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Spiro Theodore Agnew was born in Baltimore, Maryland on November 9, 1918. His parents were Theodore Spiros Agnew, a Greek immigrant who shortened his name from Anagnostopoulos when he moved to the US, and Margaret Marian Akers Pollard Agnew, a native of Virginia. Agnew graduated from Johns Hopkins University and from the University of Baltimore School of Law. He was drafted into the United States Army in 1941, serving as an officer during World War II, and was recalled for service during the Korean War in 1950. He worked as an aide for U.S. Representative James Devereux before he was appointed to the Baltimore County Board of Zoning Appeals in 1957. He lost election for the Baltimore City Circuit Court in 1960, but was later elected Baltimore County Executive in 1962. In 1966 Agnew was elected the 55th Governor of Maryland, defeating Democratic opponent George P. Mahoney. He was the first Greek American to hold the position, serving from 1967 to 1969.
Nixon chose Agnew because of his moderate image, his background as the son of Greek immigrants and for his success in a traditionally Democratic state. Agnew was seen as a candidate who could attract Southern moderate voters, but who was not identified with the Deep South. Agnew had been a strong supporter of Nelson Rockefeller, Nixon's main opponent for the GOP nomination, but by June he switched to supporting Nixon.
During the 1968 general election campaign against Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Agnew served as the attack dog, hammering the Democrats on the issue of "law and order". Agnew's Vice Presidency was also the highest-ranking United States political office ever reached by either a Greek American citizen or a Marylander.
Agnew soon adopted the role as the voice of the so-called "silent majority". By late 1969 he was ranking high on national "Most Admired Men" polls. He also inspired a fashion craze when one entrepreneur introduced Spiro Agnew watches (a take off on the popular Mickey Mouse watch). Conservatives wore them to show their support for Agnew, while many liberals wore them to mock him.
Agnew was known for his scathing criticisms of political opponents, especially journalists and anti-war activists. He attacked his adversaries with relish, hurling unusual, often alliterative epithets—some of which were coined by White House speechwriters William Safire and Pat Buchanan. These included "pusillanimous pussyfooters", "nattering nabobs of negativism" (written by Safire), and "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history". He once described a group of opponents as "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals." Agnew spoke out against anti-war protesters and media portrayal of the Vietnam War, labeling them "un-American". However he also spoke out publicly against the actions of the Ohio Army National Guard that led to the Kent State shootings in 1970, describing their action as "murder". Agnew toned down his rhetoric and dropped most of the alliterations after the 1972 election, with a view to running
for president himself in 1976.
Relations between Nixon and Agnew deteriorated, almost from the start of their professional relationship. Nixon felt his vice president lacked the intelligence or vision, particularly in foreign affairs and he began freezing Agnew out of the White House decision-making process. By 1970, Agnew was limited to seeing the president only during cabinet meetings or in occasional and brief one-on-one meetings, with Agnew given no opportunity to discuss anything of substance. White House tapes reveal that in 1971, Nixon and his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, discussed their desire to have Agnew resign from office prior to the following year's campaign season. One plan to achieve this was to try to persuade conservative investors to purchase one of the television networks, and then invite Agnew to run it. Another was to see if Bob Hope would be willing to take Agnew on as his partner in his cable television investments. These and other plans never went beyond the talking stages. When John Ehrlichman, the President's counsel and assistant, asked Nixon why he kept Agnew on the ticket in the 1972 election, Nixon replied that it was because "No assassin in his right mind would kill me."
In April 1973, when revelations about Watergate began to surface, Agnew was the choice of 35 percent of Republican voters to be the next Republican nominee for President, just ahead of then-California Governor Ronald Reagan. If it wasn't for his past coming back to haunt him, Agnew would have become president when Nixon resigned the following year instead of Gerald Ford.
On October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew became the second Vice President to resign the office. (John C. Calhoun was the first). Agnew resigned after being charged with accepting almost $30,000 in bribes, while Governor of Maryland. He pleaded no contest to charges of tax evasion as part of a plea bargain. was accused of accepting $29,500 in bribes. Agnew was fined $10,000 and put on three years' probation. The plea bargain was criticized by former Maryland Attorney General Stephen Sachs as "the greatest deal since the Lord spared Isaac on the mountaintop". Professor John F. Banzhaf III from the George Washington University Law School had a group of his students, known as Banzhaf's Bandits, find four residents of the state of Maryland willing to put their names on a case and sought to have Agnew repay the state $268,482, the amount it was said that Agnew had taken in bribes. Agnew repaid $268,482 to Maryland State Treasurer William James in early 1983.
Agnew's resignation triggered the first use of the 25th Amendment, prompting the appointment and confirmation of Gerald Ford, the House Minority Leader, as the next Vice President. It remains one of only two times that the amendment has been employed to fill a Vice Presidential vacancy. The second time was when Ford, after becoming President upon Nixon's resignation, chose Nelson Rockefeller to succeed him as Vice President.
After leaving politics, Agnew became an international trade executive. In 1976, he caused a controversy with statements that called for the United States to withdraw its support for the state of Israel, citing Israel's allegedly bad treatment of Christians. In 1980, Agnew published a memoir in which he implied that Nixon and his Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig, had planned to assassinate him if he refused to resign the Vice Presidency, and that Haig told him to "go quietly or else!" (Agnew used this as the title of his book.) He also wrote a novel, The Canfield Decision about a Vice President who was "destroyed by his own ambition."
Agnew always maintained that the tax evasion and bribery charges was an attempt by Nixon to divert attention away from the growing Watergate scandal. For the rest of their lives, Agnew and Nixon never spoke to each other again. Nixon's daughters invited Agnew to attend Nixon's funeral in 1994, and Agnew attended. In 1996, when Agnew died, Nixon's daughters returned the favor and attended Agnew's funeral.
Agnew died suddenly on September 17, 1996, aged 77 at Atlantic General Hospital, in Berlin, Maryland, near his Ocean City home, only a few hours after being hospitalized and diagnosed with an advanced but undetected, form of leukemia.
I don't know if anyone under 50 remembers or even knows who Spiro Agnew is today. If they do, it might be because of how he's portrayed on the cartoon Futurama as Earth President Nixon's headless attack robot. I once did a search for Spiro Agnew on Twitter, and all I came up with was a tweet from someone who observed that Spiro Agnew is an anagram for "grow a penis".