Would the slot be filled after inauguration? Or could he just run, be elected, and serve without a vice president?
There’s nothing that says he has to pick one, or that he has to make his pick be part of his campaigning. But when the electoral college meets, they have to cast votes for the Vice President, and if nobody gets a majority of their votes (because the Republicans don’t have anyone to all agree on), then it goes to the Senate to pick one (which, in the current Senate, would presumably be a Democrat, which I imagine Trump wouldn’t want). One way or another, we’d end up with a Vice President on Inauguration Day.
I don’t know about any Republican party rules, but there’s certainly nothing in the Constitution that says a candidate needs a named VP. What it does say is that the electors will vote for a person to be VP. I suppose they could leave votes blank, but then it would go to the Senate to select one from among the two with the highest number of electoral vote getters for VP. Unless there were coordination amongst the Republican electors, which would then have made a de facto VP nominee, it’s likely the two would be the Democratic VP candidate and the highest vote getter from among the Republican “candidates”. If every Republican elector left their VP ballot blank, I guess the Senate would have to choose the Democrat.
The first thing that would happen would be a mad scramble in various state and probably federal courts as state election authorities try to figure out what to do with defective nomination paperwork. Like, I’m not sure if state laws actually provide guidance for what to do if a major party sends a nomination certificate with a shrug emoji in one of the necessary fields.
Related to this is something I’ve always wondered about. Everyone acts like the President is the VP’s boss, but as an elected official that really isn’t true. Presumably a VP could tell the P to stuff it and work on whatever initiatives he wants, vote how he wants in the Senate, etc.
How did we get to this level of subservience, and have we ever had a VP who didn’t show this level of subservience?
I can’t think of any, since it would probably be political suicide to behave that way, and we have never had a situation where a president and vice president had real reason to be at such great odds with each other. The only/closest example might be Trump vs. Pence on January-6 and the insurrection.
Trump does not have a formal role in picking the veep. It is part of the convention rules and program.
I believe Stevenson was the last nominee who did not state a veep preference.
Thomas Jefferson under John Adams. Note this was before the 12th Amendment.
John Calhoun served as Vice President under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson and fought with both of them.
Thomas Jefferson fought with John Adams while serving as his Vice President but Jefferson was elected under the original system so maybe that doesn’t count.
Teddy Roosevelt and Charles Fairbanks. On pages 334-335 here, it says that Roosevelt threatened a libel suit:
Above link has other examples.
I think most states would default to: If people vote for XYZ Party then we appoint the XYZ Party electors and let them vote however they want. Or similarly if they vote Trump, the Trump electors are appointed and they can vote for whomever they want as VP.
John Nance Garner was FDR’s first Vice President. The two famously disagreed over the New Deal, and FDR dropped Garner in favor of Henry Wallace. Wallace turned out to be too far left even for FDR, who then replaced him with Harry Truman
Although the Vice President of the United States is not technically subservient to POTUS, in reality they have very few enumerated duties other than being President of the Senate, which makes VPOTUS the only government official who formally has both executive and legislative authority. As President of the Senate, they cast tie-breaking votes, and in theory could engage in a lot of fuckery to interfere with normal functioning of that legislative body but their presiding role is governed by procedural rules created by the Senate itself, so presumably a majority of senators could just vote to shut down the Vice President.
VPOTUS also has a fleet of a few planes (operated by the US Air Force), a transportation budget, and office with staff, and residence in the Naval Observatory with a small personal staff. I can’t find what the overall budget allocated to VPOTUS is offhand but it is probably on close order of US$5M or less, and of course can’t be used for personal purposes or campaigning, so even if a Vice President were to be openly defiant of the sitting President they’d have to walk a fine line to not be credibly accused of using their office for nefarious purposes. Very few Vice Presidents’ have had any real authority except as explicitly delegated by POTUS, and the only one in living memory who actually dictated any real executive policy beyond the nominal scope of the office was arguably Dick Cheney. For the most part, Vice Presidents go around stumping for an agenda set by POTUS, sit in on Cabinet and other meetings at the President’s pleasure (or not, as the case may be; Eisenhower kept Nixon at arm’s length, Kennedy sporadically involved Johnson in executive decisions, and Johnson (who didn’t even have a Vice President finishing out his first term) plainly had little use for Herbert Humphrey), and generally have a hobby project that shows their executive chops without interfering in the POTUS agenda.
As others have noted, whether a candidate for Vice President is nominated by the Republican National Convention or not, Electoral College electors will vote for one, and frankly in most states they could vote for anyone. in the case of rampant ‘faithless electors’ in states that don’t void such voites, we could theoretically end up with a Trump presidency with Kamala Harris in the VPOTUS role.
Stranger
Trump should pick an attractive AI vice-president. This is essentially running without a Vice. Advantages: Will annoy the Libs, win over entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley, not talk back, not influence policy, can be changed as required, will look lovingly at Trump as he speaks (but where would you find previous data that does this?), not play power games until, after Trump infarcts, quickly assuming control of the sugar caves and all your base.
My suggestion:
Sure, they could. They could also be impeached.
Who would want to work with a loose cannon VP? The world defers to POTUS. A word from the President would make the VP a political leper. Maybe some cranky billionaires could provide support, although that would tear the party even further apart.
The Brits talk about a heir and a spare. In the US, the VP is the heir and the spare and nothing more.
For starters, anyone from this early Trump Cabinet meeting:
https://youtu.be/-8GkzsUaQVU
Be funny if he just doesn’t have one on the ballot, and the second place vote-getter is Biden.
Be about the only funny thing about such a tragedy.
There’s no plausible way we’d end up with Vice-President Biden, because Biden is running for President, not Vice-President. If, for some bizarre reason, the Republican Party didn’t choose a single candidate for VP, then the probable outcome would be Vice-President Harris.
To spell it out in detail: The Electors vote for a President and a Vice-President. If the Republicans haven’t chosen a VP candidate, then presumably the Republican electors would each vote for someone, but it’d be a bunch of different people, so no one VP candidate would get a majority. If Biden/Harris win anyway, then that would be irrelevant and just be a footnote in history. If Trump wins but there is no VP candidate with a majority of votes, then you pick the top 3 VP vote-getters, one of whom would almost certainly be Harris, due to the Republicans splitting up their votes. Those three then go to the Senate, who pick one. Even if, at this point, the Republicans do all coalesce behind one candidate, this would be done by the old Senate, which has 50 Democrats, and all 50 Democrats would presumably vote for Harris, and then Harris herself would have the tiebreaking vote.
How about an AI veep who will take a good look at Trump, then determine that the only way to fulfill her oath to defend the Constitution is to off Trump?
I’m not sure, but I suspect that some states have a rule that a Presidential candidate must be paired with a VP candidate on the voting ballots. No so VP candidate = not being on the ballot.