Answer: Vice President Spiro Agnew
Vice President Spiro Agnew appeared on Meet the Press in September of his first year in the Nixon White House, 1969. The former Maryland governor was known for his opinionated politics and outsized persona, but he kept his focus on the accomplishments of President Nixon and the rest of the administration throughout most of the Meet the Press interview. But when it came to a discussion of his role in government, Agnew showed his famously direct style. In the last two minutes of the program, Meet the Press panel member Lawrence Spivak asked: “Mr. Vice President, traditionally Vice Presidents have found their jobs confining, unrewarding and frustrating. How do you find the job of Vice President?” Agnew’s response showed he was anything but confined or frustrated. He admitted, “Perhaps I have been accused in some cases of being a little more outspoken than Vice Presidents usually are.” But, he said that was because neither he nor Nixon saw the role of Vice President as a inhibited one: “I understand that my contribution to the administration, as the President understands it, will be enhanced by my being completely candid and forthright and attempting to bring to the national government the particular expertise that I have accumulated in state and local government.” He added that Nixon recognized that the Vice President is a “standby President.” In his second term as Vice President, Agnew would be accused of abusing that power; he was charged with accepting bribes and falsifying federal tax returns, and resigned from office in 1973. But there was no sign of such trouble in that early Meet the Press interview. At the end of the program, when asked if he had anything more to say about being a Vice President, Agnew cheerfully replied “I have little to add except that it keeps me pretty busy.”
You can watch more of Spiro Agnew’s 1969 appearance from Meet the Press at the beginning of his Vice Presidential career in the clip below.
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