Vice President of the United States

F

How Vice Presidents Make Their Mark

The history of the vice presidency has largely been a story of frustrated ambitions. When the first two vice presidents—Adams and Jefferson—were elected to the presidency in their own right, it was assumed that the vice presidency was a kind of breeding ground for the highest office. But with the rise of political parties and the change made by the 12th Amendment in the way vice presidents are elected, the vice presidency lost its claim on the presidency. After Jefferson, only two incumbent vice presidents immediately won election to the presidency: Martin Van Buren in 1836 and George Bush in 1988. Richard Nixon also won the office in his own right, but only on a second try in 1968, eight years after he had left the vice presidency and lost the 1960 presidential election.

Nine other vice presidents also became president, eight by the death of a president, and Gerald Ford by Nixon’s resignation in 1974. In addition to Ford, the other vice presidents who assumed a vacated presidency were John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon Johnson. Of these nine, only Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, and Lyndon Johnson subsequently won election to the presidency in their own right.

Taking office did not guarantee, however, that a vice president would be an effective president. Of the 14 vice presidents who served as presidents, including those who won election to the White House in their own right, most historians contend that only Adams, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon made a substantial mark on the presidency. Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, and Arthur stand in the ranks of forgettable presidents about whom most Americans know very little, if anything. Although Ford and Bush enjoy much greater name recognition because of their recent service, many scholars predict they are unlikely to be well remembered in another hundred years, when all their contemporaries have passed from the scene. Andrew Johnson’s term as president is remembered by historians and the public, but only because of his meager accomplishments and the unenviable fact that he was the first president to be impeached and tried by the Senate, which acquitted him by just one vote.

G

Following in the Right Footsteps

Of the 14 vice presidents who went on to serve as president, several found themselves limited by crises or problems only the most exceptional politician could have mastered. When Adams won election to the presidency in 1796, for example, he faced the impossible task of trying to match the leadership of his predecessor, George Washington. Washington, sometimes called the Father of the Country, held a stronger grip on the public imagination than any other leader could. With Washington as a predecessor, Adams’s presidency was certain to pale in comparison. To make matters worse, Adams was confronted by an urgent need to pull the country together to deal with rising tensions with Great Britain and France.

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In 1974, nearly 200 years after Adams took office, Vice President Ford faced a very different set of problems when he assumed the presidency after Nixon resigned. Ford had not even been elected to the vice presidency—he was the first appointed vice president. Moreover, although he had been the minority leader in the House of Representatives, he had never run in a national election. In addition, he was burdened with the Watergate scandal, which had driven Nixon from power. Although Ford had nothing to do with Watergate, his decision to pardon Nixon for any crimes he may have committed as president tainted Ford with the scandal and greatly hampered his efforts to win the presidency in his own right.

H

Models of Success

Although Adams, Ford, and several other vice presidents have been hobbled by political circumstances beyond their control, some vice presidents who assumed the presidency have enjoyed significant success as president. Theodore Roosevelt, Truman, and Lyndon Johnson are three 20th-century vice presidents whose successions to the presidency were brought about by difficult circumstances that they turned to their advantage. Each of these men provided a smooth transition from the preceding administration and showed skill in managing important issues of the day.

Roosevelt came to office in 1901 after President McKinley was assassinated. McKinley was a popular president who had just won reelection with a strong majority of the popular vote and a nearly two-to-one margin in the electoral college. Roosevelt, who had a reputation for personal assertiveness, took every opportunity to emphasize his determination to continue McKinley's cautious approach to national economic and political affairs. Only after Roosevelt had established himself as a steady backer of the former president's plans did he address national problems that the country was, in fact, eager to confront.

Similarly, Truman, the “little man from Missouri,” as some referred to him as vice president, took pains to continue the policies of the widely popular Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt had been the longest-serving president in American history, and his death in the closing months of World War II made him all the more compelling a public figure. Faced with the challenge of bringing the war to a successful conclusion, which he did through the widely supported decision to use atomic bombs against Japan, Truman quickly established himself as a reliable promoter of Roosevelt’s war policies.

Johnson faced as difficult a transition as Roosevelt and Truman. The Kennedy assassination demoralized a nation shocked at the senseless death of a young and popular president at the height of his powers as a leader. Johnson, by contrast, was little known to the country despite his many years as a congressman, senator, and vice president. Johnson moved with lightning speed to assure the country that he would follow all of Kennedy’s plans, telling a joint congressional session, “Let us continue.” Pressuring Congress to approve tax cut legislation, a civil rights bill, and a war on poverty favored by Kennedy, Johnson used a martyred president’s prestige to become a national leader and to entrench Kennedy’s political legacy.

The vice presidency is no longer “the most insignificant office,” as John Adams said it was. Although occupants of the position remain essentially presidents-in-waiting, in the last hundred years more vice presidents have used the office to run for and win the presidency than was the case in the first 112 years of the nation. Only 5 vice presidents ran for the presidency before 1900, but 11 have done so since. In the 13 elections from 1960 to 2008, only 4 of them—1980, 1996, 2004, and 2008—did not feature a former or incumbent vice president as a candidate. In 1968 the country had the unique situation of choosing between two men, Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, who had both served as vice president. A far cry from the position’s meager stature early in American history, the vice presidency has truly arrived as the best stepping stone to the presidency.

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