Somewhere during one or two of the multiple presidential terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt, his vice president summed up the worth of the vice president as amounting to nothing more than a "bucket of warm spit."

Of course, he didn't really say spit. And it isn't entirely true.

But it certainly does put all this hubub about who the presidential contenders and their respective decisions on who will be their running mates for this year's election into perspective.

That being said, there have been a wide swath of No. 2 men that lived up to their name, if you know what I mean. Here's a few:

5. Andrew Johnson

He might have not been considered one of the worst if President Lincoln had been shot and Johnson forced to assume the office of the presidency, where he was left to help some of the civil rights gains made by the North's victory in the Civil War.

But then again, he did come to his own inauguration intoxicated.

Yet, if Lincoln had not been assassinated, the esteemed president's pick as vice president - who was largely put on the ticket as a political move to show a unified front to the nation because Johnson was a native of the South - Reconstruction may not have had the bad name it received over the years.

But Johnson, considered by historians as a racist whose views against the advancement of rights for people of color were severe enough to land him under articles of impeachment, likely did more damage merely by his inattentiveness to efforts to restrict rights to the recently freed slaves of his time.

After his term, Johnson failed to be renominated, landing instead back in the Senate, from whence he came.

4. Aaron Burr

Generally, if you shoot one of the founding father's - as Burr famously did when he challenged Alexander Hamilton to a duel and fatally wounded him in 1804 - that act alone would land you atop the worst vice president list. Especially considering that Burr was in office at the time of the act.

But Burr, too, was a Revolutionary War hero and former senator who is considered the father of what is today the Democratic Party. He was popular enough to end up in a dead heat in his race for the presidency against Thomas Jefferson, one of the four faces on the Shrine of Democracy and considered to be one of the greatest presidents to have ever lived.

Burr's place in history may have been mostly anecdotal in the ranks of poor politicians if not for his machinations after he left office and headed west to find his fortune. In the few years after he left office, his efforts to either entice Mexico into a war with Spain lands beyond the Louisiana Purchase earned him a trial date for conspiracy. It is suggested that he sought to start a new country with the recently purchased Louisiana Purchase.

And although he was acquitted, his drive to destabilize Mexico and create mischief there forced him back across the Atlantic. He sought support throughout Europe and even landed him on Napolean's doorstep, but in the end, it left him penniless and without power.

His personal life fared no better, as he returned to the U.S. and married for a second time - his first wife having died. But Burr's penchant for land speculation in the West caused his new bride to separate from him a mere four months after they were married. She later sued for divorce.

3. Thomas Eagleton

I've reserved the list to primarily to running mates that actually made it to office, but perhaps the most famous pick of someone who not only didn't make it to office but didn't even make it to the election has a special place in this South Dakotan's heart.

When South Dakota's own George McGovern picked Thomas Eagleton, a fellow U.S. Senator from Missouri, it seemed like a good political move. The young, popular candidate had a decent record and gave McGovern the potential of pulling off some electoral votes in a tough state to win, Missouri.

But the Eagleton pick was a short-lived one, albeit a disastrous one. It came out at a news conference in Custer that Eagleton had suffered from mental illness and that he had electric shocks as part of his treatment.

Although McGovern solidly stood behind his running mate after the revelation came out in the press - he offered the famous "1,000 percent for Tom Eagleton" line - the ticket was dissolved in less than three weeks.

To Eagleton's credit, it's unfair to judge what kind of vice president he would have been. His career in the Senate would point to being excluded from the members of the rest of this list.

And even McGovern expressed remorse for bowing to party pressure and kicking him off the ticket, noting that he "didn't know anything about mental illness."

However, Eagleton's lack of forthcoming in disclosing his unusual past may not have caused the route that would become the Nixon vs. McGovern race in the fall of 1972, it certainly didn't help it. What it did do is create a much fuller vetting process of candidates that continues to this day.

2. Spiro Agnew

A moderate Republican from the South who was once considered likely to rise to the office of president himself, Spiro Agnew became the only vice president in U.S. history to be forced to resign because of criminal behavior.

Agnew was indicted on tax evasion and money laundering charges while he had been governor of Maryland in the mid-1960s. Agnew pleaded no contest to accepting $29,500 in bribes during his tenure as governor of Maryland. Agnew was fined $10,000 and put on three years' probation, a slap on the wrist that was mocked by former Maryland Attorney General Stephen Sachs as the "greatest deal since the Lord spared Isaac on the mountaintop."

Of course, Agnew hadn't been that popular with the boss, Richard Nixon, either, who had attempted to dump his as a running mate after the first four years in office. Nixon had tried to push Agnew into the private sector so he could offer the job to Treasury Secretary John Connally. But Connally didn't want the job, largely because he didn't believe it helped his own presidential aspirations.

Of course, after Agnew's resignation was followed by that of his boss over the Watergate scandal, that proved to be not to good of a move.

1. John C. Calhoun

Of course, you really can't top Agnew, but if you could, Calhoun would be your man.

Calhoun served as the country's seventh vice president in the John Quincy Adams administration. But in a shocking move, he jumped ship to run against the Adams ticket in the next election, winning another term as veep, this time under Andrew Jackson.

It has been compared to an act that would have been paramount to current Vice President Dick Cheney announcing in 2004 to leaving the George W. Bush ticket to run with John F. Kerry.

But that isn't why he's on this list.

The primary reason was for his opposition and actions against tariffs passed by President Jackson and Congress and his assertion of the nullification theory, which proved to be precursor to succession of the South.

Calhoun became the first vice president to resign from office, almost exclusively over the tariff issue.

While many of the pre-Civil War powers that be are guilty of doing little to prevent the run up to the war, Calhoun inflamed the situation and began the country on a slow march toward the worst war in U.S. history. And he asserted that there are some federal laws that simply shouldn't be followed, which may have made him the godfather of the current militia movement in the U.S.

Regardless, he was one dangerous dude whose mere presence on the national stage made him worthy as a top candidate here.

NOTE: There are plenty of scholars, pundits and politicos who would argue vehemently that this list is faulty for its exclusion of the sitting vice president, Dick Cheney.

And while I agree that some of the moves the most powerful vice president to ever held office has made and his wildly baseless accusations concerning Iraq's role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, I leave him off for one reason.

Who would have run the country over the past eight years if he hadn't been in office?