Biden = Not really a dumbass, but certainly not presidential.
Palin = Dumbass
Cheney = Not incompetent, but unabashedly evil, frightening and grouchy; not presidential
Gore = Dumbass
Quayle = Dumbass
GWB = well, presidential as it turned out
Mondale = I was too young to remember, but apparently electable though not elected
Ford = See Mondale
So for as long as I’ve been paying some attention, it looks almost like an anti-assassination strategy, started by former CIA Director George H W Bush, to have a VP so incredibly incompetent and/or anattractive as a replacement that it makes assassination a bad idea for anyone who loves America, just not the leader. GWBush had this “strategy” so strongly in place that even if you got rid of Cheney the alternatives were still pretty ugly until you got halfway into *Capitol Hill.
Has anyone ever commented officially on this? Or are the cream of the crop from the Dem * Repub parties really so alone and above the rest of their fellows that the #2 is so much worse? I have trouble believing that because Clinton and Romney, while not super popular, are at least not laugh-worthy.
Vice Presidents aren’t chosen to be front-runners. They’re chosen to make sure the ticket gets elected. So they’re chosen to represent states that the party needs votes from, or who are outspoken about some particular issues, or to “balance the ticket”.
it’s not a great system, but it’s arguably better than our original system, where the second-place vote-getter got the job. This placed a man with opposing views second-in-command, and lead to things like Thomas Jefferson working at cross-purposes to John Adams during the latter’s presidency.
Some Veeps have gone on to successful careers. Teddy Roosevelt certainly put his stamp on the office. Lyndon Johnson had notable successes (Civil Rights act, pushing through the Space Program, etc.) along with messes like Vietnam.
Of course, you’re more likely to end up with a John Tyler or a Jerry Ford.
Well, obviously your assessments of the recent VPs are entirely subjective. By actual popular votes cast, at least, more people thought Al Gore was presidential than thought George W. Bush was.
Of course, GWB (George Walker Bush) was never Vice President; his father, GHWB (George Herbert Walker Bush) was, serving 1981-89 under Reagan. From all I’ve read, GHWB genuinely thought in the runup to the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans that Dan Quayle would give the GOP ticket a boost because of his high energy, relative youth and good looks. Obviously it didn’t work out that way, but I’ve never read or heard anything to suggest that Bush the Elder - or any of his successors - have chosen their running mates as some kind of “assassination insurance.” The nuts who tend to shoot at Presidents aren’t thinking about who will move into the White House after the state funeral anyway.
IMHO, a running mate is chosen either (1) to help win in November, or (2) because the Presidential nominee thinks he or she has a particular skillset that will compliment the President’s, once elected. Sometimes it’s a combination of both, as with both Cheney and Biden, but more often than not it’s obviously the first, pieties about “I chose someone who I know could serve well as President if, God forbid, something happened to me” notwithstanding.
He came pretty damn close to getting elected - so I think it’s a stretch to label him “not presidential.” Not being a dumbass does not appear to be a presidential requirement.
But basically, the person is selected as VP on the ticket because the presidential candidate thinks that it will help him be elected, and for no other reason (with some possible exceptions I suppose - although I’d need an awfully lot of convincing).
Over the course of US history, there are very different reasons why particular vice presidential candidates have been selected. To generalize as you have, does not produce a valid argument.
There have been 14 US presidents that were the vice president prior to taking office.
Quick—name something a vice president has accomplished as vice president, other than stepping in upon a president’s death.
The office of VP doesn’t get much respect. According to one VP, the American vice presidency is “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” So, not everyone wants the job. And those who get it often don’t have much chance to demonstrate that they’re presidential material.
It occurs to me that there was one Vice President who was chosen precisely because it was felt that he had a good possibility of becoming president – Harry Truman. FDR’s declining health was one reason Wallace was removed from the ticket for the 1944 elections. it was felt that people wouldn’t vote for the Democratoic ticket if they thought Wallace might become president. Truman did, indeed, take office. He certainly wasn’t a non-entity, and many people regard him as a success (certainly David McCulloch did). Truman may be the only case of a Vice-Presidential candidate selected in very lkarge part because of how he was perceived as a serious successor.
On the other Hand, Ford was certainly not chosen because of vote-getting or ticket-balancing, since he replaced a sitting vice-president who had been through his second election cycle. Nobody thought Ford would be a Veep on the next election cycle. But it doesn’t seem obvious to me that he was selected based on his perceived value as a successor, either. Supposedly he was the only real choice the Congressional leaders offered.
Also a poor choice, as he was a defacto opponent of the President. He was handed jobs that would keep him out of the press, or at least not garner him any political points.
Actually, the Watergate scandal was already fully abrew when Nixon nominated Ford under the terms of the 25th Amendment in October 1973. The “Saturday Night Massacre” was just eight days after Ford’s nomination, and the prospect that Ford might succeed Nixon was widely discussed at the time. Ford was widely popular on Capitol Hill (he’d been House minority leader since 1965) and was regarded as decent and honest, none of which could be said for Nixon at the time. Nixon knew he could be quickly confirmed, and that’s just what happened.
Ironically, Ford appointed Nelson Rockefeller as his VP, who went through a buzzsaw over finances, but then didn’t choose him as his running mate in 1976 because of Reagan’s challenge from the right. Ford shored up his base by picking the much more conservative Bob Dole as his running mate, but still lost in November.
The VP is picked to balance a ticket. Biden’s long service is supposed to balance out Obama’s lack of experience, for example. Like Obama is going to be calling up Biden and asking “what should we do about the Middle East?” In any case, during the campaign they are a team - when they get into office it turns out the VP is in charge of getting coffee and breaking congressional ties.
IMO the president’s number one job is appearing presidential. He has a thousand people behind him analyzing data and making plans but he is the public face. The VP is selected more for that support role than for his public persona.
Cheney was chosen as Bush’s running mate to counteract Bush’s reputation as a bit of a political lightweight. It was remarked upon at the time that Bush appeared to be surrounding himself with competent, experienced statesmen, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell.
Cheney had a good reputation and positive approval rating going into the 2000 election. He had a great deal of experience, including having served as Secretary of Defense under GHWB, Chief of Staff under Ford, and a decade in the House of Representatives.
Following the 2000 election, Cheney seemed far less interested in public opinion and popularity than his influence behind the scenes, and his approval ratings dropped throughout GWB’s two terms.
The story goes that Cheney, as an experienced white house worker for the real George Bush, was given the job of selecting a VP candidate. He went through the usual roll call of politicians and then apparently approached GWB and said “Hey I’m a better choice than any of these clowns”. The force can have a strong influence on the weak minded, IIRC.
Cheney was an odd choice as usually VP is a politician, but the party was not going to buck their only presidential candidate, and it proves that ticket “balance” is a lot less relevant than thought - although maybe a politician from an hung state (Florida?) might have made a bit more of a difference.
Harriet Meiers tried the same trick - “Heck, I’m as good as any of those high-falutin’ Ivy League judges!” GWB bought her schtick too, but the rest of congress balked at too many lowbrows in positions of power. For the SCOTUS there is some serious thinking and logic involved, much as we may think otherwise about some decisions.
Another big factor is an obvious one. A Vice Presidential candidate is not running for President. So why should his campaign portray him (or her) as being presidential? A VP isn’t supposed to be the guy who takes charge; he’s supposed to be the right hand man. If the campaign tries to run their VP candidate as being presidential material then they’re going to risk underming their actual Presidential candidate.
(Bolding added.) I believe Charles Giteau said “I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts. … Arthur is president now!!’”, shortly after he assassinated James Garfield, so that is at least one instance where the VP mattered to the “nut”.
The VP often gets reduced to a one-dimensional caricature in popular culture (late night comedians and such) because most of his role is behind the scenes. He’s not the one people vote for, and he’s not the one who makes the decisions. So people often pay more attention to their public gaffes than anything else they do. Does that mean they’re all un-presidential? No. The VP job seems to pretty be whatever the VP and the administration make of it. Some of them work on specific issues, others have a hand in everything.
I don’t think VPs get picked for geographical balance anymore. It’s more for resume balance. And what we’ve seen with Bush and Obama is that they were more interested in choosing someone who would complement their resumes and lack of experience in things like international affairs than in picking someone who might be their successor in eight years. Cheney never had any ambitions toward being president and didn’t try to be popular. His health is poor anyway. Biden has run for president a few times but he comes off as too much of a Senate creature, I think, in addition to sticking his foot in his mouth a regularly and the long-ago plagiarism scandal. So they’re “not presidential” for different reasons, but their skills still made them appealing to the candidates who chose them.
I put it to you that had McCain made a less-obviously bad choice for a running mate, the most recent election would not have favored Mr. Obama quite so heavily. I can’t be the only one who knew folks who held their noses and voted against the possibility of a President Palin.
Both Cheney and Biden have been very active Vice Presidents and both had legitimate power and authority within their respective administrations. There was a (I believe Pulitzer Prize winning) serial article published by the Washington Post about Cheney’s Vice Presidency and how he is easily the most powerful Vice President in U.S. history. From everything Biden has said before and after his election to the VP position, he has semi-echoed Cheney’s statement back at the beginning of Bush’s Presidency that he had an “understanding with the President” about what his role would be. Just like Cheney, Biden didn’t sign up to wave and do nothing, he agreed to be Obama’s running mate in exchange for real power and influence within the administrations, and it appears Obama has kept that pledge so far.
Obviously since VP has very limited de jure power, the President can easily take anything he gives away.
What’s interesting is the varying levels of power of other executive branch offices. For example for some time the most important people in the Executive Branch were the high ranking members of the Executive Office of the President (headed by the White House Chief of Staff.) These individuals were often the primary advisers to the President, and meetings with cabinet secretaries were not the primary means of shaping Presidential opinion. From the early 70s (Nixon) through the first Bush administration I always had the impression that the cabinet officers were mostly “administrators” of their fiefdoms and were not hugely influential on the President himself (obviously they sat in on relevant meetings.)
Clinton seemed to balance things a bit more between his cabinet and his inner circle of advisers. Bush seemed to de-emphasize the Executive Office of the President (Andrew Card was one of the longest if not longest serving White House Chief of Staffs and he’s mostly unremembered and had little influence in government) in favor of bringing his cabinet very close to him and making them his primary advisers–along with the Vice President.
Farther back in history past Presidents have essentially been almost “distant” from their cabinet and would mostly be advised by political friends and colleagues who weren’t even in the executive branch. Andrew Jackson was criticized by his political opponents for his heavy reliance on his “kitchen cabinet” for advice. Jackson had cleaned out most of the real cabinet due to the Eaton affair and started relying mostly on a group of friends that he met with regularly in the White House.
I think you are being tricked into thinking that The Presidents are more presidential because they have the title but really most of them are just as pathetic.
Really look at their Presidents:
Obama - good talker, waste of space, achieving nothing, may as well be a Republican
Bush - fuckwit
Clinton - liar, bullshit artist
Bush - Dumbass
Reagan - hater of the working class
Carter - probably best of this bunch, low evilness but yawn inducing leadership
Nixon = evil
