I keep hearing that should Lieberman be elected Vice-President, and the Senate ends up being split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, the Republicans would have a majority. The conventional wisdom being that Lieberman would resign his Senate seat, which would then become Republican as the governor of Connecticut is Republican, and he gets to make the appointment. Thus the split becomes 51-49 favoring the Republicans.
What I haven’t heard anyone mention is the possibility that Lieberman would resign the Vice-Presidency, thus keeping his Senate seat, and with President Gore having the power to appoint a new VP, he would pick a Democrat. Thus the 50-50 split would break ties with the newly appointed Democratic VP. Thus, a Democratic majority in the Senate.
This is of course all contigent on the election results, and on Washington state sending a Democrat to the Senate, but if this happened, why wouldn’t Lieberman resign the VP and take the Senate seat, thus giving the Democrats slightly more power than the Republicans?
Lieberman couldn’t resign the vice-presidency unless he was elected and sworn in to the office.
I think you mean: can Lieberman refuse the job? That’s probably not clear.
I don’t see why he would want to do it. Most likely a Republican Congress would reject any attempt to work around such a scheme.
Thinking about this more, I don’t see how it would work. The new Congress will be sworn in January 3. The VP gets sworn in January 20.
So, let’s Lieberman refuses the VP job. Then Gore would appoint a successor. Such a successor would have to approved by both houses of Congress. The Republicans control the House and the Senate, at best, will be tied. That means there would have to be a person amenable to Congressional Republicans, who, presumably, would be pretty PO’d because Lieberman has provoked a constitutional crisis by refusing to serve as VP.
Lieberman’s presence in the Senate won’t help at all in the House and in the Senate, I doubt that many Republicans would want to have anything to do with him. Probably a lot of Democrats too.
It would be a lot simpler if the Democrats, sensing a win, decided to have their electors vote for a different candidate. It would also tick off a lot of people, but at least it would appear to be legal.
Maybe we could go back to the original idea when it came to choosing a president: The winner is President, the runner up is Vice President. That’s how it worked for Washington/Adams and Adams/Jefferson. Of course, it made for some pretty tense times between the Pres and Vice, but it couldn’t be any worse than things stand at the present.
Ignore the pronouncements of these “Nattering Nabobs of Negativism.” Spiro T. Agnew was vice president at one time, and he managed to resign the position. He also came up with the Nattering Nabob phrase when trying to describe the liberal press.
Agnew wasn’t even the first VP to resign. In what would no doubt be considered a precedent, John C. Calhoun quit as Vice President in 1832 because he’d been elected to the Senate to fill a vacancy.
There’s one way this could be done without Lieberman resigning. Gore could pick someone else and then notify the Democrat electors to vote for that person. (This is what would happen in the case that Lieberman dies before the Electoral College did its thing.) I don’t see this happening, but it would be the cleanest way.
Calhoun also resigned because he and President Andrew Jackson didn’t like each other at all and disagreed on many major issues, in particular nullification.
Calhoun was the VP for both Adams and Jackson and he really didn’t get along with either president.