Vice Pesidents Have a Habit of Using Salty References

Vice President Dick Cheney recently took a lot of heat after he used an epithet in a spirited exchange with Sen. Pat Leahy on the Senate floor, but the reaction was excessive. The occupants of the second-highest office in the land have been known for their salty language since the earliest days of the republic.

Not long after being sworn in as the nation's first vice president, John Adams set the tone by responding to a senator's critical remark on the Treaty With the Wyandot by telling his fellow Federalist to"ftuff it, you miferable, ftinking, ftupid F.O.B." The irascible patriot's running mate in the 1796 election, the normally genteel and refined Thomas Jefferson, continued the tradition of colorful invective by responding to campaign criticism from Caesar Rodney by suggesting to the eminent statesman from Delaware that he"put it in that intimate nether locality where the sun, for all its refulgent luminosity, is not wont to shine."

But it was left to America's most controversial vice president, Aaron Burr, to move the discourse up — or down — a notch, to the level it now occupies. In a colloquy with Alexander Hamilton, which may have precipitated their fateful duel, Burr responded to an accusation of bias from Hamilton by calling the distinguished New Yorker"a hogshead of feculence in a four-peck firkin." Hamilton's riposte is said to have infuriated Burr....