FORWARD to Veeptopus

So the book is here VEEPTOPUS: VICE PRESIDENTS WITH OCTOPUSES ON THEIR HEADS, and it is spectacular! It is also SOLD OUT!

You can still get a Jon Crow original print of a vice president with an octopus on his (and perhaps one day soon, her) head. And you should.

I gave my dad a Spiro Agnew for Father's Day and can't wait to put up my print of my namesake (Aaron Burr - who may have inadverdantly inspired me to get into this business) on my wall.

Maybe Aaron Burr isn't for you? How about Elbridge Gerry (he didn't do much as VP, but he gave us the term gerry-mander.)

 Maybe VPs with cephalopods aren't your thing? How about Taft with a badger?

I have long been a supporter of the entire Veeptopus enterprise. So much so that I contributed a forward to the book. I've written (ok co-authored) three books. So I'm an author. But Forwards are written by august persona, leaders. The opportunity to lend gravitas to this worthy project was an opportunity I could not miss.

So, here is how I introduced this important (and beautiful) volume:

By placing octopi on the heads of vice presidents and creating Veeptopus, Jonathan Crow has a done a great service to American democracy.

The renowned political scientist Samuel Huntington once observed, “Comedy depends on incongruity” and that American humor is born of the incongruity between American ideals and American reality. Prominent but powerless, the veep embodies incongruity.

The annals of the vice presidency include many formerly prominent politicians, reduced to historical footnotes by their office.

Perhaps the archetypal denizen of the nation’s second highest office was the fictional Alexander Throttlebottom of the 1931 George S. Kaufman musical Of Thee I Sing. Throttlebottom could only get into the White House by joining the White House tour. The tour guide fails to recognize him and is surprised at how much Throttlebottom knows about the vice president. Throttlebottom explains that the vice president is nice enough, but no one wants to get to know him. “What’s wrong with him?” the tour guide asks. Throttlebottom replies, “There’s nothing wrong with him. Just vice-president.”

In recent years, the office has changed. In fact, after the Cheney vice presidency scholars and pundits worried about unchecked vice presidential power. An exaggeration perhaps, nonetheless, having spent the better part of a decade studying them I can state that the individuals only a heartbeat away from the presidency are Throttlebottoms no more.

So be grateful for Veeptopus in which Jonathan Crow restores some of the incongruity inherent in the vice presidency, providing a much needed antidote to the growing seriousness about our nation’s second highest office.

Aaron Mannes, PhD

Author Veepcritique.com

A blog about the vice presidency