Come on, Joe, being veep ain't so bad

The general public regard for the American vice presidency was once summed up by Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s standby, in the sad story of a man who had two sons. One was lost at sea, the other became vice president of the United States, and neither was ever heard from again. Wilson offered his own judgment of Marshall by once unguardedly referring to him as “a small-caliber man.”

The office of the vice presidency has never ceased to be the brunt of ridicule—even by its very occupants. Vice President Joe Biden at Harvard last week jokingly derided the office as “a bitch” before quickly insisting, perhaps less convincingly, that taking it was the “best decision I ever made.”

Not all vice presidents would say the same, especially most of the early, long-forgotten ones like Daniel Tompkins, George Dallas and William King. But despite Marshall’s and Biden’s gibes, most latter-day occupants of the second office have been significant—in some cases, essential—presidential partners in governing the country, attesting to the power of the role. Often, less-than-illustrious vice presidential performances have had less to do with the office itself than with the selection of running mates by presidents-to-be and how well, once elected, they made use of their seconds-in-command. If being vice president is like being lost at sea, it’s because, as history confirms, for too long presidents picked their VPs frivolously or carelessly and then left them to drift.

The first three presidents—George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson—had no say whatsoever concerning the identity of their vice presidents, as the Constitution stipulated that the runner-up in the balloting for president would get the job. The faults of this system were soon apparent. Adams, as Washington’s first veep, observed woefully, not unlike Biden, that “in this I am nothing, but I may be everything.” The second VP, Thomas Jefferson, used much of his four years in the office subverting his boss by creating what eventually became the Democratic Party, while publicly deploring “factions” in the young nation’s politics. (He once insisted, “if I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go at all.” Two centuries later, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was moved to observe: “Even Jefferson soon decided that, with the right party, he would be willing to go, if not to heaven, at least to the White House.”)

By 1804, when the Twelfth Amendment was ratified, it had become clear that the existing VP selection system meant members of rival factions might be forced to work together, imperiling continuity of policy if a vice president succeeded to the presidency. At first, the path to the vice presidency was often through the death of a commander in chief. Eight accidental presidents, from John Tyler to Lyndon Johnson reached the Oval Office through the death of their party leader (though Tyler opportunistically turned Whig once he was president), and Gerald Ford got there by way of Richard Nixon’s resignation in the Watergate scandal.

But in the modern era, seekers of the two top offices, for practical purposes, have run on the same ticket—and increasingly the president wisely has decided to make greater use of the second office in governance. For too many years, presidents basically ignored their understudy as they clung warily to their power and closely guarded presidential secrets. In 1945, when Vice President Harry Truman took the Oval Office after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he hadn’t even been told that the atomic bomb that would end World War II was near completion. Succeeding vice presidents were generally kept better informed, but 30 more years passed before they were employed in a manner commensurate to their experience and skills. Even Lyndon Johnson, master of the U.S. Senate prior to becoming John F. Kennedy’s second-in-command, was essentially kept on the sidelines as key Kennedy aides handled major legislative matters, to LBJ’s immense frustration.

Ironically, not until a Washington outsider named Jimmy Carter became president in 1977 was the vice president made a genuine presidential partner. Carter personally interviewed and chose running mate Walter Mondale, a U.S. senator from Minnesota, who, in alliance with the president, was most responsible for the evolution of the second office.

In a sense, the defeated 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern inadvertently played a role in the development of the Mondale model. After selecting Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his original running mate under the pressures of a contested national convention, McGovern dropped him upon disclosure that Eagleton had received electric-shock therapy for mental depression. The furor persuaded Carter four years later to conduct a thorough personal vetting of several running-mate prospects, including Mondale.

In advance of Mondale’s interview by Carter in Plains, Georgia, the senator’s chief of staff Richard Moe drew up a detailed memorandum on what Carter seemed to need and want in a vice president. Mondale and Moe then crafted a paper describing what Mondale could offer and sent it to Carter, who bought into it at once. When he met Mondale, Carter told him: “I want you to be in the chain of command—a vice president with the power to act in the president’s place.”

Once installed in the White House, Carter and Mondale together created the modern model for putting the vice presidency to work fulltime. Carter gave Mondale complete access to him in the Oval Office and to his inner circle, and made him his chief adviser in dealing with Congress, about which Carter had no experience, as was often revealed.

Jules Witcover is a syndicated political columnist and author of books on American politics and history, including biographies of Vice Presidents Agnew and Biden.His latest, The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power, was published this month by Smithsonian Books....