After Vice President Harris’s first public remarks since losing the election, the public is joking about her sobriety. Whatever a breathalyzer might say, the 49th vice president can take comfort that the humiliation is nowhere near that suffered by the 16th.

“I know this is an uncertain time,” Ms. Harris told supporters on Tuesday in a video on the Democratic Party’s X account. “I’m clear-eyed about that. I know you’re clear-eyed about it, and it feels heavy. I just have to remind you: Don’t you ever let anybody take your power from you.”

Mockery of the pep-talk rages online including versions altered to show Ms. Harris waving a bottle of liquor. She does look drained, but running a presidential race and losing will do that to anyone. Plus, there’s some confirmation bias at play.

The public’s first impression of Ms. Harris was that performed by the “Saturday Night Live” actress Maya Rudolph. In 2019, she began portraying the then-senator as America’s “fun aunt,” always with a drink in hand Dean Martin-style.

Once Ms. Harris emerged as the replacement for Mr. Biden, Ms. Rudolph’s impression grew more sober. The martini and wine glasses disappeared along with the carefree attitude. The portrayal, however, was already rooted in the national mind, and Ms. Harris will forever be seen through its lens.

President Andrew Johnson experienced a similar problem thanks to a cocktail of booze, illness, and bad luck. His biographer, Hans Trefousse, wrote in “Andrew Johnson” that the vice president “could take or leave liquor at will and was inebriated in public only once.”

The author of “Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy,” David O. Stewart, had a different take. “AJ had a reputation as a nasty drunk,” he told me, “and nobody likes that person. Cheerful drinkers, however, are another matter entirely,” and Ms. Harris does love to laugh.

In any case, Johnson showed up drunk on March 4, 1865, for his vice-presidential inauguration. He’d been feeling sick for some time and, Trefousse writes, had “shared many glasses of whiskey” while celebrating the previous night with a friend.

Johnson’s wife, Eliza, and daughters had stayed home in Tennessee, giving him what we today call a “hall pass.” He arrived at the Capitol hungover and, seeking a little hair of the dog, dropped into the office of Vice President Hamlin, whom he’d replaced on President Lincoln’s ticket.

According to Trefousse, Johnson, “still feeling unwell,” asked for whiskey, “filled his glass, and drank it straight.” Another followed, and “on his way to the Senate chamber, he ran back” for a third. “In his weakened condition, these drinks affected him severely.”

Here, a little mischief creeps into the story. “It’s possible,” Trefousse writes, “that had Hamlin not been hurt” by Republicans dumping him for Johnson, “he might have prevented” his successor “from going to the ceremony in a state of inebriation.” Whatever his motive, Hamlin kept the booze flowing.

The day ought to have been a triumph for Johnson, the only Democratic senator from a seceding state to reject the cause of the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. Instead, he staggered into the Senate chamber, scandalizing guests, legislators, and foreign ministers. 

Lincoln had a literal front-row seat.

After Hamlin spoke, the “unsteady” Johnson began. “As he proceeded,” Trefousse writes, “it became evident that he was drunk.” It was like the worst speech by a groom you can imagine, and it was the entire nation wedding its fortunes to the slurring man before them.

Johnson tried to thank members of the Cabinet, but forgot their titles, at one point asking in what he thought was a whisper, “Who is the Secretary of the Navy?” Irritated and head spinning, Johnson bore down on his “harangue” about the Cabinet deriving their power from the people.

On and on the spectacle went. Johnson waved around the Bible he’d used to swear the oath of office and shouted, “I kiss this Book in the face of my nation of the United States!” It was Hamlin who at last nudged Johnson to stop.

As with Ms. Harris, the press was full of taunts about Johnson’s performance, but after he acceded to the presidency, the coverage changed. The Reverend George W. Heacock, the Sun reported on May 10, 1865, thought the martyred Lincoln would dismiss the concerns about his running mate.

“We would rather have,” Reverend Heacock imagined Lincoln saying, “Andy Johnson drunk than Jeff Davis sober.” Ms. Harris may need quips like that if she plans future campaigns, because she can expect the snickering about alcohol to linger, fair or not. Meanwhile, she is out of a job, and who can fault her for a cocktail or two?