Text © 2014 by Jules Witcover
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Witcover, Jules.
The American Vice Presidency : From Irrelevance to Power / Jules Witcover.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-58834-471-7
eBook ISBN: 978-1-58834-472-4
1. Vice-Presidents—United States—Biography. 2. Vice-Presidents—United States—History. 3. United States—Politics and government. I. Title.
E176.49.W58 2014
352.23’90922—dc23
2014004242
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v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
1. John Adams of Massachusetts
2. Thomas Jefferson of Virginia
3. Aaron Burr of New York
4. George Clinton of New York
5. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts
6. Daniel D. Tompkins of New York
7. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina
8. Martin Van Buren of New York
9. Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky
10. John Tyler of Virginia
11. George M. Dallas of Pennsylvania
12. Millard Fillmore of New York
13. William R. King of Alabama
14. John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky
15. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine
16. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee
17. Schuyler Colfax of Indiana
18. Henry Wilson of Massachusetts
19. William A. Wheeler of New York
20. Chester A. Arthur of New York
21. Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana
22. Levi P. Morton of New York
23. Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois
24. Garret A. Hobart of New Jersey
25. Theodore Roosevelt of New York
26. Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana
27. James S. Sherman of New York
28. Thomas R. Marshall of Indiana
29. Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts
30. Charles G. Dawes of Illinois
31. Charles Curtis of Kansas
32. John Nance Garner of Texas
33. Henry A. Wallace of Iowa
34. Harry S. Truman of Missouri
35. Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky
36. Richard M. Nixon of California
37. Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas
38. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota
39. Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland
40. Gerald R. Ford Jr. of Michigan
41. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York
42. Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota
43. George H. W. Bush of Texas
44. J. Danforth Quayle of Indiana
45. Albert A. Gore Jr. of Tennessee
46. Richard B. Cheney of Wyoming
47. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware
48. The Evolving Assistant Presidency
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Other Books by This Author
To Walter Mondale, who first made a reality of the assistant presidency
INTRODUCTION
Through most of the history of the American vice presidency, the office had little significance or utility in governing the nation’s affairs. Most often it was awarded purely on the basis of political considerations of home state or region or as a reward for past service. The office was chronically subject to lame jokes and its occupant to ridicule, often with reason. When the first vice president, John Adams, took office in 1789, he acknowledged regarding his role as a presidential standby: “In this I am nothing, but I may be everything.”1
That dismal appraisal no longer holds. Over the past four decades, vice presidents as never before have helped shape and implement domestic and foreign policies in the administrations in which they’ve served. In particular, four of the last six occupants of the office—Walter Mondale, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden—have performed tasks far beyond the old ceremonial and political chores of the vice presidency. They have become genuine partners in governance with their presidents. In the process, not only have they enhanced their own prominence and utility; they have also elevated the public stature of the office, to the point that it is not too much to say that the American vice president has for all practical purposes come to be the de facto assistant president. The days when public figures of stature routinely shunned the position are over.
But this transformation of the vice presidency did not occur overnight. For nearly two hundred years, its occupants generally toiled in obscurity and irrelevance until circumstances and enlightened presidential leadership gave the office its current prominence. No statute empowers the vice president; only the sitting president can do so by delegating authority and responsibilities, and even now there is no assurance it will be done.
When the founding fathers of the American Republic gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to write the new nation’s constitution, the vice presidency was a mere afterthought in the discussion of how to choose the president. In the first election, there was never any doubt that General George Washington, hero of the Revolution and presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention, would be selected overwhelmingly. But the founders feared that following Washington’s service an indecisive scramble to succeed him would occur. So many states might put forward favorite sons that no one candidate would acquire the majority required to elect a widely acceptable president.
To avoid that outcome, Delegate Hugh Williamson of North Carolina proposed that each state appoint “electors” who would cast three ballots for the position—prominent citizens voting rather than legislators, to minimize improper influence. Only one of the three ballots could be given to a state’s favorite son, presumably producing a broader-based choice. Another delegate, Gouverneur Morris of New York, suggested that two votes per elector would serve the same purpose, and it was so decided.
This “double-balloting” for the presidency, it was reasoned, would arrive at the two most deserving candidates, so why not make the runner-up vice president? Then both offices would be filled by individuals presumably worthy of holding the higher office. At the same time, beyond being a standby for the presidency, the otherwise idle vice president would serve as president of the Senate, chairing it but voting only to break a tie. The scheme ensured, however, that from the vice presidency’s first years and most of them thereafter, the office would be regarded as a mere appendage to th
e machinery of national governance, and its occupant would be airily dismissed as such. If there was any approximate model, it was the lightly regarded office of lieutenant governor in several of the original states.
The very notion of a vice presidency triggered a contentious debate among the founders over the necessity, utility, and wisdom of including the office, the manner in which its holder would be chosen, and what that person’s functions and duties would be. The idea that a vice president was needed at all gained credibility and support only when the complicated method for selecting the president conveniently and simultaneously also provided for a spare president-in-waiting.
Even placing the executive power in the hands of a single individual worried some delegates, mindful that rebellion against a monarch in England was what had led to the creation of the new nation in the New World. Once that concern was overcome, the core of the discussion became the need to give the small states in the new union an equitable voice in the presidential selection. Delegate Charles Pinckney of South Carolina expressed fear: “The most populous states by combining in favor of the same individual will be able to carry their points.”2 The same would be true if the election of the president were decided by a direct vote based on population, as favored by Morris, by James Wilson of Pennsylvania, and by James Madison of Virginia.
When Roger Sherman of Connecticut argued that the president “ought to be appointed by and accountable to the legislature only,”3 which was the depository of the supreme will of the society, Morris raised a cautionary flag. Having the legislature pick the president, he warned, “would give birth to intrigue and corruption” between the two branches “previous to election and to partiality in the executive afterwards to friends who promoted him.” Madison agreed, saying that under this process “tyrannical laws may be made” that would “be executed in a tyrannical manner.”4 So some formula also had to be found to protect the rights and influence of the smaller states in choosing the chief executive, a formula in which the president would not be indebted to particular legislators who had voted for him. It was from this quest that creation of the vice presidency emerged.
To sidestep the direct voting for president by members of the national legislature, Wilson proposed that each state legislature choose as the presidential electors private citizens equal to the number of its congressional delegation—two senators plus the number of legislators in the House of Representatives as determined by population. From this so-called electoral college, which would meet in the individual states to minimize collusion among them, the candidate achieving a majority would be elected president, and the runner-up, vice president.
When Madison reported this solution to the convention, he offered only a mild caution. “The only objection which occurred,” he wrote, “was that each Citizen after having given his vote for his fellow Citizen [from his own state] would throw away his second on some obscure Citizen of another state, in order to ensure the object of his first choice.” Then he added, too optimistically as history would show, “But it could hardly be supposed that the Citizens of many States would be so sanguine of having their favorite selected, as not to give their second vote [for vice president] with sincerity to the next object of their choice.”5
Indeed, the so-called double balloting was greeted with some optimism. Delaware’s John Dickinson decided that each state’s “partiality” for its own favorite son would work to the advantage of all. “Let the people of each State choose its best Citizen,” he said. “The people will know the most eminent characters of their own State, and the people of a different State will feel an emulation in selecting those of which they have the greatest reason to be proud” for the two top executive posts.6
In a moment of prescience, Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts urged that the Senate be required to confirm the plurality of the vice president, but he was ignored. Madison subsequently wrote, “As the regulation stands, a very obscure man with a very few votes may arrive at the appointment.”7 That outcome did not occur under the double-balloting system, but in due time under a subsequent and different method of choosing the vice president, Madison’s warning would echo in regrettable vice presidential selections.
At a time that political parties did not yet exist in the young nation, there was no anticipation that this arrangement might produce a president and vice president of sharply differing political loyalties. Indeed, the notion of factions was widely disparaged as the new country generally demonstrated strong unity in the task of creating a new self-government distinct from the one in England, from which it had just achieved independence.
Hugh Williamson of North Carolina, a member of the convention’s Committee of Eleven, assigned to draft the Constitution, sounded a sour postmortem on the creation of the presidential standby. “Such an office as vice president was not wanted,” he said. “It was introduced only for the sake of a valuable mode of election which required two be chosen at the same time.”8
When a vice presidency was first proposed, many delegates to the Constitutional Convention pondered what the officeholder would do while he stood by to take over the duties and powers of the presidency of a deceased or disabled chief executive. Thus came the patchwork of having the vice president simultaneously serve as president of the Senate, with a single right and assignment—to cast the deciding vote in case of a tie.
This idea also had its opponents, who cited an apparent breach of the separation of executive and legislative powers, with the vice president having a foot in each branch. One who objected was Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, later himself the fifth vice president. “We might as well put the President himself at the head of the legislature,” he warned. “The close intimacy that must subsist between the President and Vice President makes it absolutely improper.” Gouverneur Morris quipped about that expected kinship: “The vice president will be the first heir apparent that ever loved his father.” But Roger Sherman saw the practical utility of making the vice president the presiding officer of the Senate. Without it, he noted, the man “would be without employment.”9
In point of fact, presiding would not be much employment at all, inasmuch as the man in the chair would not really be a senator and would have no other function than breaking a tie. He would have no explicit power to join in debate on the issue at hand or any other business on the floor of the Senate. Delegate Luther Martin of Maryland ridiculed the proposed vice president as “that great officer of government.” With the candidate needing only to finish second in the presidential balloting, he said, it would be “very possible, and not improbable, that he may be appointed by the electors of a single large state,” conceivably his own. An apparently disgusted Martin later reported to his state legislature, “Every part of the system which relates to the Vice President, as well as the present mode of electing the President, was introduced and agreed upon after I left Philadelphia.”10
On the other hand, William R. Davie of North Carolina saw particular advantage in having the relatively unoccupied vice president available to break Senate tie votes. “From the nature of his election and office,” Davie said, he “represents no one state in particular, but all the states.” Therefore, he reasoned, “it is impossible that any officer could be chosen more impartially. He is, in consequence of his election, the creature of no particular district or state, but the office and representation of the Union. He must possess the confidence of the states in a very great degree, and consequently be the most proper person to decide in cases of this kind.”11
Another prominent delegate, George Mason of Virginia, argued instead for a “Council of State” acting as an advisory body to the president, chaired by a “Vice President of the United States pro tempore,” who would succeed the president “upon any vacancy or disability of the chief magistrate.” Having one individual serve as both vice president and president of the Senate, Mason feared, would be “a fatal defect … dangerously blending” the executive and legislative branches.12
In all this, the drafters se
emed to be more worried about having the vice president take on the limited role of president of the Senate than themselves clarifying how and under what circumstances he would succeed to the presidency if destiny were to require it. They also left ambiguous whether in such an event the vice president would actually become president, or would merely assume the functions and responsibilities of the office as an acting president until another person was elected or until a surviving incumbent could resume them.
Alexander Hamilton of New York, discussing the vice presidency in terms of presidential succession, made clear his belief that a vice president would take over only temporarily. It would happen, Hamilton proposed, only in case of “the death, resignation, impeachment, removal from office or absence from the United States of the President.” Then, the vice president would “exercise all the powers of this Constitution vested in the President until another shall be appointed, or until he shall return to the United States if his absence was with the Consent of the Senate and Assembly.”13
The Committee of Eleven, charged with drafting the final language on succession, deleted the reference to a president’s physical absence from the country. Considering the possibility that the vice president might die first or be disabled, or that both the president and vice president might perish at the same time, Delegate Edmund Randolph of Virginia won approval of another resolution providing in such an event “the Legislature may declare by law what officer of the United States shall act as President … until such disability be removed or a president shall be elected.”14
Surprisingly, considering the criticality of the matter in presidential succession, the convention’s Committee on Style, which wrote the final language, left unspecified the means whereby Congress would identify and choose that officer to “act as President” in such circumstances. Eventually, Article II, Section 1, read that in the case of a vacancy in the presidency, “the Powers and Duties … of the Same” were to “devolve on the Vice President,” creating confusion later as to whether “the Same” referred to transferring the powers and functions only or to the office itself.
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