He was short and bushy-browed and looked like a roguish Kewpie doll. Franklin Roosevelt called him "Mr. Common Sense." John L. Lewis tagged him a "poker-playing, whisky-drinking, labor-baiting, evil old man." To most Americans he was best known as "Cactus Jack."
Out of the arid—and cactiferous—wastes of southern Texas, where even today the cowboys say you can see farther, and see less, than anywhere else on earth, John Nance Garner carved a hefty fiefdom along the Rio Grande and parlayed his brand of conservative populism (with due regard for the interests of cattle, oil and Democratic regularity) into 46 years of power. His political personality was quintessentially Texan: grass-rooted, plainspoken, coyote-cunning, and he set a style of congressional clout that made him perhaps the most influential Vice President in U.S. history.
Staying Hitched. Born in 1868 in a mud-chinked cabin near Blossom Prairie, Garner took to politics like a bird dog after quail. In 15 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, he rose to Speaker; then in 1932 he made a bid for the presidency. With potent support from William Randolph Hearst, Garner held the Texas and California delegations until the fourth ballot, then threw his votes to F.D.R., in a deal that made him the ticket's No. 2 man.
Through the years in which Cactus Jack's legend grew, he enjoyed the tales as much as the public. They called him as taciturn as Coolidge, and he boasted that he had gone eight years in Congress without making a speech. They called him a miser and—though a multimillionaire—he employed his wife as full-time secretary and cook. He doted on hunting, fishing, poker and pungent Mexican cigars, loved his sour-mash bourbon and glorified convivial nipping as "striking a blow for liberty." Many a blow was struck with congressional leaders of both parties and with his protégés, Sam Rayburn and Wilbur Mills. In those backroom meetings of what he called the "Board of Education," Garner usually got his way, and Rayburn continued them as Speaker. Above all, Cactus Jack kept his word, which he characteristically called "staying hitched."
Garner was no mere usher for the New Deal. He was its midwife, using his years of Capitol Hill experience to ram much of F.D.R.'s program through Congress in the famous "first 100 days." Just as fellow Texans Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson would do later, Garner operated behind the scenes. Through the first two F.D.R. terms he stayed hitched to Roosevelt, whom he called "Cap'n." A lifelong foe of Eastern banking interests, he had been a major force in forging a graduated income tax, guaranteeing bank deposits, and baiting big business. Garner worked loyally for Roosevelt's bill to pack the Supreme Court, but considered it a tactical error; when it failed, the Cap'n pulled away from his first mate.
Failure & Regret. The break became public in 1940, when Roosevelt began to flirt with a third term. Garner unhitched himself, offered his own name in opposition, was crushed, swore in Henry Wallace as Vice President and retired to Uvalde, vowing never again to cross the Potomac.