The result was vice presidents who were cut out of the action, relegated to trivial duties, or dispatched to attend funerals in foreign countries or to take part in other, largely ceremonial roles. If balance was the criterion for selection, it all but guaranteed that the office itself would be pretty uneventful. Formerly powerful senators suffered this fate.
Lyndon Johnson, the powerful majority leader of the Senate, found himself suffering one slight after another at the hands of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, kid brother of the president. It is not an exaggeration to say that these two probably exerted more influence on policy than all prior vice presidents combined.
They also delegated substantial power to them and treated vice-presidential projects as presidential projects. Recent vice presidents have reshaped the office and the expectations Americans have for the office.
What made this change possible was not so much the personal characteristics of Gore or Cheney—although they both were powerful and experienced men. The office has been occupied by many accomplished and once-powerful former governors and legislators.
What changed the relationship between presidents and their vice presidents has its roots in the nomination process.
Changes in the nomination process itself have diminished the importance of balance on the ticket and increased the importance of partnership. Before , when Clinton chose Al Gore, no nominating convention in since the s, in either party, had gone beyond a first ballot. Because of reforms enacted between and , the power to nominate a presidential candidate had passed from the party leaders and elected officials who became convention delegates to voters in a long sequence of primaries.
The conventions had become a spectacle to be captured on television cameras in prime time and not the arena for serious political negotiations. And aside from the occasional fight over platform or party rules, the quadrennial party conventions did little business. Republicans accused her of deceiving the American public about the reasons behind the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the death of the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.
Rice has recently emerged as one of the front-runners for the spot, along with Kamala Harris. If she ends up as Biden's pick, it could indicate that he's more interested in having a loyal and knowledgeable second-in-command than in anointing a political heir. Just a few months ago, there wasn't a lot of buzz around Gretchen Whitmer, a former state legislator in her second year as Michigan's governor.
Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and she became the face of her state's response, which included occasional criticism of what she viewed as the federal government's lacklustre handling of the outbreak. That made her a target for Donald Trump's vitriol - and elevated her national profile.
Her decision to enact sweeping social distancing and business-shutdown measures as Michigan became one of the top US hotspots of the coronavirus outbreak also led to several angry conservative-organised protests in her state, boosting her standing among Democrats. In Hillary Clinton narrowly lost Michigan to Donald Trump - one of the upsets that helped decide the election.
If Biden hopes to avoid a similar outcome, he might decide to put a Michigan native on the ticket. Tammy Duckworth, the junior senator from Illinois, has a CV that jumps off the page. She lost both her legs when the Army helicopter she was piloting was shot down by insurgents in Iraq.
She stayed in the military and retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel, before becoming an assistant secretary in President Barack Obama's Department of Veteran Affairs. Duckworth served in the House of Representatives and then won her Senate seat in She is the first Thai-American woman elected to Congress, as well as the first double-amputee woman. In she became the first woman to give birth while serving in the Senate.
Illinois is a safe Democratic state, but its proximity to key Midwest battlegrounds - as well as her middle-of-the-road politics - could make her an attractive pick for Biden. Elizabeth Warren's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is a story of what might have been. Her "I have a plan for that" mantra seemed to strike a chord with Democrats, and she led the polls for months in mid, drawing enthusiastic crowds and cruising through the early debates with seeming ease.
Then her support faded, as many progressives drifted back to Bernie Sanders, while moderates opted for younger candidates like Pete Buttigieg. Many progressives expected her to endorse Sanders when she dropped out of the race in early March, so her decision to hold back may have earned her some appreciation from the Biden team.
Now they have the opportunity to return the favour by offering Warren the running-mate spot. While there was some friction between the Sanders and Warren camps, Warren would still be a significant signal that Biden wants to reach out to his party's left wing - and govern as more of a progressive than he let on during the campaign.
With the nation facing a serious economic crisis, Warren could lend some liberal policy heft to the Democratic ticket. Karen Bass was a late addition to Biden's vice-presidential contender list.
With numerous senators and governors under consideration, a soft-spoken five-term congresswoman from California was not an obvious choice for the position. The death of George Floyd and the subsequent national protest movement, however, has elevated concerns about institutional racism and policing - and increased pressure on Biden to pick an African-American woman for the number-two spot.
That's when talk of Bass, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus and former speaker of California's state assembly, began to circulate - and, unlike some little-known contenders whose prospects have peaked and then subsided, she's stayed in the mix as a safe, broadly acceptable choice.
Perhaps the biggest cause for concern among some Democrats is prior positive comments Bass made about the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, which could hurt Biden's chances with the anti-communist Cuban vote in swing-state Florida. If Biden wants to bring diversity to his ticket without having a flashy running mate who upstages him on the campaign trail or is angling for the presidency i.
Four years ago, Hillary Clinton was lambasted for never campaigning in Wisconsin during the general election, then losing the pivotal state to Donald Trump as her Midwest Democratic "blue wall" crumbled. Democrats have pledged not to repeat that mistake, going so far as to pick Milwaukee as the site of their now entirely virtual national convention.
If Biden wants to lean into the whole "don't ignore Wisconsin" theme, he couldn't do much better than to pick an actual Wisconsinite as his running mate. Tammy Baldwin is in her second term as one of the state's senators, having served in the House of Representatives for 14 years prior to that.
Her selection would also be historic, as she would become the first openly gay person to serve on a major party's ticket - just as she became the first openly gay member of the Senate.
In a season where Pete Buttigieg, who is also gay, proved to be a potent electoral force in Democratic politics, there may be particular appeal for such a move. There's a line of thought among Democrats that this election's Wisconsin is not, in fact, Wisconsin, it's Arizona. Barbara Norrander , a professor in the School of Government and Public Policy in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences , studies elections, public opinion and political parties.
Norrander discussed the implications that come with selecting a running mate, why presidential nominees have gotten to choose their vice presidents only since the midth century, and what will be different about the presidential race between now and Nov. Q: What are your main takeaways from Biden's selection of Harris as his running mate? A: He picked someone who appeals to various components of the Democratic party. So, obviously, she'll appeal to African Americans, she'll appeal to women.
But she also appeals kind of across the board. She's not really out of step with the party on any particular issues. It's also kind of a conventional pick because she is a senator, and that's the typical vice presidential candidate.
It shows that she has qualifications, that she has experience in elections and a variety of other things that would help in the campaign and in the future if they win the election. Q: How much does a running mate really matter? Has it ever been a game changer in an election? A: The political science research says it doesn't matter very much. People tend to focus on the top of the ticket. There used to be some notion that the vice presidential candidate could help in their home state, but that doesn't really apply in this case because California would have gone for Biden most likely anyway.
So, it's more about perhaps mobilizing Democratic voters who would be a little bit more enthusiastic because of the vice presidential candidate, but it's not going to change people's minds to switch to Biden because he chose Harris. Q: What's changed about the way nominees choose their running mates in presidential elections? A: If we go back to the s, the conventions on their own chose the president and on their own chose the vice president.
So, it wasn't that the presidential nominee could expect that they would choose the vice presidential nominee. The conventions would meet and there wasn't really any information about who the public supported because there were no presidential primaries and no public opinion polls.
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