was often dignified, articulate, and a bit stern, but his red meat speeches were delivered in a slow, jeering style that conveyed the barely contained rage and contempt felt by many of his admirers for his targets. Agnew frequently asserted that the most privileged in society were the most supportive of disorder and decadence, and the least loyal to the country. Today’s right wing populism echoes that. “The student now goes to college to proclaim, rather than to learn,” Agnew said, “The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated, in a contemporary antagonism known as the generation gap. A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs, who characterize themselves as intellectuals.” Agnew spoke of the college student’s “pot and Portnoy secreted in a knapsack, taking their tactics from Castro, and money from Daddy.” He joked about a “Spock marked generation.” “Today my friends,” Agnew told one audience, “decency is under assault in almost every aspect of our lives, most noticeably in the shouting and posturing of obscenities by the scruffy, shaggy, sons of the New Left.” Union construction workers, many of them former Democrats, began sporting hard hats with stickers proclaiming “Spiro is my hero.”
Ted Agnew was an unlikely true believer. His journey reflected rootless striving assimilation, and a cynical quality of assemblage, common to mid twentieth century suburban America. A Democrat in his youth, a Battle of the Bulge vet in the war, Spiro met his wife at the Baltimore insurance company where he was a young clerk. He worked his way through Baltimore law school night classes, switching from a major in Chemistry at Johns Hopkins. When his first law practice failed, he found work as a personnel manager at a grocery store chain. He wore a smock, dealt with shop lifters, and made politically useful friends negotiating for the meat cutters union. The future almost president would depart in a dispute with one of the store owners.
A mentor in law practice advised him he could rise faster, and make useful contacts for his law practice, in the Republican party. Baltimore County contains only the suburbs of the city of Baltimore, but was still dominated by a Democratic machine, and ambitious Dems had to wait their turn. Agnew would rise more quickly, his mentor advised, in the minority party. Agnew did just that, settling in suburban Towson, volunteering in GOP campaigns. He angled for a county council nomination in 1956. He lost a judgeship race in 1960. In between he secured appointment to the Zoning Board. The token Republican was viewed as honest and diligent. In 1961, Democrats purged him from the Zoning Board, and Agnew orchestrated a public outcry. This, and a divisive Dem primary, allowed Agnew to be elected Baltimore County Executive in 1962.
Agnew was a moderate to liberal Republican then. A reformer. But a lack of self awareness, which would hobble him later, surfaced in a bizarre incident. In 1963 big Republican names: Rockefeller, Goldwater, Nixon, etc. led the speculation about who could unseat JFK in 1964. And yet the obscure Baltimore County Exec decided it fell to him to promote Thomas Kuchel for the 1964 presidential nomination. Kuchel was the unprepossessing Senator from California, a party whip, a moderate in trouble in his home state with a party moving rightward. Kuchel never expressed interest in running for president, nor did anyone else express interest in his doing so. After an embarrassing face to face with Kuchel, Agnew dropped his endeavor.
Facing a united Baltimore County Democratic party, and likely defeat for a second term, Agnew rolled the dice again. He accepted what was thought a worthless GOP gubernatorial nomination. A bitter Democratic primary was then won by George P. Mahoney, a perennial also ran in Maryland, a wealthy paving contractor and a segregationist. He derided Agnew as a “big slob.” Mahoney associated with the KKK and derided open housing legislation. “Your home is your castle,” Mahoney would say. Agnew introduced himself with a musical jingle, to the tune of My Kind of Town, the song made popular by Agnew’s late life friend and benefactor Frank Sinatra, in the Rat Pack movie Robin and the Seven Hoods. “My kind of guy, Ted Agnew is…” Then Spiro took off the gloves.
As VP, Agnew would be key to Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” but in 1966, Agnew was a liberal hero. “These robed figures,” Agnew sneered, “these faceless men, these fright peddlers and fear mongers don’t scare me. My family and I are getting the threatening letters and phone calls typical of the extremist technique. Why were Klan members wearing Mahoney hats at their rally two weeks ago? It is nothing but bigotry this man Mahoney is appealing to.” Agnew told the Baltimore Kiwanis “There is no middle ground in this election. We chose the bright flame of righteousness or the evil fiery cross.” Agnew won easily, sweeping the DC suburbs, and usually Democratic black and Jewish precincts in Baltimore.
Agnew was a progressive Governor. He promoted a modernized state constitution. He signed the first open housing law south of the Mason-Dixon line. He also repeated his Kuchel folly on a grander scale, with large consequences. Nelson Rockefeller found running for president a painful experience in 1964. He was supporting Michigan Governor George Romney for the 1968 GOP nomination. He had set aside his own ambition. Governor Agnew, however, publicly insisted Rocky remembered where he put it, and heavily promoted Rockefeller. When Romney’s effort collapsed, Rocky was widely expected to enter the race. Agnew relished the imminent vindication, calling the press to his office to view the announcement on TV. Rocky announced he wasn’t running, without warning his proud fellow Governor. Agnew seethed. By the time Rockefeller entered the race 40 days later, Agnew had been to see Dick Nixon, and stopped returning Rocky’s calls.
During that 40 day interval, Martin Luther King was murdered, and urban America seemed to burst into flames. Agnew called in Baltimore civil rights leaders, and demanded they repudiate “black racism” and rioting. He began making cracks about all the folks at the Poor People’s encampment in Washington “arriving in Cadillacs.” Nixon noticed, and remarked approvingly to young Pat Buchanan, “I think we’ve got ourselves a hanging judge here.” Agnew placed Nixon in nomination at the convention. Nixon made the obscure Governor his surprise running mate. Despite the derisive laughter in opposition ads, Agnew proved a good fit for Nixon’s 1968 suburban and border state strategy.
As Eisenhower’s VP, Nixon had played the partisan heavy while Ike stayed clean. Agnew was not highly regarded by Nixon’s inner circle, and was not a player in the formation of policy, but Agnew relished his own role as the hatchet man, and played it with a style and confidence that appealed to a great many people. Nixon famously called these people “The Silent Majority,” the “non shouters, the non protesters.” The term appealed to their own self image as fair and patient. Not bigots or extremists but an abused mainstream, running out of patience with nonsense. Spiro Agnew was going to be their champion.
Agnew not only took on “radical liberal Democrats,” supposed discrimination against white southern supreme court nominees, and the counter culture. He also took on what today is called “The Fake News Media.” In contrast with the range of choices today, LBJ gave Agnew this warning in 1969. “Son, in this country we have three networks: CBS, NBC, and ABC. We have two newspapers: the New York Times and the Washington Post. We have two wire services: AP and UPI. We have two magazines: TIME and Newsweek. And don’t get any ideas about fighting.” Early on Nixon vented his frustration with this insular world in his bitter “last press conference” of 1962, after losing the presidency narrowly in 1960, followed by a humiliating loss for Governor of California in 1962.
Agnew had a feel for middle America’s suspicion and resentment of condescending “media elites,” who seemed to mock their values, and attribute every disagreement to their bigotry and obtuseness. Agnew’s subsequent disgrace, and suspect motives, made it too easy to dismiss his arguments, which might better have been weighed more thoughtfully. Today anyone can become a media outlet. Trust in legacy media and corporate media have collapsed, in part because their power has been abused. The abuses and censorship by corporate media, and now ‘big tech,” are decried today on the right and left. Today the public has no agreed to set of facts to operate from. Nothing more empowers bad actors or more endangers stable democracy.
The networks broadcast in full Agnew’s 1969 attack on them, in a speech in Des Moines. Then they accused him of trying to chill free speech. Nixon was not adverse to being vindictive with critical media outlets. Had not Watergate weakened his hand, Nixon fully intended to have the FCC yank a TV station license from the Washington Post company, which would likely have ruined them. Tricia Nixon, the President’s daughter, praised Agnew for “helping the media reform themselves.” She added sweetly “you can never under estimate the power of fear.” Some detected a whiff off antisemitism in Agnew’s emphasis on New York TV producers.
Agnew denied all. His salvo at the networks was in response to sympathetic coverage of the anti Vietnam war protests. “I just flew out to Des Moines and exercised my right to dissent” Agnew would say sarcastically. “I’m not asking for government censorship of the news or any other kind of censorship,” Agnew stressed, “I am asking whether a form of censorship already exists when the news that 40 million Americans receive each night is filtered through a handful of commentators who admit to their own set of biases.” Agnew called them “a tiny, closed fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one, and enjoying a monopoly licensed and sanctioned by government.” Agnew said the relatively new network news shows were “a concentration of power unknown in history.” Hearst, and other conservative press lords of yore, might have differed with that. “The President has a right to communicate directly with the people who elected him” without “instant analysis” by “hostile critics,” Agnew insisted.
Until his fall Agnew was regarded by many as a serious man.
One fan was the powerful Newsweek columnist Stewart Alsop. Alsop was a Cold Warrior Democrat, a social friend of the Kennedy’s. After Agnew’s fall, shortly before Alsop died, he related his chagrin at having been fooled by Agnew. He wrote that he found Agnew more likeable and serious than most politicians he knew. Agnew was “serious about ideas, there was an impressive gravity about the man. Above all, he seemed a proud man.” Yet Alsop concluded, “the man who might have been president turned out to be a crook.”
Agnew’s fall was swift, and almost comically accidental. He turned quiet in 1972 as he and Nixon cruised to re-election. He escaped the stain of Watergate, never being part of Nixon’s inner circle. The US attorney for Baltimore was a Boy Scout named George Beall, son of one Republican Senator from Maryland, brother of the current one. His office was looking into corruption in Baltimore County, controlled by Democrats, in the form of kickbacks to county officials from builders, engineers, and architects in exchange for lucrative contracts in the growing county. Agnew’s overwrought efforts to shut down the investigation aroused suspicion about him. Beall, and Attorney General Elliot Richardson played it straight. Richardson also coveted the 1976 GOP presidential nomination, but 1973 would disrupt a lot of people’s plans. Agnew was incredulous that, aside from a gentle inquiry about being a team player from GOP Chair George HW Bush, the White House would not intervene with their own Justice Department on the Vice President’s behalf.
The case against Agnew was strong. It developed that the same people that had been handing Baltimore Dems envelopes stuffed with cash had been doing it for Agnew when he was county executive. Moreover, Agnew continued the practice while Governor, and even Vice President! Agnew insisted that his accusers were making it up, trying to save their own skins by offering up a juicier target. But the evidence that usually settles such questions weighed heavily against him. Agnew took envelopes from people who kept careful contemporaneous records. Chemical testing of the ink and paper authenticated this. A net worth investigation, common in tax evasion cases, revealed Agnew spending far more than he made. Agnew appeared to be supporting a mistress. The manners of 1973 left that unreported. When Agnew’s wife learned of the extent of his legal problems she fainted.
Agnew would likely have been convicted and jailed. In public, Agnew reverted to his usual posture. He attacked the motives of the prosecutors, tried to intimidate journalists, and tried to evade the criminal justice system by insisting that impeachment by congress was the proper forum to address the charges. Agnew had enough friends in congress, he believed, to fend off conviction, which required two thirds of the senate. Moreover, a jury of politicians would not be unfamiliar with the overlapping of political fundraising and personal expenses in an era of far less regulation, disclosure, and accountability. But congress declined to cooperate with this legally dubious scheme. Vice Presidents do not enjoy the same immunity as presidents.
Attorney General Richardson was well aware of Nixon’s legal jeopardy in Watergate. He contemplated the danger to the country, amid a world in crisis, if Nixon had to resign while the Vice President was on trial for bribery. His staff wanted to prosecute and jail Agnew. Richardson’ s priority was to get Agnew out of the line of succession to the presidency. Agnew was publicly bombastic, vowing he would “not resign if indicted.” In private he made a deal. He would resign and plead no contest to a count of tax evasion in exchange for no jail time. Richardson agreed, but insisted that the evidence against Agnew be made public. Agnew resigned October 10, 1973.
Ten days later Richardson would be forced out as Attorney General, essentially for not shutting down the Watergate investigation. By the following August, the courts would pry loose the evidence of Nixon’s Watergate guilt. Facing impeachment and conviction, Nixon resigned. Agnew’s successor as VP, appointed by Nixon, would succeed Nixon as president, pardon him, win an award from the Kennedy family for doing so — and perhaps embolden subsequent bad actors, with whom the United State is contending to this day. Richardson was a hero to many, but finished in GOP politics. Prosecutor Beall would send several Baltimore county Dems to prison, as well as Agnew’s Democratic successor as Governor.
Agnew was stoic. He left public life. He took care of his staff. His friend Frank Sinatra gave him loans to tide him over, which he repaid. Loeb had soured on Agnew, not because of the bribes, but because of Sinatra’s jet set lifestyle. The hypocrisy of Loeb’s puritan pose would come to light in the fullness of time. Disbarred, Agnew tried to acquire a Coors beer distributorship. Actress Eva Gabor’s husband thought Agnew’s “communication skills” would help his international business ventures, but his board balked.
Agnew wrote two books. The first was a novel about a vice president, which gave more hints about his hostility to the “Jewish Controlled Media.” The second was a memoir, “Go Quietly, or Else,” best remembered for claiming Nixon Chief of Staff, General Alexander Haig, threatened Agnew with being killed if he didn’t resign. Haig denied all. Haig enjoyed playing the bad cop, and indeed urged Agnew to leave. Agnew quotes Haig as saying things like “this could get ugly, the president has a lot of power, anything could be in the offing.” Agnew said he took that to mean he might have an “accident,” a “heart attack,” or be set up with a fake suicide. The former vice president had “no doubt” the US government was capable of such. This undoubtedly fueled Agnew’s fertile imagination. If such were in the offing, John Dean would probably not be with us today.
Richardson recalled Nixon’s cynical reaction when he shared evidence of the misdeeds of the man Nixon selected to be his vice president. He expected Nixon to be shaken. Instead Nixon casually remarked that “all the Maryland politicians are like that.” Agnew inexplicably protested his innocence, but his true feelings would come to light, and they were similar to Nixon’s. In his memoir, Agnew made some peevish comments about his lawyer, who had been his friend for decades. This released that lawyer from attorney-client confidentiality. In a civil proceeding in 1981, which found Agnew had indeed “taken the envelopes,” Agnew’s lawyer quoted Agnew as admitting guilt. “It’s been going on since the beginning of time” Agnew explained.
Mostly Agnew lived a private life. Ultimately Agnew would prosper as a kind of international man of mystery, enough so to afford to live near Sinatra in Rancho Mirage, California (with a condo in Ocean City, Maryland). He moved in circles that didn’t much care about the envelopes he took, didn’t quite understand what all the fuss was about, but who allowed him continued opportunities to improve himself financially based the offices he held. Agnew had enough stature to be a rain maker, a door opener, at least among the dictators of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Romania (all later killed by their own people). Agnew picked up an $800,000.00 commission for arranging to have uniforms for Saddam’s military to be produced in Romania at, shall we say, below union scale wages. His hard hat supporters, to say nothing of his friends in the meat cutters union, would be disappointed. That was one heavy envelope.
About the Saudis, a very interesting letter surfaced after Agnew passed away in 1996. Always hustling, Agnew wrote Prince Fah’d in 1980, citing “unremitting Zionist efforts to destroy me.” Elliot Richardson (who was as Waspy as they come BTW) was in on it too. Agnew said he was “framed” because he was not supportive enough of Israel. Agnew added that B’nai B’rith arranged for his former attorney to sue him! All part of an effort to bleed him of resources and thus prevent him from telling the American people about Zionist control of their media. Agnew asked for $2 million in a Swiss bank account, so it would “not be traceable to the Saudi royal family.” If that was not “suitable,” how about “any idea that might give me about $200,000 a year for three years? “I so want to continue my fight against the Zionist enemies who are destroying my once great nation.”
The 39th Vice President of the United States concluded his letter to Prince Fah’d with “congratulations to Your Highness on the clear and courageous call to Jihad.” That’s the last time the Jews in Baltimore vote for him for governor.
The son of Greek immigrants had come a long way from his father’s Baltimore restaurant. He had moved to the suburbs, and lived the American Dream, which ended in what he described as his “nightmare come true.” This history is darkly funny, deeply tragic, and very relevant to our current condition.