If I were the Vice President, I think I’d like to preside over the Senate. It would give one something to do, would it not?
But all I’ve read says that the VP usually just lets the president pro tempore do everything. Why is that?
Your insights, please.
Because being President of the Senate is a very boring job and the VP can do more important stuff than just sit there and wait for a bunch of senators to finish up a long rambling debate on some topic.
The Speaker of the House rarely sits in his chair either.
When the VP job started, the first ones would preside over the Senate most of the time. But part of that was to help work on Senate rules and procedures.
With the advent of the Majority Leader running the agenda, there is no real good reason for the VP to be there unless a tie vote is anticipated
The Vice President has a large collection of unofficial duties – exactly which, depend on the personalities and skill levels of the President and the Vice President and how they interact. But they occupy a great deal of his “working” time.
For Eisenhower, Nixon was two things: (A) the “relief President” for ceremonial appearances, particularly overseas, giving Ike, who was in good physical shape (except for his heart attacks) but aging, some break from the incessant need to be somewhere for some special event; and (B) the “stalking horse” and “bad cop.” If the Administration needed to test a controversial proposal, or to “slap a supporter’s hand,” Nixon, supposedly acting on his own, would propose the controversial step or make the public criticism – which Ike could then distance himself from if circumstances called for it. And both men, who knew how to play politics with the best of them, were comfortable with this arrangement.
Johnson was too much a maverick to either do this for Kennedy or to have Humphrey do it for him, but Nixon, President himself, used Agnew in very much the same role. Reagan depended on GHWB’s expertise in foreign affairs quite extensively, and Al Gore’s longstanding Congressional connections made him equally useful to Clinton – as did Alben Barkley’s when he was Truman’s VP. (I’m skipping several VPs whose roles if any I’m not familiar with – which is why this hopskotches as much as it does.)
Mr. Cheney’s extensive expertise and contacts throughout the public and private sectors, and strong policy views, have made him seem to be an eminence gris in GWB’s Administration – with the caveat that he at least was elected to the job, so his influence is not the murky Colonel House style backroom manipulations of the past.
But in general, having a man who can carry part of the burden of the Presidency and whose public role precludes him from criticism of the Administration has been invaluable to Presidents, and those more-or-less-behind-the-scenes capacities are the important, albeit informal, part of the Vice President’s job.
Only on those rare occasions where a tie-breaking vote or a ruling on Senate Rules that has substantive consequences is called for, does the formal element of the job, the presiding over the Senate, become significant. Hence the custom of having the President Pro Tem or another senator occupy the chair the majority of the time frees the VP for his “real work.”
The last time I remember a VP presiding over the Senate, other than regarding the Electoral College, was when Quayle presided at the Clarence Thomas confirmation vote.
Is this also true of the President Pro Tempore of the Senate? It certainly seems that every time I happen to see the Senate on C-SPAN, a different person is presiding.
And related to that: how do they choose who presides when it’s not the Speaker of the House or the President Pro Tempore in the Senate?
During the 50/50 Senate split, Cheney was present more than he wanted to.
The most recent famous Senate session when the Vice President was present must be the vote on the 1993 Clinton Budget Bill. Al Gore cast the deciding vote.
I believe Cheney was present during the John Ashcroft confirmartion vote, just in case something went wrong.
There’s an interesting bit of technical usage in parliamentary procedure involved here: The “Chairman” (sometimes “President”) is the person who is selected (usually elected by a group) to preside over it. The Vice President is the chairman of the Senate; the Speaker, of the House. The “Chair” on the other hand is the presiding officer of the body at a given particular time. For example, if the President of the Podunk Philatelic Society wishes to speak about the proposal to put on a stamp show, he may name someone else to take the Chair, and step down from it temporarily to address the group as a member.
The Vice-President or in his absence the President Pro Tempore, and the Speaker, name individuals to preside over individual settings of each house as the interim Chair for that house. It is his job to preserve decorum, recognize speakers, rule on questions of procedure, etc., while in the Chair. I believe generally in the Senate each member is assigned a few days a year during regular sessions when he must make himself available to preside if needed; the House procedure, I don’t know.
Truman was famously presiding over the Senate when he became President, listening to an absolutely boring speech about a Colorado River water rights treaty with Mexico, though he was not aware of it until after the day’s session ended.
No, you wouldn’t–not unless you’re a very unusual human being. The job involves little more than recognizing Senators to speak and announcing the result of roll call votes.
The president pro tem does even less, and presides less often, than does the Vice President. The Vice President at least has to be present and presiding in order to exercise his tie-breaking vote. The president pro tem doesn’t even have to do that. The job of serving as presiding officer is considered grunt work and is assigned to junior senators on a rotating basis.
For my money, the surprising thing about VP’s isn’t that they don’t preside today, but that they did so much more often in the past. Earlier presidents generally didn’t assign any executive responsibility at all to the vice president, so the legislative role was all they had. And, that role was once more muscular than it is today. BobT has hit the nail on the head in this respect–many of the duties formerly performed by the VP-as-presiding-officer (naming members to conference committees, setting the Senate agenda, allocating time for debate) were taken over in the Twentieth Century by the Majority Leader.
It would be like watching C-SPAN all day long. Shudder
Actually it would be like watching C-SPAN2.
Cheney mentioned in the VP Debate last night that he tries to attend the Senate every Tuesday…
Cite, please. I have never ever seen the term “chair” to refer to distinguish an “acting chairman” from a “real chairman.” In fact, Robert’s Rules of Order (albeit from 1915, the only version I can find online) says:
Also, the Constitution says that the Vice President “shall be President of the Senate.” It says nothing about him being the “chairman.”
Junior senators of the majority party typically are called to serve as the presiding officer for an hour or two each day, working it into their daily schedule around committee meetings, speeches, and other duties. If a Senator enjoys presiding, after 100 hours in the chair he is awarded the Golden Gavel. There are similar practices in the House.
It’s also worth noting that the presiding officer in the Senate, by practice, hardly does anything. If a question rises on parliamentary procedure, the Parliamentarian, who sits right below the President of the Senate, makes his ruling, whispers it to the President, who announces it to the Senate. And, for reference, the influence of the presiding officer of the Senate has been continually diminished since 1825
…but he’ll try to make it for special occassions too, or to tell Senators to fuck off.
The last time the VP made an important decision on the floor of the Senate was in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
“The President recognizes … the junior senator from Montana!”
The term chair is a generic term that refers to any presiding officer, whether or not it is the regular presiding officer. Here is the relevant excerpt from the current edition of Robert’s:
Henry M. Robert, Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised § 47 at 433 (10th ed. 2000).
Most organizations provide in their constitution, bylaws, rules, or other governing document that some officer has the duty of serving as the regular presiding officer of the organization’s governing assembly. That officer may be the organization’s head, whose title may be “President,” “Chairman,” “Grand Pooh Bah,” or whatever else the organization wants. (Some organizations elect an officer whose principal duty is presiding over the governing assembly, and who may or may not have other executive duties. The chair of a corporate board of directors is the most common example.) Most organizations likewise provide that, in the regular presiding officer’s absence, some other officer – such as a vice-president, when the president is the regular presiding officer – ordinarily presides in his or her stead. Some organizations authorize the regular presiding officer to appoint a president pro tempore. When an organization’s regular presiding officer and his or her successors are absent, and the appointment of a temporary presiding officer has not been provided for or the power of appointment has not been exercised, then the assembly may elect its own temporary presiding officer. Robert’s provides that the recording officer presides over such an election.
Imagine the fun that could be had now if we still operated under the rule that the person getting the most electoral votes was President, and the person getting the second hightest number was Vice President.
As has been mentioned elsewhere on these boards, the VP often attends a GOP lunch on Tuesdays. It is a party strategy session that is harder to get into than a Re-elect the President Rally. At these sessions it is the VP’s job to bear the straight skinny from Mr. Rove, set the legislative and PR priorities, rally the troop and shoot the stragglers. If he has any contact with a Senator from the other party it is only to elbow him out of the way and drop a cheerful bon-mot such as that bestowed on Senator Lehey.
Please note that this is a factual posting free of political animus. Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.
I hope this doesn’t sound like a partisan hijack, but in the interest of just throwing info out there…
A look at the list of people who have presided over the Senate in the last few years shows that he was apparently not being truthful. Or if he said that he tries to attend, his attempts have rarely been successful. As others have shown, he has more important things to do.
Attend is not the same thing as preside. He can attend meetings without setting foot on the floor of the Senate.
And, as has been noted already, the only meeting that’s on Cheney’s regular Senate duty schedule is the weekly Republican policy lunch. Not likely he’s going to meet a Democratic senator there, is he?