So said Vice President John Nance Garner about his own office, it was reported (perhaps cleaned up a bit).
More delicately, Vice President Thomas Marshall told a tale of two brothers. One went west, recounted Marshall, the other became vice president, and neither was ever heard from again.
And it's been said that the only duty of a vice president is to drop in at the West Wing each morning and inquire politely after the health of the president.
America’s second office suffers from a bad press. Vice presidents live with an odd combination of respect and ridicule, power and powerlessness, influence and uselessness, tight constraints and huge possibilities.
Yet nearly a third (15 of 49) of America’s vice presidents have later served as president, and three more lost a presidential try. Eight have acceded to the White House to fill out a term; four of the eight then won election in their own right.
And on this Constitution Day 2024, we’re poised to add another to the list of such “promotions” if Vice President Kamala Harris wins in November.
It’s a largely unnoticed possibility. Everyone knows that she would be the first woman (and first of South Asian heritage and second Black) chief executive. A first, to be sure, but also the 16th to move up from the second office to the first.
(Incidentally, should former President Donald Trump prevail, he too would make history, joining Grover Cleveland as the only nonsequential two-term presidents. And assuming he completed that second term, he would edge Joe Biden by two months as the oldest serving chief executive.)
In short, the 2024 contest, for all its monumental importance and hyperpartisanship, gives us occasion to examine the intriguing development of the vice presidency from its brief mention in the original charter of 1787 to its constitutional standing today. Let’s look at some characters and cases.
ADAMS AND JEFFERSON
Vice presidents enjoy but one prescribed function: breaking rare tie votes in the Senate. So they tend to languish in the shadows. Once elected, few presidents have given their running mates an integral role in their administrations. Franklin Roosevelt, for instance, despite evident ill health, failed to disclose the atomic bomb project to new Vice President Harry Truman.
So it’s no surprise that the first vice president, John Adams, chafed in his limited role during George Washington’s two-term tenure. When he succeeded Washington, he faced the indignity of having as his vice president his opponent in the 1796 election, Thomas Jefferson.
So why the odd pairing of opponents? Drafters of the Constitution of 1787 did not envision the rapid emergence of political parties. But two sprouted almost right away: Adams’ “Federalists” and Jefferson’s “Republicans.” That transformed the intended selection protocol for electing the new nation’s chief executive: it instantly became more democratic but more contentious.
To insulate the high offices from a presumably unschooled electorate, the charter (Article II Section 1) inserted a “College” of Electors to make the final selection, comprising members from each state based on its total of senators and representatives. (I explained pros and cons of this confusing Electoral College in my 2020 and 2016 essays.) Moreover, the charter originally directed each “elector” to write two names on the same ballot. The one named on the most ballots would become president, the second place finisher vice president.
When the electors convened in 1796, they voted their party loyalties. But though everyone knew Adams or Jefferson was the intended presidential choice, the parties never orchestrated who should get their electors’ second vote. Jefferson got the second highest vote total, so he was elected his rival’s vice president.
It gets weirder. With the two political parties now firmly in place, in 1800 the same candidates led their tickets. That meant the incumbent Vice President Thomas Jefferson ran against the incumbent President John Adams. This time both parties designated specific running mates: Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Republican Aaron Burr.
Yes, this is the Burr who would kill Alexander Hamilton in the infamous duel on the banks of the Hudson, conspire to detach the lower Mississippi from the U.S., and escape conviction in his landmark treason trial. This is the Burr whom Hamilton described as “sanguine enough to hope everything, daring enough to attempt everything, wicked enough to scruple nothing.”
HAMILTON AND BURR
And yes (you saw it coming!), this is the Burr who almost manipulated the system to slip past Thomas Jefferson into the presidency. Thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster musical “Hamilton,” most of us know the outcome.
As in 1796, each elector had to write two names on a single ballot. The Jefferson-Burr ticket polled stronger, so Republican electors dutifully submitted their ballots naming Jefferson and Burr. No one thought to ensure that one ballot didn’t name Burr. It was a tie!
With no way to certify what everyone knew should happen — that Jefferson was the intended president — both Republicans got the same total. That meant that, as Article II goes on to direct, it would be the House of Representatives to decide the winner. But here’s the wild card: the delegates must vote not as individuals, but by state.
And the wheeling and dealing began. Could the Federalists steal the presidency by somehow winning nine state delegations? (Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee had joined the original 13 states.) Could the Federalists, a minority, influence the outcome, maybe by swinging the states they dominated to Burr? Could a conniving Burr manipulate the process and slip by both Jefferson and Adams?
Indeed, a few Federalists pondered plotting with Burr to block Jefferson. But the fervently anti-Jefferson Hamilton fought the conniving. Comments biographer Ron Chernow, he “preferred a man with wrong principles to one devoid of any.” Plus — and most important to history — he insisted that the Constitution’s process, and thus the Constitution itself, must prevail.
The first vote in the House of Representatives gave eight states to Jefferson, six to Burr. Thirty-five more followed over five tense, drawn-out days. Finally, reflecting Hamilton’s behind-the-scenes pressure, several Federalist representatives agreed to abstain, allowing Jefferson to gain his decisive ninth state. The election outcome turned out as the balloters wished.
And the Constitution had survived what some historians now believe was its greatest early test. For the first but not last time, even though both believed their rivals to be destroyers of the republic, the charter shepherded a peaceful transfer of power from one party to the other. It is not too far-fetched to suggest that the Constitution’s first challenge, a two-stage crisis over the vice presidency, may have been the most consequential.
The office itself would likewise survive, despite its continuing reputation for housing rogues, hacks or nonentities. But it would revert to its intended secondary status in 1804 when a 12th Amendment to the Constitution passed. Recognizing that the emergent two-party system now controlled nominations, the new election protocol required electors to specify, according to the parties’ designations, the intended office. No more accidental ties between a party’s two nominees.
“TIPPECANOE AND TYLER TOO”
Four decades and two political parties later, the most famous campaign slogan in American history propelled Whig Party candidates William Henry Harrison and John Tyler to victory in 1840. The vice presidency, and its Constitutional definition, would never be the same.
The Virginian Tyler, like many running mates, was added to the ticket to widen its geographic and ideological appeal. Harrison came to prominence on the midwestern frontier, most notably as the triumphant commander of U.S. troops in the decisive Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. The former general fully subscribed to his party’s principles of national activism albeit congressional, not presidential, supremacy. John Tyler, a fierce opponent of power-wielding President Andrew Jackson, likewise feared executive power, but as a states rights slaveowner. As a New York Whig ruefully noted about “Tyler Too;" “there was rhyme, but no reason” to the pairing.
Through eight administrations over 50 years, Americans had grown used to two-term presidencies. So it was a huge psychological and political shock when Harrison died of pneumonia just one month after taking the oath. That meant John Tyler was . . . what?
The Constitution was not clear.
Article II, Section 1 prescribes that if the president for whatever reason can no longer “discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the vice president.”
The same what? The same “office” or just the same “duties”?
Congressman (and former President) John Quincy Adams believed this clause intended a mere acting president, who should be officially titled “vice president fulfilling the duties of the office of president.” (Privately, Adams sniffed at “His Accidency.”) Tyler begged to differ. He took the presidential oath, issued an inaugural address, and moved into the White House. Though those fearful of executive power were horrified, Tyler settled the question for all time: when the first office is vacated, the vice president becomes the president — in full.
And these instances have been frequent. In fact, eerily, between 1840 and 1960 every victor in a year ending in zero (i.e. every 20 years) died in office, usually from an assassin’s bullet. Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, finally broke the curse; shot two months into his term, he survived. By way of contrast, just three vice presidents have died in office and two more resigned.
ROOSEVELT AND TRUMAN
One of those presidential deaths — Franklin Roosevelt’s in April 1945 – came at a dangerous time: just as the end of World War II neared. Worse still, the vice president had just joined the ticket in the November 1944 election. Upon Harry Truman was thrust the responsibility of stepping in as commander-in-chief.
But though Truman had had little time to get oriented to the wartime administration’s inner workings, he enjoyed a bit more than any of his predecessors, thanks to the 20th Amendment, ratified back in 1933 just as FDR first assumed office. From the beginning, Inauguration Day had been set for March 4 — a long “lame duck” interim from election to swearing-in. Improved communication since 1787 permitted an accelerated schedule: the new Congress henceforth would convene on January 3 and the president and vice president would take their oaths on January 20.
(The amendment also took care to clarify that if a president had not yet been certified by the earlier date, the vice president “shall act as president,” with Congress charged to provide for a case where neither had yet “qualified.” A 1947 act, never needed, prescribes the line of succession: the House speaker, the Senate president pro tem, the secretary of state and other Cabinet secretaries.)
Franklin Roosevelt’s unprecedented four presidential victories prompted another constitutional adjustment. The 22nd Amendment (1951) limited a president to two elected terms. A vice president who filled a presidential vacancy could only run for reelection twice if the “first term” was shorter than two years. Long before, Franklin’s distant cousin Theodore, who had gained the presidency on McKinley’s assassination, had won in his own right in 1904, then ran for a third time in 1912 on a third-party ticket but lost. Lyndon Johnson, who served out 14 months of Kennedy’s term, though eligible, withdrew from a 1968 reelection bid.
JOHNSON AND NIXON
All too often then, a president’s death has elevated the second officer to the chief executive’s chair. Guided by an increasingly attentive Constitutional framework, the passing of power, though traumatic, has been remarkably smooth and routine.
Such was the case when Lyndon Johnson took the presidential oath of office aboard Air Force One in November 1963 after Kennedy’s assassination. But this time a significant initiative followed that would soon bear extraordinary fruit.
As had happened seven times before, LBJ’s elevation left a vacancy in the vice presidency. Should he too succumb, no automatic successor stood in waiting. The original Constitution’s Article II had, to be sure, included the proviso directing Congress to specify a line of succession. But Johnson’s Democratic Congress worried that a successor might come from the other party, and moved to fill the void.
The 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967, remedied several potential problems. First, vindicating John Tyler of old, it stated flatly that the vice president “shall become president.” But what if the president is merely incapacitated? (James Garfield had survived nearly three months after being shot.) The amendment prescribed a protocol for certifying the president’s inability to serve, in which case the vice president would “assume the powers and duties” until the president could resume them. (This has been invoked at times when the president has undergone surgery.)
Most crucially, the amendment for the first time specified a process to fill a vice presidential vacancy: the president puts forth his or her nominee who must gain majority approval in both houses of Congress.
Famously in 1974, Richard Nixon became the first president to step down midterm. But less well known is that his original vice president had earlier resigned, bringing the amendment into play. Spiro Agnew had stepped down in 1973 due to revelations of misdeeds in his prior career. Nixon became the first to act under the amendment, filling the vacancy with Congressman Gerald Ford. And none too soon: the next year Nixon himself resigned, avoiding impeachment for the Watergate scandal.
FORD AND ROCKEFELLER
Gerald Ford thus suddenly found himself not only a resident of the White House, but with his own vice presidential vacancy to fill. He tapped former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. But in the election of 1976, incumbent Ford, the only president never elected to either executive office, dropped Rockefeller in favor of the more conservative Kansas Senator Robert Dole. With the Republicans still tainted by Watergate, the incorruptible Ford lost to Democrat Jimmy Carter.
BIDEN AND HARRIS
And so we return to the current campaign. The vice presidency looms large. Outgoing President Joe Biden served under Barack Obama. He picked Kamala Harris as his running mate, and when he decided not to pursue reelection, blessed Vice President Harris for the Democratic nomination.
Because it may surface in the campaign, it probably needs to be noted that there is one other vice presidential duty mentioned in Article II and repeated verbatim in the 12th Amendment. That obscure proviso loomed large on January 6, 2021. In the role of presiding over the Senate, he or she opens the certificated Electoral College ballots and announces the count to a joint session of Congress. As Vice President Mike Pence insisted, and the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 clarified, the duty is solely ceremonial: there is no constitutional or legal basis for any discretion in receiving the ballots. It is senators and representatives alone who may raise objections, which they must then by law adjudicate on the spot.
The vice presidency, in short, somewhat underdeveloped in the original Constitution, sometimes pilloried, often overlooked, has both earned increasing attention in several amendments and emerged as a stepping stone to the highest office. So it is appropriate that much has been made of the second contest this November, pitting Governor Tim Walz against Senator JD Vance. Midwesterners both, but of contrasting personal stories and political persuasions, they nevertheless share one historic significance.
They vie for an office no longer (if ever it was) invisible or irrelevant.