Some call it a “behind-scenes job” that gets less credit than it deserves.
Yet, for almost every president in the history of the U.S., there has been a vice president. Vice presidents have both helped unite the parties and, at times, caused more controversy than was necessary.
With Election Day inching closer and closer, there has been much talk about the vice presidency and just who presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain will choose as their potential running mates.
While both senators have remained mum about the issue thus far, speculation as to their running mates has circulated the Web with many trying to find out just exactly who is on their short lists. Lists of possible running mates compiled by the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times have included both senators and governors who would help balance the presidential ticket in some way.
History has demonstrated that the influence of the vice president has ranged significantly from president to president; some vice presidents have had little contact with the president while others have been involved as crucial advisors.
Exactly just how much power these vice presidents have exactly is ultimately up to the president himself, said Joel Aberbach, professor of political science at UCLA.
“The president can give them a lot to do … or the president can pretty much ignore them,” Aberbach said.
During Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s last term in office, he didn’t keep his vice president, Henry S. Truman, updated on matters concerning the end of the war.
When Roosevelt died in 1945 of a massive cerebral hemorrhage, Truman ascended to the presidency with little information relating to the development of the atomic bomb. Truman would later decide to use the weapon against Japan.
Other presidents placed their vice presidents to head minimal programs. John F. Kennedy placed his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, as the head of one such program at the time, the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. When Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Johnson was sworn in and proved to be a formidable president who decided to continue implementing all of Kennedy’s works. Johnson was responsible for moving forward with much of the civil rights legislation that Kennedy had proposed.
While only eight of the 43 presidents have died in office, the possibility of the vice president succeeding the president has been something that has lurked in the back of voters’ minds.
“We make a big deal about it, because the person’s one heartbeat away from the presidency,” said Lynn Vavreck, an associate professor of political science at UCLA.
Though, she added, at the end of the day a vice presidential candidate bears little thought in voters’ minds and is not likely to influence many voters’ decisions in November.
“It won’t have much effect (on voters),” Vavreck said, since historically speaking, that hasn’t been the case. She said that the public typically can become very excited about the presidential candidates’ announcement about the vice president but are otherwise unmoved by it.
Strictly speaking, the vice president doesn’t even advise the president or have his or her own office in the White House, Vavreck said.
Still, the guessing games as to who may be the next vice president continue. Ideally speaking, analysts have noted that vice presidential candidates should help to diversify the ticket by having some expertise in a field that the presidential candidate doesn’t have, according to an article published in June in the Los Angeles Times.
It’s a difference from earlier presidencies where having a vice president from a key swing state could help the candidate win votes, though the last time that happened was in 1960 when Kennedy’s selection of Johnson as vice president helped him secure key votes in the Southern states.
How much of an effect a vice presidential candidate will have on voters’ decisions is yet to be determined while both campaigns focus on their respective candidates for the presidency.