Is there anything prohibiting the POTUS from appointing the VPOTUS to serve as Secretary of State or some other cabinet position?
Possibly the Presidential Succession Act.
You didn’t explicitly rule this out in the OP, so I’ll just mention that no politician would want to do both of those jobs at the same time, and no Senate worth its salt would let anyone try.
No politician would want to be Secretary of State and Vice President?
Are you at all aware of the colossal egos in Washington? Do you honestly think Joe Biden would turn down such an offer? Or Lieberman? Or anyone else? (Palin’s too new to speculate on, IMHO, anyway.)
I don’t see that the Presidential Succession Act would prohibit it.
There have been recurring proposals over the years to give the Vice President a Cabinet post in addition to his or her constitutional post. Many states do something of the kind; in Ohio, for instance, the lieutenant governor is often appointed to head a state agency (currently the Department of Development). I could see two problems with that on the Federal level: double-dipping salaries (although the Veep could always waive one, or donate it to charity), and the fact that from time to time the President just has to fire someone. You might fire the Veep from the State Department, but you’re still stuck with him or her as Veep. Could be… awkward.
Something I didn’t consider. 
You can’t fire the vice-president anyway - this is an elected official with constitutional responsibilities. In the beginning of our system the vice-president and president didn’t even belong to the same party.
If they have a falling out, the president can freeze the vice-president from executive roles, but that’s about all he can do. Tiebreakers in the Senate can still be broken, for instance, and the travel and housekeeping budget is separate (I believe) from the White House.
If a vice-president doesn’t want to leave, the only thing that can be done is to impeach him or wait until another election.
Doubtful. Madeline Albright was SoS and ineligible to be president. If we got to the point where we had a VP/SoS and the presidential succession got that far I would imagine it would just skip on the the Secretary of the Treasury.
The VP is also President of the Senate. There might be problems associated with someone who is a Senate officer simultaneously serving in the Cabinet. What if the vote to confirm tied, for instance – would the VP vote on his or her own confirmation?
Note that the President has no such Congressional role. It is therefore a potentially different question as to whether the POTUS could serve as his own Secretary of State.
When Spiro Agnew resigned as Vice President in 1973and Richard Nixon resigned as President in 1974, they both formally submitted their resignations to the Secretary of State.
So who could the Pres. or VP resign to if either were also Sec. of State?
Top Federal officials from time to time can and have recused themselves where there’s a potential conflict of interest. In such a situation, the Veep/SecState would probably submit his or her resignation to the Deputy SecState.
Having a colossal ego is not the same as thinking you can handle two jobs that each require the full attention, energy, and time of a single person. I don’t think anyone in DC is arrogant enough to tackle that.
Here in Minnesota, we had the Governor appoint his Lt. Governor to simultaneously head the Department of Transportation.*
But recently, after poor maintenance caused the I-35 bridge to fall down during rush hour, killing more than a dozen people, the Legislature fired her – refused to confirm her appointment for another term.
So I think the President could appoint the VP to his cabinet, but it would require Senate confirmation.
- I won’t mention anything else she did in that job; I couldn’t do that unless this thread was in the Pit!
So, if a Prez wanted his VP to serve as SoS, he couldn’t arrange the VP’s schedule to allow for the added responsibilities? And if the Pres’s party had a clear majority in both houses, the VP’s tir-breaking senate votes would hardly be important, for the most part.
The above post was directed to Captain Carrot’s last post, not to you, t-bonham.
Here in Minnesota, the opposite was true: the other party held a clear (actually veto-proof) majority in the Senate. But that still meant that the tie-breaking vote in the Senate would be meaningless – hardly ever used.
What about the oft-mentioned rumor that John Kerry and John McCain considered joining on the Democratic ticket in 2004, with the proviso that McCain would be both VP and Secretary of Defense? Obviously, it never came to pass, and I don’t think it’s ever been substantiated, but I’ve never heard anybody say it wasn’t possible.
Can someone tell me why do we need a vice president?
Someone needs to take over the office of the President when the Pres is dead or incapacitated.
Even a simple surgery under anesthesia requires the VP to be the acting President during that time.
Right, but I think the point was that this successor could be someone else in the government that has an actual job while in a position to take over as president.
The founders probably had an idea of a vice-president who had a regular job of presiding over the Senate, but that is wholly ceremonial in modern times.
So, I guess the argument is why pay a person a greater than six figure salary to do nothing but sit around in case the president dies?*
*I realize that the Vice President does various things for the administration, but nothing necessarily important.