In reading the biography John Adams, I’m being reminded of some of the things that have faded into my distant memory about early American politics. One such thing was how the first few Presidential elections were handled. I had almost forgotten that in the first elections, the Vice-President was basically the runner-up. Note that we’re talking about electoral votes in all of these cases, not popular vote.
According to this site, one reason for getting away from that process was the tied vote between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr in 1800.
The 12th Amendment was put in place to help alleviate this problem.
According to this Slate article, the office of the Vice-President was largely expendable until the 20th century, with few changes in the process of nomination and election.
In the 1960’s came the change that most reflects what we see today in the selection of VP candidates. From the same Slate article:
This is an interesting progression to me, from a process which is voter-centric to a selection which is centered around the Presidential candidate. I’m wondering this: what was wrong with the old way?
The problems with tie votes seemed to have been dealt with by the 12th Amendment. However, the idea that bothers me somewhat is that Presidential candidates are given full responsibility for choosing their running mates. This pretty ensures that both candidates agree ideologically… but I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.
While some might see problems arising from a President and VP who disagree (or in the modern context, belong to divergent political parties), I see the political process at work, and the will of the people more accurately reflected. The idea of the original elections, with President and Vice President having gotten the most votes, intrigues me. At the very least, if the two winners are indeed from opposing parties, we’d have more diverse ideas coming out of the Executive Branch.
And while I’d like my OP to be above today’s political field, I can’t help wondering… wouldn’t it be interesting if Bush had Gore as his VP? Always a bridesmaid, never a bride… chortle
So, what do the rest of you think? Good idea? Crappy idea? Feasible or not? Of course I’m aware that we’re talking purely theoritically here, and that this isn’t going to happen anytime soon. So, just as a brain exercise, what do you think?
As I understood it from my history lessons, the real reason they stopped doing this was because some of these guys who got elected together couldn’t stand each other, but that wasn’t a good enough legal reason to throw on something. Besides that, once the rules of succession went into place it was probably a really good idea that the VP not be from an opposing party. Since the majority of electoral votes went to a person with X ideology, it also stands to reason that people would be pissed if the president died and someone with Y ideology took his place. I think it’s probably only in these very close elections that people might sway towards this idea. If it had been 80-20 or 70-30 most of us (Literally) wouldn’t want the other guy attached to the executive branch.
The problem came when Jefferson and Burr, who were running on a ticket together, tied. The election had to be thrown to the House, which took forever to make a decision. The rules were changed due to this.
The principal duty of the Vice President–aside from that whole “break ties in the Senate” thing–is to be ready to assume the duties of the Presidency. In this modern Age of the Nuclear “Football”, we tend to want the person who’s next in line of succession to being President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, etc., to be as prepared as possible for the job–to be regularly briefed and up to speed on all the assorted troublespots and potential crises out there, and with a good working relationship with the Cabinet Secretaries and heads of independent agencies and other important officials in the Executive Branch. Frankly, it has been hard enough getting modern Presidents to not shut out their V.P.'s when they’re members of the same party–I believe a number of 20th Century Presidents didn’t really like or trust their Vice Presidents. (One problem is that, due to the political considerations of party unity and regional and ideological “ticket balancing”, Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates, although of the same party, may nonetheless be of divergent wings of that party, and may have even been outright political rivals for leadership of that party before the primaries were finally settled.) With a system which would guarantee that the President and Vice President would be of completely different parties, it would be even harder to keep the President’s designated sucessor as fully “in the loop” as he or she ought to be.
This paragraph doesn’t mention that the office of Vice President was given to the runner up. I don’t see how it addresses that problem at all. What it says to me is that electors would decide (in their minds) that they wanted candidate x as President or for Vice President but they didn’t make it clear that they wanted the person they chose to be President or Vice President. They didn’t say if they were voting for who they wanted to win or who they wanted to lose. That’s what the first sentence in the paragraph says to me.
I don’t see that making the runner up the vp would make any difference in the Jefferson and Burr case. Lets say that Jefforson had a running mate, and Burr had a running mate. Jefferson and Burr tie. Woah! Wait a minute! I thought we gave them both running mates to keep the tie from happening! How did they tie then?
The tie would have had to be broken anyway. A vp running alongside the pres wouldn’t make any difference.
I think you misunderstood the cite. The Jefferson/Burr tie happened in the 1800 election, before there was any awareness of the potential problem. The solution to the problem came before the next election, in 1804, in the form of the 12th Amendment. But in 1800, neither Jefferson nor Burr had a running mate, because elections didn’t work that way yet.
I think there’s some validity to Copaesthetic’s view as well. Washington and Adams, as President and VP respectively, seemed to respect one another, but Adams discredited himself early in that term and Washington was forced to distance himself somewhat. Though the stated reason for the 1804 Amendment is the issue of tied votes, as Governor Quinn points out, I could easily expect that there was more behind it than just that.
This is pretty much the reason I settled on for why this wouldn’t work today as well. Realistically, the parties and ideologies are probably too divergent. From what I’ve been able to tell, in the late 18th Century, there were certainly differing political ideologies amongst the Founding Fathers and that fact did sometimes (often) stop up the works. In the end, though, they were able to get past it and get things done.
These days, I’m not sure the same is true. The idealist in me wants to believe that even the staunchest politicians get get over themselves long enough to work productively in their official capacity. But then again… maybe not.
No, I didn’t mis-understand the cite. I was giving an example of how the solution mentioned wouldn’t have solved the Jefferson/Burr tie. At least that’s not what this paragraph states:
I don’t see how running mates would keep a presidential tie from happening. But maybe I’m missing something that wasn’t in that article. Clearly there is more to the 12th ammendment than “The Presidential Candidate must have a running mate who upon winning the election shall atain the office of Vice President.” But none of this is mentioned in the paragraph.
I do also agree with Copaesthetic that the present system has some advantages.
I think Adams and Jefferson had issues during their term together, and as I recall there was much rumor mongering about physical threats and hissing rebukes. Of course, this was a time when we still had fistfights in the houses of congress(Sometimes I miss those days. . .) and men challenging each other to duals of honor and such. Much of this was probably just hearsay from people who found it hard to believe that two people with differing political views could really work together.
“I will out live Jefferson.” , John Adams, a repeated quote offered on their rivalry, due to the fact that Adams was 7 years younger than Jefferson
“Thomas Jefferson survives.”, John Adams, on his death bed
Of course, he didn’t know that Jefferson had died that same day, uttering similar things about Adams.
Their rivalries were so public, and so absolute on both sides, that I think some people were actually afraid that the president and vice president might start ‘dueling on the commons’.
Yes, the did. Jefferson and Burr were running mates. That’s why they each received 73 votes. The Federalist slate of Adams and Pinckney received 65 votes, but they were savvy enough to have one elector withhold his vote from Pinckney and give it to John Jay.
If this system were in effect today, Bush and Cheney would have tied for the Presidency, and the House would have had to pick between them. Imagine Democrats trying to make up their mind between those two (assuming that the distribution of House seats was such that their votes would have mattered).
The pre-1800 system would be a nonstarter today. It was not the Framers’ proudest creation. But you’re right, Avalonian, that the current system of having the presidential candidate hand-pick the VP candidate leaves something to be desired. I don’t know how to change it, though; we aren’t about to go back to letting conventions make real decisions (too messy for televsion) and no candidate has any incentive to change the process.
Oh. I see. You can see how the paragraph wasn’t clear, right? I didn’t know that Jefferson and Burr were running mates. I had to have a pretty decent knowledge of the presidents to know who Jefferson’s Vice President was. The paragraph required someone to know this information.
Let this be a lesson to all of us. Assume your audience is made of idiots.
It’s easy to get confused, prisoner, because the pre-12th Amendment procedure produced two very different outcomes in 1796 and 1800. Just to give a full explanation:
In 1796, parties and nominations were still informal. There was broad consensus among the Federalists and Democrat-Republicans that Adams and Jefferson would be their presidential standard-bearers, but less consensus on the vice presidency. The Federalists informally nominated Thomas Pinckney to run with Adams, and the D-R’s Burr to run with Jefferson. But the electors didn’t view themselves as bound by the choices. As a result Adams received 71 votes and Jefferson 68, but VP defections reduced Pinckney to 59 and Burr to 30, with the balance scattering. So the losing presidential candidate became vice president.
This underscored the need for more discipline. By 1800 Congressional caucuses formally nominated Jefferson, Burr, Adams, and C.C. Pinckney, and the parties put heat on their electors to back both candidates. Alas, the D-R’s were too successful; every one of their 73 electors voted for both Jefferson and Burr, producing the tie. So the House had to pick between two running mates for the presidency.
You can now see, I trust, why this system would not be appealing today.
Thanks for clearing that up, jklann. I guess I also didn’t fully understand what happened in 1800.
Now with this knowledge, it just seems to me that we’ve gone too far in the other direction. I also don’t know how this change could be affected, but putting control of running mates back to the conventionsand out of the hands of the candidates themselves would probably be a good step.
Missouri still has seaparate ballots for governor and lt. governor. It’s happened a couple of times in the last few elections that we wound up with a governor from one party and a lt. governor from another. Overall things start out with both people promising to cooperate but by the end of the term it degenerates into a type of gridlock not envisioned by the framers of the Constitution.
