Richard Nixon in Joe Biden biography by Jules Witcover

On Principles & Values: Eisenhower could not think of a major idea by V.P. Nixon

8 years later, when Nixon himself reached the Oval Office, he kept his vice president, Spiro Agnew, V.P. Nixon remained essentially an outsider in the Eisenhower administration. When a reporter asked Eisenhower at a news conference for an example of "a major idea of his you had adopted" during Nixon's years as his vice president, the president replied, some quarters as a sort of insurance policy for Nixon's presidency, with Nixon himself facing impeachment in the Watergate scandal and cover-up. The thinking was that Congress would not impeach the president & put the tainted Agnew in the Oval Office. similarly in the dark, never informing him in advance of Nixon's heralded "opening to China" secret trip to what was then called Peking. Eventually, with Agnew facing the loss of the vice presidency in an investigation of bribe-taking, he was seen in