The American Vice Presidency

T
hrough 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.”
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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 the 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.”
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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,”
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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.”
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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.