Who are the Greatest Fictional U.S. Vice President(s)?

[MovieMogul]

Inspired by this thread, but a bit more challenging. Fictional VPs are rarely noteworthy in their own right. Sometimes they’re deadweight (The West Wing), sometime duplicitous (24), but usually they’re just invisible. Remember the VPs of Seven Days in May or The American President or Dr. Strangelove? Didn’t think so.

So who are the greatest VPs? (In the interest of fairness, it doesn’t count if a majority of the film/book/etc. features the VP after they’ve ascended to the Presidency)

Two standouts:

VP Kathryn Bennett (Glenn Close) in Air Force One. She’s decisive and assertive, but not power-hungry enough to formally assume the CiC position pre-maturely.

VP Nance (Ben Kingsley) in Dave. Humble, honest, diplomatic, compassionate–a public servant par excellence.

Honorable mention to Laine Hanson (Joan Allen), who assumes the VP position at the end of The Contender after an arduous confirmation process.

[silenus]

The VP was never mentioned at all in The American President.

Robby Jackson - Jack Ryan’s VP

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Alexander Throttlebottom

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-9119719.html

Veteran political observers remember when all of the folly associated with the Vice Presidency could be summed up in one word: Throttlebottom. To be reminiscent of the hapless Vice President Alexander Throttlebottom spelled political ruin. Every Vice President from John Nance Garner to at least Lyndon Johnson went into the office vowing: “I will not be a Throttlebottom.”

But don’t look for Throttlebottom in a history book, because the only White House he ever got lost wandering through was on the stage of Broadway’s Music Box Theater. As the creation of the legendary playwrights George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, Throttlebottom floundered his way into America’s hearts in the 1931 smash hit Of Thee I Sing.

[alphaboi867]

@ArchiveGuy

…VP Kathryn Bennett (Glenn Close) in Air Force One. She’s decisive and assertive, but not power-hungry enough to formally assume the CiC position pre-maturely…

I actually thought she was being weak for not invoking the 25th. The POTUS is unable to communicate and under extreme duress. She should’ve assumed the the role of Acting President and then returned power to him after he was rescued.

@ArchiveGuy

…Honorable mention to Laine Hanson (Joan Allen), who assumes the VP position at the end of The Contender after an arduous confirmation process.

Nitpick, the film doesn’t actually reveal whether or not she’s confirmed. It’s left to the audience to decide, but it does seem that we’re supposed to guess that she gets the job.

[Captain_Amazing]

Harley Hudson, the Vice President in Advise and Consent.

[OneCentStamp]

Dan Quayle. All these years later, I still refuse to believe it was real.

[ElvisL1ves]

@Exapno Mapcase

Alexander Throttlebottom

I do wish we’d get to see a rerun of the TV version of “Of Thee I Sing” with Jack Gilford as Throttlebottom and Carroll O’Connor as President Wintergreen, and Lee Meriwether as a bit of tail. AFAIK it was only aired once, but IIRC it was a riot.

[RealityChuck]

Vice President Bob Russell in The West Wing. Hoines was a sleeze, and McGarry was never sworn in, but Russell actually was interesting and a pretty decent guy.

[Johnny_Hildo]

Gotta like Van Johnson’s turn as the VP in the obscure William Shatner actioner The Kidnapping of the President. The president gets kidnapped and the VP’s wife is a total Lady MacBeth kind of shrew who doesn’t want to negotiate with the terrorists at all, thus ensuring the president will be killed. You think Johnson’s so henpecked and power hungry that he’ll go along with the plan, but in the end he really steps up.

[BrainGlutton]

The unnamed African-American female VP in “The Happy Days Ahead” by Robert Heinlein, a short story at the end of his collection Expanded Universe. Of course, she’s only an important character because the POTUS dies shortly after inauguration, leaving her in charge.

[Dr.Rieux]

VP Ford in Wrong is Right.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@Captain Amazing

Harley Hudson, the Vice President in “Advise and Consent.”

I was gonna say that. Underrated and oft-ignored, but a calm, reasonable and decent man.

Jack Ryan was a good Vice President, too… for about five minutes.

[brianjedi]

@RealityChuck

Vice President Bob Russell in The West Wing. Hoines was a sleeze, and McGarry was never sworn in, but Russell actually was interesting and a pretty decent guy.

You mean this “Bingo Bob” Russell?

@Toby Ziegler and Will Bailey

“‘Distinguished’ is as high as we go. You’d have to be high to go loftier. Here’s what it should be: ‘In a triumph of the middling, a nod to mediocrity, and with gorge rising, it gives me great nausea to announce Robert Russell, Bingo Bob himself, as your new Vice President.’”
“This lapdog of the mining interests is as dull as he is unremarkable–”
“-- as lackluster as he is soporific… this reversion to the mean–”
“-- this rebuke to the exemplary–”
“-- gives hope to the millions unfavored by the exceptional… Bob Russell: not the worst, not the best, just what we’re stuck with.”

[RealityChuck]

@brianjedi

You mean this “Bingo Bob” Russell?

Yes.

The point was that he was not what his image was: he wasn’t stupid and the “affectations” were for logical reasons (i.e., he always wore boots because they were the only shoes that were comfortable). He had been ridiculed in the press and in Congress by people who didn’t get to know him, and Bartlett saw that.