Word: throttlebottoms
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...Ball. So firmly was the vice presidency fixed in the American mind as the symbol of uselessness that it was easy for the musical satire, Of Thee I Sing, to establish Alexander Throttlebottom as the quintessence of vice presidentiality...
Richard Nixon, heir to the Throttlebottom dynasty, realized the painfully narrow limits of the job and, in the best vice-presidential tradition, made jokes about it. On Election Day 1952, Candidate Nixon and a friend were tossing a football on Laguna Beach, Calif, with three marines who happened by. Chasing a fumble, Nixon and one marine almost collided. Recognition lit up the marine's face. He exclaimed: "Good God, you're some kind of a celebrity!" Answered Dick Nixon: "No, I'm not a celebrity. I'm running for Vice President...
Handicapped by an archaic 1872 charter which made him, like all his predecessors, the Throttlebottom of the city council, he set up mayor's commissions on everything from human relations to smoke abatement. He was a great hand at patching labor troubles. After settling one row, Humphrey proudly explained: "What labor and management need is a catalytic agent. And brother, that's little Hubert...
...know the world as Roosevelt knew it, and the world did not know him. When he spoke informally, in American idiom, the world was likely to misunderstand him. Apprehensive Britons, reading that he felt as if a bull had fallen on him, might mistakenly take him for a Throttlebottom. They would feel better if they knew that he had privately had a lot to do with the Senate resolution on world cooperation last year. They would also be wise if they remembered that in all things having to do with the British, Harry Truman would be a man from Missouri...
...might again have won the Vice Presidential nomination. But the President chose to buy party unity instead. He gave the go-ahead to unexciting Harry S. Truman of Missouri, whom none of the three factions could warm to-nor strenuously object to, either. The Vice-Presidency had more than Throttlebottom proportions this time: each delegate kept uppermost in mind that his choice for Vice President might become President...