There is a joke that Woodrow Wilson’s Vice President Thomas Marshall once told, “There were two brothers, one went to sea and the other became vice president. Neither was heard from again”. This joke has largely been a historical reality, and if we think the vice presidents are often forgotten, then VP nominees who don’t make it are very much so. Who outside Virginia, for instance, remembers that Hillary Clinton’s running mate was Senator Tim Kaine in 2016? Who remembers Jack Kemp was Dole’s running mate in 1996? Although Goldwater was quite a memorable loser, his vice presidential nominee is very much forgotten in William Edward “Bill” Miller (1914-1983).
After serving in World War II, Miller, who had in peacetime been a lawyer, served as an assistant prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials under Justice Robert Jackson. Although as opposed to communism as any American conservative, he would cite the Nazis as an example of ultimate evil rather than communists (McGill). Miller was first elected to Congress in 1950 after Congressman William Pfeiffer decided to step down after one term.
Miller was more known for his conservatism than his predecessor or even Pfeiffer’s predecessor, the more prominent Ham Andrews. Interestingly, his DW-Nominate score only comes out at a 0.263, which looks paltry compared to modern Republicans. However, Americans for Constitutional Action regarded him as a stronger conservative in his record. His scores adjusted to count legislative pairs are:
1957 – 80
1958 – 100
1959 – 100
1960 – 70
1961 – 100
1962 – 64
1963 – 93
1964 – 75
One of the issues Miller was most known for was as a staunch foe of public power generation, and went to bat for private power companies at Niagara Falls (The New York Times). However, Miller, consistent with New York’s largely internationalist reputation, regularly voted for foreign aid bills, although he supported some cuts. He also had a reputation for his caustic rhetoric, including referring to President Harry S. Truman as a “hatchet man”, charging President Kennedy with staging “a smoothly rehearsed crybaby performance” over the Senate defeating a Medicare bill in 1962, and stating that “There are only two businesses better off today than they were under the Republican Party. That’s the seat belt business in Texas [over LBJ’s driving]and the paint business in Washington to whitewash investigations [over the Bobby Baker scandal]” (The New York Times). Although Miller sponsored few significant laws, he was a formidable debater and this won him popularity with his Republican colleagues.
In 1956, although Miller had been a co-sponsor of the Eisenhower Administration’s proposed voting rights bill, he turned against it. It was rumored on Capitol Hill that Miller had exchanged his vote for Rules Committee Chairman Howard W. Smith (D-Va.) blocking a Senate-passed bill placing power development in the Niagara Falls region to the New York State Power Authority, but no deal was ever confirmed to have existed (The New York Times, September 6). However, this seemed to have been a one-off. Miller would assert that the 1956 bill had some unique problems and would support other civil rights measures, including the strong Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1959, Miller voted to oust House Minority Leader Joe Martin (R-Mass.) in favor of Charles Halleck (R-Ind.), winning favor with the victorious latter. That year, he broke from New York Republican orthodoxy by announcing his support for Richard Nixon’s candidacy for the nomination before Governor Nelson Rockefeller had decided to drop out.
In 1961, Miller was selected as the chairman of the Republican National Committee, and was a capable leader, making many speeches and traveling across the nation to promote the Republican cause. Kentucky Senator Thruston Morton, his predecessor, said of him that “He’s done an effective job, and he’s done it on skin and bones. He’s liquidated the party’s debt and he’s run the committee well on K rations” (Time Magazine). However, his popularity in his district was declining. Miller’s popularity had taken hits for three reasons. First, his home county was economically declining, second, his interest in his district was declining, and third, Miller’s strident attacks on President Kennedy did not go over well with many of the district’s Catholic voters (The New York Times, September 6). In 1962, he had a tough reelection, winning with 52% of the vote. Miller was also on the outs with Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and he thought that his career was over so he announced he would not run for reelection in 1964 (Time Magazine). However, at the Republican National Convention Goldwater announced that Miller was his choice for running mate. This was a rather odd choice, and the conventional thought was that Goldwater would balance out the ticket by picking moderate Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton. However, Miller shared Goldwater’s philosophy for the most part and Goldwater told a group of Republican state chairmen that one of the reasons he picked him was that “he drives Lyndon Johnson nuts” (Time Magazine). The trouble is, however, that picking a VP nominee with the intent of sticking it to your opponent didn’t work in 1960 either. Goldwater was hoping that Miller’s presence on the ticket would push LBJ into a mistake, but this did not come to pass. The Goldwater-Miller ticket went down in flames, with the ticket winning only 39% of the vote and Arizona plus five Deep South states. For the latter, his vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enough, especially in Alabama and Mississippi.
Although after 1964 Goldwater would make a comeback to the Senate, Miller never returned to politics. He stated in retrospect, “I worked so hard as a candidate for Vice President, and it turned out so badly that I decided I’d never work again” (McGill). Although not a bad politician by any stretch, Miller stands as one of the worst picks for VP as he added nothing to the ticket. He was essentially “Goldwater Light”. In 1975, Miller for a brief time was back in the spotlight featuring in American Express ads. Funny enough, more people in his last years recognized him for being in the American Express ads than for his political career. On June 24, 1983, Miller died from complications of a stroke. Goldwater, at the time still in the Senate, stated that “he was one of the greatest men I have ever known and I feel his loss very deeply” (McGill). One of Miller’s children is Stephanie Miller, who fell quite far from the apple tree, being a progressive talk radio host.
When I first set to work looking into Miller, I thought that he had sacrificed a Congressional career to run for vice president. After all, his successor was a Republican. But Henry Smith was a different animal than Miller.
References
Bill Miller Am Ex Commercial. YouTube.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcCKFP2AUqg
Man in the News; Goldwater’s Running Mate William Edward Miller. (1964, July 17). The New York Times.
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McGill, D.C. (1983, June 25). Ex-Rep. William Miller, 69, Dies; Goldwater’s 1964 Running Mate. The New York Times.
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Miller Spurned the Usual Road to Political Advancement. (1964, September 6). The New York Times.
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Miller, William Edward. Voteview.
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https://www.voteview.com/person/6516/william-edward-miller
Nation: Running Mate. (1964, July 24). Time Magazine.
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https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,939010,00.html