in 1914, Marshall responded to earlier comments from Senator Joseph L. Bristow that provided a long list of what he felt the country needed. Marshall reportedly leaned over and muttered to one of his clerks, "What this country needs is more of this; what this country needs is more of that" and quipped loudly enough for others to overhear, "What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar." Marshall's remark was popularized and widely circulated among a network of newspapers. Other accounts later embellished the story, including the exact situation that prompted his comment. In 1922 Marshall explained that the five-cent cigar was a metaphor for simpler times and "buckling down to thrift and work." Legacy The situation that arose after the incapacity of Wilson, for which Marshall's vice-presidency is most remembered, revived the national debate on the process of presidential succession. The topic was already being discussed when Wilson left for Europe, which influenced him to allow Marshall to conduct cabinet meetings in his absence. Wilson's incapacity during 1919 and the lack of action by Marshall made it a major issue. The lack of a clear process for presidential succession had first become an issue when President William Henry Harrison died in office in 1841, but little progress had been made passing a constitutional amendment to remedy the problem. Nearly fifty years later, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed, allowing the vice president to assume the presidential powers and duties any time the president was rendered incapable of carrying out the powers and duties of the office. Historians have varied interpretations of Marshall's vice presidency. Claire Suddath rated Marshall as one of the worst vice presidents in American history in a 2008 Time magazine article. Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that had Marshall carried out his constitutional duties, assumed the presidential powers and duties, and made the concessions necessary for the passage of the League of Nations treaty in late 1920, the United States would have been much more involved in European affairs and could have helped prevent the rise of Adolf Hitler, which began in the following year. Morison and a number of other historians claim that Marshall's decision was an indirect cause of the Second World War. Charles Thomas, one of Marshall's biographers, wrote that although Marshall's assumption of presidential powers and duties would have made