Vice President Garner would say: ‘It’s 12 o’clock somewhere’

John Nance Garner of Uvalde, Texas, was America’s “New Deal” vice president. Operating behind the scenes, he pushed through federal legislation beginning in 1933 that propelled President Franklin D. Roosevelt into the national limelight.

 

Garner was known as “Cactus Jack.” It was a nickname he “earned” while serving as a young buck state legislator in Texas. He had introduced a bill in 1901 to name the prickly pear cactus as the official Texas state flower. 

The prickly pear cactus – technically classified as both a fruit and a vegetable – was prevalent in Garner’s district that included Uvalde and the Texas Hill Country River Region.

He believed the spring blossoms on a prickly pear cactus were more beautiful than an orchid. Some folks said the flower was the original “yellow rose of Texas.”

 

Historians say Garner became rather prickly himself during his eight-year stint as America’s vice president.

 

Garner once questioned his own sanity: What made him give up his chair as Speaker of the House of Representatives to become vice president? He viewed the office as “a no man’s land somewhere between the legislative and executive branch,” wrote author Bascom Timmons.

 

Dr. Patrick L. Cox, a Texas historian, said Garner also commented that the office of the vice president “is not worth a quart of warm spit.” Garner complained that he used a different four-letter word, but “those pantywaist writers wouldn’t print it the way I said it.” 

Garner enjoyed smoking cigars and drinking whiskey with members of Congress. He was prone to announce to his friends, “It’s twelve o’clock somewhere,” which meant it was time to open the bar, wrote Ray Hill of The Knoxville (Tenn.) Focus, an online news source. 

Yet, “John Nance Garner helped change the vice presidency from a mere ceremonial post to a position of some influence,” Hill wrote. “No modern vice president has ever been more influential with Senators and Representatives than John Nance Garner.” 

“Roosevelt, fully understanding Garner’s popularity and usefulness, sought out his vice president’s views at Cabinet meetings, and the Texan helped to pass much of the early New Deal legislation,” Hill added.

 

Indeed, Garner and fellow Texan Sam Rayburn, who was Garner’s successor as Speaker of the House were “at the apex of the New Deal power pyramid,” said Lionel V. Patenaude of the Texas State Historical Society. 

“But as the New Deal drifted toward welfare-state concepts, Garner demurred. By 1935, he began to refer to some or Roosevelt’s programs as ‘plain damn foolishness,’” Patenaude said. “By 1938, he was opposed to most of the New Deal proposals, especially those involving government spending.”

 

“Though Garner never openly acknowledged his split with Roosevelt, their mutual hostility continued,” Patenaude remarked. “Because of their mutual distrust, during the last two years of Roosevelt’s second administration, Garner opposed virtually everything the president wanted. In effect, he became ‘the leader and the brains of the opposition’ to the man with whom he had been elected.” 

Garner was appalled when Roosevelt began to hint at the possibility of an unprecedented third term as president. Garner declared his own candidacy for president in December 1939. The increasing instability in Europe, however, assured Roosevelt’s nomination and eventual election, with a new running mate – Henry A. Wallace of Iowa, former Secretary of Agriculture under Roosevelt. 

After the inauguration in 1941, Garner and his wife, Mariette Rheiner Garner, who was his personal secretary throughout his 38-year political career in Washington, D.C., boarded a train bound for Uvalde, Texas. They crossed the Potomac River for the last time.