Quote:
Originally Posted by vtred
Weekly "what if" fight match-up:
25th amendment tag team:
Harry Truman/Gerald Ford vs. Calvin Coolidge/Lyndon Johnson?
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Either of those tag teams would get a whuppin' put on em by the John Tyler/Andrew Johnson pairing. Tyler was a closet Democrat serving as a Whig president, Johnson was an actual Democrat serving as a GOP president. It requires no great imagination to see that these are formulas for disasters and indeed, that is how they unfolded. Tyler is the only president to be expelled from his own party while serving in the White House, Johnson they tried to expell from the office itself.
As the first to be elevated to the presidency though not elected to that office, Tyler was called "His Accidentcy" and in the pre 15th ammendment days, there was a real question as to whether he was the president for the rest of Harrison's term, or he was merely "acting president", an office caretaker until a special election could be organized. Johnson was only on the ballot because the GOP needed to attract Democrat votes in the North and Andrew had established himself as some sort of symbol by being the only Senator from a rebelling state who remained loyal to the Union. No one wanted him to be president and they were justified in these views, Johnson was not a good man for the job. Ill tempered, an inflexible black/white thinker, a drinker who could not hold his booze and no friend of the freed slaves, Johnson wanted to conduct reconstruction by himself and wanted to act as though there had been no war and everything was just as it was before the hostilities. In short, Johnson's notion was that the four years of blood and treasure invested in the war, were for nothing.