Vice President of the United States the Twenty-fifth Amendment established a procedure for filling such a vacancy: This procedure has been implemented twice since the amendment came into force. The first instance occurred in 1973 following the October 10 resignation of Spiro Agnew, when Gerald Ford was nominated by President Richard Nixon and confirmed by Congress. The second occurred 10 months later following Ford's August 9, 1974 accession to the presidency upon Nixon's resignation, when Nelson Rockefeller was nominated by President Ford and confirmed by Congress. Had it not been for this new constitutional mechanism, the vice presidency would have remained vacant after Agnew's resignation and
Spiro Agnew judgment was already upon him, the first Vice President of the United States to have resigned in disgrace. All that he achieved or sought to achieve in his public life ... had been buried in that tragic and irrefutable act". Levy sums up the "might-have-been" of Agnew's career thus: It is not a far stretch to imagine that if Agnew had contested corruption charges half as hard as Nixon denied culpability for Watergate – as Goldwater and several other stalwart conservatives wanted him to – today we might be speaking of Agnew-Democrats and Agnewnomics, and deem Agnew the father of