THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE

Job Description: Nothing and Everything

The vice president's job is essentially set by Article II of the Constitution:

In the case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President.

The job is waiting--there is no other job to do. The basic contradiction was well summarized by the first vice president, John Adams. "I am nothing," he said, "but I may be everything." Vice presidents are the presidents' understudies, the next in line in succession. Their major job is to be ready, pending presidential death or disability, to assume the duties of that higher office. But in the meantime, they have little of their own work to do. Benjamin Franklin, who opposed the idea of the vice presidency, said weshould call the holder of the office "His Superfluous Majesty." The framers of the Constitution, who after receiving the committee report on the subject spent less than one full day in its consideration, finally agreed to bend the separation of powers somewhat and make the vice president the president of the Senate. Vice presidents would preside over the Senate and cast tie-breaking votes. But the Senate made clear early in the nineteenth-century that the vice presidents need not inconvenience themselves by the trip up to the Hill. The Senate, thank you, could take care of its own presiding. (The effective Senate leadership, we saw previously, is carried on by elected party leaders from the floor; the routine job of presiding is assigned as a chore to the most junior senators.) Daniel Webster in the middle of the nineteenth century refused the vice presidential nomination saying "he did not propose to be buried until he was already dead," and Theodore Roosevelt at the beginning of the twentieth century accepted it but said he was "taking the veil" and considered going back to finish law school to occupy his spare time.

Increasingly in the twentieth century, presidents have found uses for their vice presidents. They have been used as diplomats, heads of symbolic presidential panels, and general errand runners. They have made goodwill tours, attended functions, made speeches, and done things that presidents could not or did not wish to do. Lyndon Johnson's vice president Hubert Humphrey was assigned to speak around the country and explain the increasingly unpopular VietnamWar. Richard Nixon's vice president Spiro Agnew was used as critic of dissenters, American intellectuals, and the news media. Nixon, himself, when he was vice president under Eisenhower, complained that he was the "Secretary for Catch-all Affairs." George Bush and Walter Mondale were given a variety of jobs by their respective presidents. Mondale commented that he felt Carter had treated him better than any previous president had treated his vice-president, and Bush retained some visibility in the Reagan administration. And yet in all these cases it is clear that the vice presidential busy work could be easily given to other advisers, cabinet officials, or presidential aides. Further, the work is assigned at the pleasure of the president. "The President gives," said Humphrey, "and the President taketh away." And further, it is the president's work--not the vice president's--that is performed. Vice presidents have none of their own work to do.

Thus while each recent new president promises a "new expanded role" for the vice president, no real change has been apparent. Figures who have been leaders in the Senate suddenly vanish from sight upon assuming the vice presidency, reappearing for ceremonial foreign trips from time to time. The "team" of Clinton and Gore, much heralded during the inauguration festivities, quickly faded from public sight and Clinton stood alone. Gore would appear from time to time, for example during the NAFTA debate where he was considered very useful, but Gore was no second-string president in theClinton White House. He had taken the veil of vice presidential obscurity. The problem in the twentieth century is the same one Adams described. It is the contrast between the potential role of everything and the actual role of nothing: The vice president is the president's understudy, who waits in the wings with nothing much to do.

Most understudies prepare for the part they may be called upon to play. It is one thing to say that no one can prepare for the presidency, and yet judging by historical accounts, vice presidents do not even attend rehearsals. There have been famous accounts of presidents and vice presidents, as for example Wilson and Marshall, who were not on speaking terms. Few vice presidents are mentioned at length in any presidential biographies. Of all modern presidents, Kennedy may have been the one who needed most from Congress by way of an ambitious legislative program but who was not blessed with an abundant supply of liberal Democratic congressional votes. Kennedy had in the vice presidency the past majority leader of the Senate--widely recognized as a twentieth-century genius in the art of congressional persuasion. And yet Johnson was rarely called upon for any presidential liaison with Congress, his name rarely mentioned in accounts of the great Kennedy legislative struggles on Capitol Hill.

Why couldn't Kennedy use Johnson? What could have been more important to his presidency than his legislative program? What is it about the presidency that suggests some answers to this puzzle?

Perhaps the sharpest illustration ofthe vice president's lack of preparation occurred with the transition to the Truman presidency. At the time of FDR's death, Truman did not know of the existence of the atom bomb, and yet four months later he would be called upon to use it against a human population. Vice presidents are now de facto members of the National Security Council and so to the extent that presidents use these councils for serious briefings and decisions, vice presidents may receive additional preparation. But this rehearsing seems small compared against the job they may be called upon to do.

The sharp incongruity between the vice president's actual and potential roles has supplied a rich source of American political humor, making the vice presidency something of a comic office. Thomas Marshall, vice president under Wilson, was the author of several jokes, such as the one that went, "Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected vice president. And nothing was ever heard of either of them again." The Broadway musical of the 1930s Of Thee I Sing featured a fictitious vice president named Alexander Throttlebottom. Nobody in the play could seem to remember his name. He spent his time feeding pigeons in the park and trying to find two persons to supply references for a library card. After the 1968 nomination, Spiro Agnew jokes enjoyed a brief glory in some popular political humor. Agnew himself contributed some of the humor. ("I'll agree with you," he drawled, "that the name of Spiro Agnew is not a household word.") But there was nothing unique toAgnew in all that: He had simply inherited more than a century's comic legacy. Quayle, like Agnew, inherited the legacy and seemed to contribute his own share to it. Quayle jokes and quotations reached such proportion that a quarterly humor magazine (The Quayle Quarterly) began to be published. Quayle fit the part, but the part had been written long before as a comic one.

All comedy, of course, has its very serious side. Quayle was not funny as a U.S. Senator: he became funny as vice president because he could be president. Something struck people as incongruous or wrong about that. Thus we might well ask whether people with the energy, ambition, and talent for the presidency want to spend four to eight years of their lives doing nothing in an office that is a good joke--or whether people who are willing to do so will make good presidents. The comedy, moreover, stands in stark contrast to the grimness of succession. The nation's comic office is also its symbol and reminder of presidential mortality. As an understudy in the wings, the vice president is a shadow of the president's own death. It may not be surprising, then, that president's have not sought the presence and advice of their vice presidents on any close or regular basis.

Job Qualification: Rival or Running Mate

The selection system poses a contradiction inherent in the vice presidential office in its sharpest form. What are the necessary qualificationsfor an office mate and a potential president? How may both sets of qualities be chosen for at once? The historical account offers little in the way of a solution.

These questions received scant attention at the writing of the Constitution in 1789. The vice presidency was, essentially, an afterthought--a hasty solution to the problem of succession agreed on by delegates exhausted after three months of major problem solving. At the end of the summer in Philadelphia, on August 27, the delegates turned to the subject of succession. It was suggested that the president of the Senate (then conceived to be only a senator) could temporarily perform the duties of the presidency until a new president could be elected. Gouverneur Morris objected, arguing that having a legislative office next in line would blur the separation of executive and legislative powers. A Committee of Eleven was appointed to consider a number of remaining details for the new government, including the mode of electing presidents and the question of succession. The committee met August 31, created the executive office of vice president, and brought its formal proposal back to the Constitutional Convention on September 4. It was ratified after little debate. On September 17, the convention adjourned.

It is an irony worth noting that the same procedure has been followed in almost every national party nominating convention since. The delegates, exhausted after the selection of a presidential nominee, spend a few hours on the vice presidential selectionand then the convention adjourns.

No one wants to think about the vice presidency very much.

As adopted in 1789 the vice presidential office would be given to the runner-up presidential candidate. The electoral college would vote only for president and the candidate receiving the second highest number of votes would automatically be elected vice president. This ensured that the next in line would be of presidential stature and ambition. The candidate would be, by the standards of the new democracy, the second most-qualified person for the office. The first vice presidents were clearly qualified to be presidents in their own right. John Adams served two terms as vice president and on Washington's retirement was elected president on his own. Thomas Jefferson, the second choice in 1796, served under Adams and was elected president in 1880. Each had been prominently active in the formation of the new government before assuming the vice presidential office.

The provision may have selected well-qualified candidates, but it created some difficulties as well. It meant that the presidential successor would be, by definition, the candidate defeated in the election and that the first and second ranking executives might well be bitter political rivals. With the emergence of political parties representing very different views about government, these difficulties assumed more serious proportions. On the death of a president, the party and the political views that had lost the election would assume control of the government.

The crisis of the tie election between Jefferson and Aaron Burr in 1800 precipitated the Twelfth Amendment of 1804 changing the mode of presidential and vice presidential selection. To ensure that president and vice president would be of the same party, the amendment stipulated that electors would vote for candidates for both offices. (Presumably the majority party among the electors would elect a president and a vice president from that party.) The vice president, then, would be by definition not a candidate for president. The Twelfth Amendment redefined the vice presidential office--and redefined it drastically.

The extent of the redefinition was noted at the time, as the Twelfth Amendment debates in Congress make clear. Members argued that it would lower the prestige of the office and thus the qualifications of the office holder.

He will be voted for not as President of the United States, but as President of the Senate.... In electing a subordinate office the Electors will not require those qualifications requisite for supreme command. The office of the Vice President will be a sinecure.... Will the ambitious, aspiring candidate for the Presidency [and] his friends and favorites promote the election of a man of talents, probity, and popularity for Vice President, who may prove his rival? No! They will seek a man of moderate talents, whose ambition is bounded by that office....

In other words only people of "moderate talents" would seek the post and only such people would be sought. And at least one representative worried whether even moderate talents could be expected.

The question will not be asked, is he capable? Is he honest? But can he by his name, by his connections, by his wealth, by his local situation, by his influence, or his intrigues, best promote the election of a President? He will be made the mere steppingstone of ambition. Thus, by the death or other Constitutional inability of the President to do the duties of the office you may find at the head of your Government as First Magistrate of a nation, a man who has either smuggled or bought himself into office.

As if to prove the worries as swiftly as possible, the 1804 Republican nomination was given to George Clinton, described as "an old man in poor health, virtually retired from politics." Clinton was a six-term governor of New York and a northerner, selected to provide regional balance for the ticket led by the Virginian Jefferson. He was renominated and reelected in 1808 and died in office with eleven months left in the term. Clinton was followed by the "sickly" Elbridge Gerry, who also was a northerner and who also died in office with nearly two-and-a-half years left in the term. The vice presidencywas vacant for almost four of the first twelve years under the new amendment. Daniel D. Tompkins, who followed Gerry, was only forty-two at the time of his inauguration, but he died soon after his second term ended. He had earlier left his duties and gone home to attend his poor health and failing political reputation. Yet all three surpassed William Rufus King, nominated in 1852, who was too ill at the time to come to Washington for his inauguration. Congress passed a special law permitting him to take the oath in Cuba, which he did, "with friends holding erect" The inauguration was in March. King died in April. The first vice presidents under the new system were considerably less well known and less hardy than the presidents they were intended to survive.

Yet it should be made clear that some of the nineteenth-century vice presidents were neither physically nor politically infirm. Considerable variety is apparent. John Calhoun followed Tompkins and Martin Van Buren followed him, and both had presidential ambitions. Calhoun was forty-two, Millard Fillmore was forty-nine, and John Breckinridge was thirty-six at the time of their inaugurations. By 1900 the office could still attract as ambitious and vigorous a candidate as Theodore Roosevelt. It is true that he had to be persuaded. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge wrote to New York Governor Roosevelt early in 1900: "It is the tradition of our politics, and a very poor tradition, that the Vice-presidency is a shelf. It ought to be, and there is no reason why it should not be, a stepping-stone. Put there bythe popular desire, it would be so to you." Nevertheless, Roosevelt did accept. And he did not go to law school.

This variety can be seen throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some vice presidential candidates have been widely known national leaders, mentioned as presidential candidates in their won right. John Calhoun and Martin Van Buren could be nominated in the nineteenth century as could Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey in the twentieth century. Both Johnson and Humphrey were leaders of their own party in the Senate and recognized presidential candidates. Gerald Ford was leader of his party in the House. Yet at the same time unknown state party figures could also be nominated. If few had heard of George Clinton in 1804, few also had heard of William Miller (Barry Goldwater's running mate) in 1964 or Spiro ("Spiro Who?") Agnew in 1968.

In 1944, with a clear recognition that Franklin Roosevelt would probably not live out his term, key Democrats gathered to choose a vice presidential candidate. Their logic in choosing Harry Truman has been researched and summarized as follows: "The man with the fewest handicaps and with some tangible advantages was Harry Truman. He had a good record as a war investigator, he stood well with labor, he had voted with the New Deal, he came from a border state, and Roosevelt really had nothing very much against him." If that was the basis for the 1944 selection, it closely parallels the kind of thing the opponents of the Twelfth Amendmenthad predicted.

To summarize, two selection systems have been tried. The first elects a presidential aspirant, but one who may differ from the president in party and ideology. The second elects a candidate of the president's party but no longer ensures presidential "stature" or ambition. The first scheme elects a rival and rivals may not make good vice presidents. The second elects a running mate, and running mates may not make good presidents. A solution to the problem must somehow reconcile the two, a point to be explored later in the chapter.