A Bucket of Warm What?

The Occasional Importance of the Vice President

In normal political times (does anyone even remember normal political times?) much of the talk this close to the party conventions would be the guessing game about the likely vice-presidential nominee of the out-party. 

Indeed, before The Debate Performance That Changed America, we were subjected to the quadrennial breathless media speculation about likely choices.  And with the upcoming Republican convention, it’s back on TV and page one. 

Is it news?  Yes.  Is it “OMG—it’s so exciting” news?  No.  By a day or two after the announcement, almost no one cares.

The vice president constitutionally has two jobs.  First, and of somewhat less importance, the Constitution makes the vice president the president of the Senate, able to vote only to break a tie.  This mattered in the 117^thSenate (2021-22), but otherwise rarely.  Most vice presidents usually find better things to do, like picking up a bottle of wine for dinner at the official residence that evening. 

The second and more important job, put succinctly, is that the vice president must wake up every morning, call in his or her chief of staff, and ask, “Is the president awake and alert?”  If the answer is yes, the vice president can knock off for the day.

Consider what some vice presidents in American history have said about the job.  Most infamously, serving under FDR, John Nance Garner said, “The vice presidency is not worth a bucket of warm piss.”

More eloquently, John Adams, serving under George Washington, said, "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."

And more humorously, Woodrow Wilson’s vice-president, Thomas R. Marshall, stated, "Once there were two brothers.  One ran away to sea; the other was elected vice president of the United States.  And nothing was heard of either of them again."

So, the vice-presidency is typically uninteresting beyond the party conventions and normally does not really matter in American politics.  But these, as I noted earlier, are not normal times.  As we have seen in recent Senate elections, the remarkably close division between the parties increases the potential importance of the vice president’s role as president of the Senate. 

Yet beyond the closely divided number of seats, there are two more reasons the vice-presidency matters a bit more now. 

First, barring some sort of constitutional or —heaven forbid—extra-constitutional change, the president elected this year will be unable to run for reelection regardless of which major-party candidate wins.  Both Biden and Trump would be serving the second of two constitutionally allowable terms.  Neither party, therefore, will be able to nominate a sitting president for the 2028 election.

This of course will put the sitting vice president in the spotlight for a 2028 nomination—along with the various governors and senators who think that they would make a great president. 

Nevertheless, the vice presidency historically has not been the best launching pad to the Oval Office.

In fact, only 15 vice presidents have become president, of whom only four (27%) were elected as sitting vice presidents:  John Adams (1796), Thomas Jefferson (1800), Martin Van Buren (1836), and George H.W. Bush (1988). 

One vice president, Gerald Ford, became president upon the resignation of Richard Nixon (1974).

Two others—Richard Nixon (1968) and Joe Biden (2020)—eventually were elected president, but not as sitting vice presidents.  And, most recently, Hubert Humphrey (1968) and Al Gore (2000) lost the presidency despite running as sitting vice presidents.

The remaining eight vice presidents reached the presidency through the death of the president they served.  John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry Truman became president after the natural death in office of, respectively, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren Harding, and FDR. 

And Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson became president after the assassinations, respectively, of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John Kennedy.

So, after George Washington, only four times did a sitting vice president immediately succeed the president he served.  Still, vice presidents can dream, and journalists, analysts, and party worker will encourage them in 2028.

Finally, in view of the foregoing statistics, the second reason for the possibly greater importance of the vice presidency now is, frankly, the age of both major-party candidates.  Whichever party wins in November, the vice president will put that morning question to the chief of staff with more than normal curiosity. 

Biden would be 82 in January 2025 and 86 by January 2029.  Trump would be 78 upon taking office and would be 82 at the end of his term. Either one would be the oldest president in office in American history.

By comparison, the median age of all U.S. presidents is 55, and the median age of those starting a second term is 58.

We can wish both candidates many more healthy, productive, and enjoyable years, but we cannot predict what nature has in store for any of us.  As a cold, hard fact of life, that makes the next vice presidency potentially more important than it usually is.  We might not hear anything about the 2025 incoming vice president until 2028, but, then again, we might.  So pay attention.