The position of Vice President of the US

Politics & Elections
1

The Nation of Dag is having a constitutional convention, and has a question for the anti-ignorance crowd regarding the position of Vice President of the US.

The VP currently is just the tie breaker in the Senate, and the replacement in case the sitting president leaves office.

The the original system, before the 12th amendment in 1803, was basically a proportional representation style election, where every elector in the electoral college had 2 votes. The candidate with the most votes was President, and the second place was VP. The small amount of discussion in Wiki says that the FF added the parts about the VP being life insurance for the President and the tie breaking vote in the senate as reasons to not “throw away” the second vote on someone who can’t win.

I have read (no cite) that some of the Founding Fathers expected the VP to be sort of an assistant president, the top cabinet member and adviser. I have also read that some FFs saw the president as a limited monarch, like in the parliamentary system in the UK of the time*

I can imagine that some saw the Senate tie breaker position as a second prize: It is not the big winner but there is a consolation prize. The president of the Senate could have been a smaller bully pulpit, and position to counterbalance the president’s bully, and it would be held by the biggest politician of the minority party. Again similar to some prime ministers. Senate rules prevent the VP from being / acting as a full senator. The Constitution is not clear or does not address this, so I think it could be changed without an amendment (unlike most of the stuff I am talking about here). I also think that if VP#1 Adams had been more popular in the senate than he was, the VP may have evolved to be more of a PM like-counterbalance to the President. This kind of VP could have been similar in stature to the speaker of the house, eclipsed the Speaker in prominence, or possibly together they might have rivaled the President.
I can imagine that some saw the VP as a “shadow” president, like the shadow government in some parliamentary systems. No formal executive powers, but having access to the same information as the Pres, so the VP can step in and take over without missing a beat (the shadow knows).

That original plan did not work out very well, so before 1804 they changed it so that the electors voted for Pres and VP on 2 separate ballots each with one winner, and since then the P and VP have been elected as a team.

                          and now the Question....

Using the real US as the model, if you had the chance to change things regarding constitutional level law around the election and roles of the V-POTUS, what would you change? Why?
Here are a few Ideas I have:
> Make the VP an explicitly responsible position in the executive branch similar to a cabinet secretary - something important like Sec of State (currently VP is treated as a legislative position in some ways). (+ assistant president +Shadow)
>Split the presidency into head of state and the head of nation roles, for instance P=top ambassador, CIC of military; VP= domestic executive, legislative executive (+ split responsibilities of pres is like having assistant pres)
> Make the second place P/VP candidates full congressional members, for instance loosing Pres candidate=pres of Senate; loosing VP candidate=pres of house (+ gives some power to the second place P/VP candidates)
> add another VP to add to the succession list (+ less chance of unelected presidents like Ford + the shadow of the shadow knows too!)
Please tell me about writings of the FF that address this, and how other presidential democracies shape their VPs. Please tell me your own ideas. And finally (for now) do you foresee any unforeseen consequences of my suggestions?

The many voices in the Nation of Dag thank you for your thoughtful advice.

(fixing democracy, one useless job at a time)

My primary source, Wiki:

*Did the “UK” exist in the 1770s? If not the use “Britain” or “England” as appropriate.

2

This was supposed to be a debate - Mod please move. Thanks!

3

I think a weak VP is desirable to prevent conflict of interest (ie. undermining the P).

P is free to give the VP any job he wants to, as far as I know. And VP, being elected, is free to turn it down.

4

Aside from your final point, can you give a reason to support any of your first three points? In what ways would any of these suggestions actually improve the governance of the country. I am afraid that they appear to be just “Hey! Let’s give this guy a real job” suggestions that do not really provide a serious improvement to the governance.

(I am not sure that your fourth suggestion is that practical, either. We have only had the Ford situation occur once in 227 years–and, given the nature of Nixon, it seems likely that if Nixon had had a vice-vice president, he too would have been sufficiently corrupt to have been removed from office.)

5

Is this intended to enhance gridlock?
Is there any country where the election losers are given special legislative power? The U.K. Speaker of the House is required to be non-partisan (and. following with Speaker Denison’s rule, can’t even break a tie to pass a bill).

6

I’d give him a full, real vote in the Senate.

7

I have long been a proponent of a “triple President” model - three positions, elected at two-year intervals for a single six-year term.

The most senior President would be “President” in every way not otherwise defined, the same role as currently, but would confine him/herself to oversight and foreign policy on a working basis.

The second most senior President would be responsible for domestic policy.

The junior President would be much like the VP - largely ceremonial, in on-the-job training and for a selection of routine duties like presiding over the Senate.

I think there’s a lot of advantages to the notion; steady and continual turnover without literally radical changes between administrations; better continuity and backup of experienced candidates; efficiency from division of labor…

8

The Nation of Dag has already started with a flawed premise.

Actually, the Founding Fathers were pretty clear on this.

[QUOTE=U.S. Constitution, Article I Section 3]
The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.
[/Quote]

No matter what way you slice, dice or make julienne fries out of it, the fact the the VP doesn’t get to vote makes it crystal clear the framers of the Constitution disn’t want the VP to be a “full senator.”

It’s probably true that the FF intended the VP to be the second-best candidate for President. But the law of unintended consequences being the same in the 18th Century as the 21st, they first (in 1796, only the third election) ended up with a Pres and VP who didn’t get along (Adams/Jefferson) and then (1800) had two candidates who were supposed to be running mates (Jefferson/Burr) locked in a tie. The House was supposed to break the tie, but it deadlocked for 35 ballots before FF Alexander Hamilton convinced his fellow Federalists that Jefferson was “not so dangerous a man” as Burr.

Ergo, the idea of having the VP either a de facto senator OR a true assistant President was doomed from the start. The only real option is to maintain the office as the compact spare tire of democracy.

9

OTOH what actual non-purely-ceremonial functions of presiding the Senate could be vested in the VP (beyond the tie-breaker) is dependent on the rules of the chamber, by which the Senators long ago decided that the actual running of the Senate was to be directed by the Majority Leader. No chance of them changing that, but one would have to believe they could make changes to make the VP do some more presiding.

10

A VP who votes only in the event of ties has exactly the same amount of voting power as an ordinary senator who always gets to vote. Or to put it another way, the only time the VP can’t vote is when his vote doesn’t matter.

11

Th advantages I see are in parentheses (+ advantage referred to in above text), although I can see that they may not be valuable enough to actually make a change.

12

The last few presidencies have had a P-VP team that worked together, but in the past that has been less true. When the Senate picks a new VP there is little chance that the VP will be a good fit for the P. So I agree that the way we replace a VP now does not go well with my idea here, and would need to be changed to accommodate this kind of VP additional responsibilities.

13

Gridlock? I don’t think it would have too much effect, but it would change the balance of power in a 50/50 vote from the sitting pres to the second choice president.
When we usually have only 2 contenders, there is a winner and a looser. When there are more than 2 contenders, there is a winner, and a second place.
For me, this is part of a larger “thought experiment” that includes proportional representation and thus more than 2 parties. I agree that giving power to the looser does not make sense, but there are ways to give second place some power in other systems, primarily proportional representation… but I am hoping some of you will show me other examples that I have not seen.

I do not want to have an unwieldy discussion on too many topics at one time, but I am sorry for leaving out some assumptions about the possibility space.

14

Well, at least you can see my confusion on the topic

15

Mostly right, but if the VP was able to submit bills and debate, there would be a possibility that the position could have become more powerful. Also, there is a lot that happens that was not explicitly in the constitution, and might have gone other ways. Even with the constitutional limitations as they are, the President of the Senate was not fated to be as minor a position as it has turned out to be.

Conceded: I was not aware of the exact limitations in the Constitution, I just took the wiki article at face value.

16

Were there any FF writings about the position of the VP? I would like to know about their thoughts around it.

and thanks for all the thoughtful responses so far - the Nation of Dag thanks you.

17

Federalist 68, written by Alexander Hamilton: "The Mode of Electing the President

That’s about it in the Federalist.

18

I believe that Farrand says that the office was created as a way to require electors to vote for two people for President, one of whom had to come from a different state than the elector. In other words, the need to have a national figure elected as President carried with it the need to require electors to vote for at least one person from another state, so the office of V-P was created to support this voting requirement.

Going by memory here - will hunt out my copy of Ferrand and see if I can find it.

19

So, it appears that I put more thought into it than the FFs did…

Thanks!

20

I am seeing that those of you who commented about the tie breaking vote in the senate did not support giving the vote to the loosing presidential candidate.

If we were to ignore the NEED for a tie breaker in the senate, would you still support the party of the winning president getting a (sometimes) vote in the senate? Would you also extend this to the House if the option were there (with no other considerations)?

The razor I am trying to use here is: do you think that the president should have a little extra power in the legislature, do you just accept it as part of a compromise in the constitution, or would you remove that feature if you could? And of course the essay question: Why?

Thanks!