What Matters: A VP’s present-day duties are relatively limited. That’s the only time the Senate has had to choose the vice president that way. Instead, he was elected vice president in a straight party-line vote by the Senate under the constitutional procedure for such contingencies. Although Andrew Jackson’s vice president, Martin Van Buren, won an electoral vote majority for president in 1836, Johnson, his running mate, fell short of the needed majority. In fact, the 1836 Johnson followed a distinctive path to become vice president.Īlthough a long-time member of Congress, Johnson was pretty controversial, partly because he openly lived with Julia Chinn, a mixed race slave, and their daughters until she died in 1833 from cholera. Johnson, 1961-63) and the only one not to become later president. In 1836, the successful VP was Richard Mentor Johnson, the first of three men named Johnson to hold the second office (Andrew Johnson, 1865 and Lyndon B. JKG: People did, and still do, seek the VP nomination when the presidential nomination seems beyond their reach or has already been decided. How long did that last and when and why did the concept of running mates begin? I didn’t realize people used to actually run specifically for vice president. What Matters: I’ve read a little bit about the contested VP race of 1836. From 1812 to 1912 seven VPs died in office. The office often attracted second-raters or those in failing health.
When the great Daniel Webster was offered the chance to be Zachary Taylor’s running mate in 1848, he declined, stating, “I don’t propose to be buried until I’m dead.” It was simply a legislative job but presiding over the Senate wasn’t much fun for ambitious men who wanted to, but couldn’t, participate in the debate. Some favored abolishing the vice presidency but it survived. So by 1804 the 12th Amendment to the Constitution replaced the founders’ not “excellent” system with one whereby electors voted separately for president and vice president. The problem was electors couldn’t designate which was which. In 1800, it also allowed Aaron Burr, basically a vice-presidential candidate, to be essentially elected president after his VP votes equaled Jefferson’s presidential votes. In 1796 it produced a split ticket result as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson landed the two jobs.
JKG: The great Alexander Hamilton thought that the presidential election system which relied on the vice presidency as the runner up was “at least excellent.” It wasn’t.Īs national political parties formed and offered a two-man ticket with a de facto presidential and vice-presidential candidate, the framers’ creation didn’t operate as designed. What Matters: Why did that role change so quickly? To give the vice president some work once he’d served his electoral purpose, the framers made him president of the Senate (otherwise he’d be without employment, one framer observed) and made him first successor. So the vice presidency was probably created to help make the presidential election system work, not because it was otherwise needed. To encourage electors not to waste their second votes, they created a second office, the vice presidency, which would go to the presidential runner up even if he didn’t get a majority. So they gave electors two votes for president but required them to vote for at least one person who wasn’t from the elector’s state. The framers worried that it would be hard to elect a president after George Washington because many electors would back their home state’s favorite sons. It’s a bit of a mystery why they created the vice presidency but the office emerged late at the Philadelphia convention pretty much at the same time as the Electoral College. JKG: The framers never would have imagined the vice presidency as we know it today! What Matters: The role of the vice president envisioned by the Constitution is very different than what we see today. Is the modern veep what the framers wanted? It is not. Our conversation, conducted by email, is below. The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden, as well as a law professor at St. His name is Joel Goldstein and he’s the author of The White House Vice Presidency: I went to an expert on vice presidents to get his take. We don’t yet know who, but we do know that if they become vice president, Biden’s running mate have very few actual responsibilities under the Constitution.Īnd it begs the question: Why do we have or need a second fiddle for the President and why do we think the picking of that person is so important?
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