26 September 2008
The Enhanced Role of the Vice President
By John M. Murphy and Mary E. Stuckey
The vice presidency of the United States has grown in importance as the demands of the presidency have increased. Likewise, vice presidents have become better known to the American public and are more likely to be nominated — though not necessarily elected — to the presidency themselves.
John M. Murphy is associate professor of speech communication at the University of Georgia. He specializes in contemporary political rhetoric.
Mary E. Stuckey is associate professor of communication and political science at Georgia State University. She has just finished a book manuscript titled Americans in Light and Shadow: Presidential Articulations of National Identity; other books are Strategic Failures in the Modern Presidency and The President as Interpreter-in-Chief.
“There is an old story about a mother who has two sons. One goes to sea and the other becomes Vice President of the United States. Neither is ever heard from again.” —Hubert H. Humphrey, Vice President of the United States, 1965-1969
The institutional, cultural, and structural pressures for a more effective vice president will continue to grow. Throughout much of the nation’s history, the vice presidency was, in the sanitized words of a disgruntled occupant, worth little more than a bucket of warm spit. Prior to World War II, vice presidents occupied little of the administration’s or the public’s attention. These men regarded the office as a graceful prelude to retirement, with at least one notable exception in John C. Breckinridge, who, after serving as Buchanan’s vice president, lost an 1860 run for the presidency and then fought the United States as a Confederate major general and secretary of war during the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865). This not entirely happy precedent has attracted no imitators.
After the emergence of the administrative state and the United States as a world power, however, the vice president could no longer be ignored. The acceleration of U.S. power and governmental complexity in subsequent decades has meant that the presidency is no longer a one-person job. A series of incremental steps, ranging from the assignment of specific tasks to the allocation of office space within the White House, has raised the profile and power of the vice president. Increasingly, the vice president has emerged as a key rhetorician for the administration, in circumstances ranging from Richard Nixon’s “Kitchen Debate” to Al Gore’s North American Free Trade Agreement debate. As a result, it has become difficult for the president to get by with a useless vice president.
In short, the presidency is now too big. President Bill Clinton enlisted the vice president and the first lady as partners, and President George W. Bush’s reliance on Richard Cheney, particularly early in his term, was so marked that The Economist’s Lexington columnist observed that the vice presidency is being upgraded into a prime ministership.
Such an evolution of the office puts the vice president squarely in the public spotlight, making him or her a logical presidential contender.
In fact, the nature of contemporary politics in general and presidential campaigns in particular makes it more likely that future presidents will campaign for their vice presidents. In the 11 presidential contests between 1960 and 2000, the ones since the advent of television as a serious force and the concomitant and debated decline of political parties, vice presidents or former vice presidents have been their parties’ nominees nine times. Only twice (Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Gerald Ford in 1976) has the candidacy been a result of the death or resignation of the president and the ascension of the vice president to the status of incumbent. In the 11 elections prior to that period (1916 through 1956), only twice were vice presidents or former vice presidents their parties’ nominees, and both resulted from the death of the previous president.
Given that recent presidents have, perforce, used their vice presidents more, these formerly unknown placeholders now possess priceless opportunities to establish themselves in the consciousness of the national television audience. In addition, with a minimum of presidential cooperation, they can warehouse political consultants on the payrolls of national committees, travel extensively and in comfort at government expense during the years prior to the election, and utilize the resources of the executive branch to develop policy positions. Most important in the present atmosphere, they are ideally situated to raise huge amounts of money and scare off or overwhelm potential opponents. As late as 1988, then Vice President George H.W. Bush faced a formidable roster of opponents to his nomination for president. By 2000, most Democrats refused to run against Vice President Gore despite the Clinton scandals and the discontent of liberal activists with the administration, and Gore brushed aside his only competition with the ease and disdain that Michael Jordan felt for the New York Knicks. As political columnist Jules Witcover said, “The vice presidency, once considered the equivalent of a gold watch awarded for faithful party service and a one-way ticket to political oblivion, [has come] to be viewed differently.”
Presidents, in short, now need their vice presidents to establish, cement, and continue their visions of the country. Presidents cannot do the job without the help of vice presidents; presidents cannot run for a third term and must turn to vice presidents; and, given the political advantages that vice presidents possess, presidents can seldom, if ever, designate someone else as a chosen heir. Yet the arguments used by most presidents to help their vice presidents end up hurting their vice presidents. Presidents still talk as if vice presidents are creatures of the president. Increasingly, they are not. We have reached the point at which vice presidents are close partners of presidents and inevitable nominees of their respective parties. They are also the almost inevitable losers in the general election. Presidential rhetoric on behalf of vice presidents exemplifies the law of unintended consequences; presidents never care to say goodbye, and yet the ways in which they bid farewell hasten the departures of their political programs and loyal heirs.
Excerpted from “Never Cared to Say Goodbye: Presidential Legacies and Vice Presidential Campaigns,” © Presidential Studies Quarterly, March 2002. Reprinted by permission.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
