Jody C. Baumgartner - The American Vice Presidency: From the Shadow to the Spotlight

The American Vice Presidency

The American Vice Presidency

From the Shadow to the Spotlight

Jody C Baumgartner with Thomas F. Crumblin

Rowman & Littlefield

Lanham Boulder New York London

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Copyright 2015 by Rowman & Littlefield

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Baumgartner, Jody C, 1958

The American vice presidency : from the shadow to the spotlight / Jody C Baumgartner and Thomas F. Crumblin.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-2889-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-2890-0 (electronic) 1. Vice-PresidentsUnited States. 2. Vice-PresidentsUnited StatesElection. I. Title.

JK609.5.B378 2015

352.23'90973dc23

2014048215

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgments

T his book would not have been possible without the help of several people who we would like to acknowledge. Townley Cheek of East Carolina University was most helpful in tracking down sources and organizing notes for this book. Professor Joseph Pika of the University of Delaware was kind enough to review the manuscript and his comments were most helpful. The editorial team at Rowman & Littlefield is also deserving of thanks, including vice president and senior executive editor Jon Sisk, Laura Reiter, and Natalie Mandziuk. Mia A. Leone was instrumental in preparing the index. Although they deserve to share in the credit, any mistakes contained in this book are, of course, ours and ours alone.

On a personal level, each of us would like to thank our wives and children for the support they have given us through the years. In a real sense, they make all of this worthwhile.

We should also note here that portions of this book were previously published in 2006 under the title The American Vice Presidency Reconsidered , to which Baumgartner holds all rights.

Introduction: The Vice Presidency

I t is quite possible that no elected office has been more maligned than that of the Vice President of the United States. Since the beginning of the republic, the office has been the object of ridicule by scholars, pundits, humorists, citizens, and even vice presidents themselves. For example, John Adams, the countrys first vice president, referred to it as the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived. The perception among many is that the vice presidency and vice presidents are, at best, irrelevant. The titles of several books about vice presidents reflect this: Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice on the Vice Presidency , Madmen and Geniuses , and Bland Ambition: From Adams to QuayleThe Cranks, Tax Cheats, and Golfers Who Made It to Vice President .

A look at some of the vice presidents throughout history seems to confirm the poor impression many have of the vice presidency. There have been more than a few subpar vice presidents. One of the commonly cited examples includes Aaron Burr, who was indicted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton while serving as vice president. George Clinton (who served under both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison) was, by most accounts, senile throughout most of his seven years in office. Daniel Tompkins, who served two terms under James Monroe, was drunk throughout his second term. This made little difference because he stayed in his home state of New York the entire time. Richard Johnson, Martin Van Burens vice president, spent much of his time as vice president running a tavern and had several slave mistresses. Hannibal Hamlin, Abraham Lincolns first vice president, spent most of his term sequestered in Maine while the Civil War raged on. Lincoln had no better luck with his second vice president, Andrew Johnson, who was intoxicated at the presidents inauguration and later impeached after assuming the presidency. Schuyler Colfax and Henry Wilson (Ulysses Grants first and second vice presidents, respectively) were both implicated in connection with the Crdit Mobilier scandal of 1872.

To focus too much on these early examples might be unfair, but it remains true that many of our vice presidents were less than exemplary statesmen. In general, a list of vice presidents and vice presidential candidates reads like a virtual Whos Who of political mediocrities. Harry Truman may have summed up the classical view of the vice presidency best when he said, look at all the Vice Presidents in history. Where are they? They were about as useful as a cows fifth teat. Anecdotes and quotes about the vice presidency abound (see box 1.1), but perhaps the best illustration of the low regard for the office is the fact that before the ratification of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment in 1967, if a vice president resigned or died in office he was not replaced. The vice presidency has been vacant for a total of thirty-seven years throughout American history.

All of this might suggest that the vice presidency is unimportant, but nothing could be further from the truth. First, and most obviously, the vice president is one of only two nationally elected officials in the country. Second, one of the only constitutional functions of the vice presidency is to assume the presidency if and when it becomes vacant. This is significant. From 1841 to 1975 more than one-third of all U.S. presidents either died in office or quit, paving the way for the vice president to occupy the White House. Eight vice presidents became president as a result of the death of a sitting president (John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson) and one, Gerald Ford, became president as the result of presidential resignation. These men served for a total of forty-two years, twenty-nine of which were in the twentieth century. In fact, vice presidents who became president by way of succession occupied the office half of the time from 1945 to 1977.

Third, since 1945 the vice presidency has been seen as a viable springboard to the presidency. Many prominent and qualified individuals who aspire to the presidency now see the vice presidency as a way to gain valuable national exposure and increase their chance of securing their partys presidential nomination. Most vice presidents since 1945 have subsequently made a run for the presidency.

Box 1.1

The Conventional Wisdom: Some Quotable Quotes on the Vice Presidency

John Adams once lamented, my country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.

Theodore Roosevelt was known to have proclaimed, I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than vice president.

Woodrow Wilson once wrote that the chief embarrassment in discussing [the vice presidents] office is that in explaining how little there is to be said about it one has evidently said all there is to say.