CONTRARY to some opinions, it is not true that if you have seen one Vice President, you have seen them all. But the question of what kind of a Veep Spiro T. Agnew will make is more than usually clouded. At the beginning of the campaign, he made anonymity an asset. A joking reference to "What's-His-Name" warmed an audience up. The admission that Agnew w.as "not exactly a household word" carried a nice touch of modesty. By the end of the campaign, many Republican strategists wished that Agnew had remained What's-His-Name. The Vice President-elect had become not only a figure of comedy and controversy but also a decided liability. "Sure I think he hurt us," said a Nixon aide on Election Eve. "Don't you?"
Originally viewed in the Nixon camp as a hard-working but unobtrusive No. 2 man, the Maryland Governor was indeed industrious. He was anything but unobtrusive. In three months, "Agnewism" became virtually a synonym of "malapropism," and Democrats got good mileage out of such comments as "If you've seen one slum, you've seen them all." A Democratic TV commercial consisted of the simple legend "Agnew for Vice President?"—and nearly 30 seconds of laughter.
Forgotten Strengths. Chosen to assure Nixon Southern support at Miami Beach, Agnew was assigned the task of appealing to the potential Wallace vote. He began the drive with the standard spiel on law and order, but as the weeks passed, he grew progressively more abrasive. At times, except for the accent, he might have been mistaken for Wallace himself, making use of such Wallace-like expressions as "phony intellectual." In the end, though Agnew may have hurt Nixon overall, he appears to have helped him win critically important Border states.
More alarmed than they readily admitted by Agnew's clumsiness, Nixon aides gradually de-emphasized his role in the campaign. Increasingly, his rallies were held in suburbs, where he felt most at home, or in small cities. To eliminate, or at least minimize, his now famous bloopers, he held few press conferences and granted few interviews.
While Edmund Muskie sat with Hubert Humphrey in a pre-election TV talkathon from Los Angeles, Richard Nixon conducted his own four-hour program without the help of his running mate. To make sure that Agnew did not feel slighted, however, Nixon was almost comically extravagant in his praise. The Marylander, said Nixon, "is a man with brains. He's a man of very great courage. He doesn't wilt under fire." Meanwhile, Agnew campaigned in Virginia, then flew home to Maryland, where he relaxed on Election Day on the golf course, and gave a party in Government House, the official mansion, for 150 campaign workers.