Dump The V.P. Job? An Interesting Idea
Bruce Ackerman writes in the LA Times:
Sarah Palin is the product of a design flaw -- the unintended consequence of the founders' decision to create the vice presidency.For two centuries, presidential nominees have used the office to balance the ticket by naming a running mate from a different region, or one who speaks with a different ideological accent to a specific constituency. This means that a president's death generates a double shock: The nation not only mourns a fallen leader, it must deal with a replacement who may push politics in a new direction.
Teddy Roosevelt -- who replaced William McKinley when he was assassinated in 1901 -- may have been a great progressive president, but he had been named as vice president by the arch-conservative McKinley simply to carry New York. The country elected a right-winger but ended up with something else entirely.
Similar perverse logic led Abraham Lincoln to choose Andrew Johnson as a running mate. Lincoln knew that Johnson was a racial conservative, but he was more interested in carrying Tennessee. This tragic blunder clouds Lincoln's claim to greatness. When Lincoln was killed, Johnson's bitter opposition to Reconstruction helped poison race relations for generations.
Recent elections have lulled us into a false sense of security. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush nominated like-minded, known-quantity running mates, as has Barack Obama this time around. But John McCain's surprising choice should lead us to think again. Mexico and France see no need for a vice president. We should designate the secretary of State to be in charge until a special election can be held to replace a president.
This isn't a question on which the founders deserve any deference. They designed their system for a very different political world.
...If McCain wins the presidency, we can only wish him a long life. But however the race turns out, we should recognize that the founders didn't have the slightest idea that the vice presidency would episodically explode in our face, and it's about time we fixed it.
WTF? The Secretary of State? Is Ackerman as confused about what happens if the Presidency is vacant as Alexander Haig was? What happened to the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate? Wasn't this all covered in the 25th Amendment back in 1965? Mr. "professor of law and political science at Yale" needs to spend two minutes on Wikipedia.
Hasan at October 2, 2008 11:28 AM
This means that a president's death generates a double shock: The nation not only mourns a fallen leader, it must deal with a replacement who may push politics in a new direction.
And having an election every four years doesn't do that. What does Ackerman think the 22nd Amendment does? It forces the country into a new political direction every 8 years by limiting the president to two full terms. If he's that concerned about forced direction changes, let's see him advocate abolishing the 22nd Amendment.
But Ackerman's not mad about direction changes. Ackerman's mad about Sarah Palin. He's okay with Biden because Biden follows the liberal orthodoxy.
The founding fathers didn't err in creating the office of the Vice President. They knew what they were doing. The US has three separate and equal branches of government. The founding fathers did this to avoid concentrating too much power in one branch and basically to keep our government in a permanent state of mild confusion. Having a vice president as part of the executive branch means that Congress cannot simply remove the president in order to put one of its own in the office.
Congress tried that with Andrew Johnson. Johnson, taking over upon Lincoln's assassination, had no Vice President. His removal from office would mean Congress would decide who was President. The Presidential Succession of 1792 was in effect then. Had Johnson been successfully removed from office, Benjamin Wade, the President pro tempore of the Senate would have become acting president.
The Presidential Succession Act of 1868 put the Cabinet secretaries ahead of Congressional leadership in the succession order.
The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (not the 25th Amendment as stated earlier) put the Speaker of the House third in the line of succession.
As for those countries who operate without a VP, are Mexico and France really the sterling examples of competent government that we want to emulate?
Conan the Grammarian at October 2, 2008 12:08 PM
Whereas Biden's just peachy.
Jim Treacher at October 2, 2008 3:52 PM
The VP office was originally given to the candidate who got the 2nd most votes for president. It was originally a check against the president's power.
flighty at October 3, 2008 9:14 AM
It was originally a check against the president's power.
How so? The VP wasn't given any real power with which to "check" the president's.
The VP was a way of assuring a seamless and non-violent succession in the event of the president's incapacity.
In the one hundred year period before the Constitution was ratified there were something like six or seven wars of succession in Europe - including the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the War of the Polish Succession (1733-1738), the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), and its continuation, the Seven Years War (1756 to 1763) to name a few.
All of these conflicts included significant and bloody fighting in North America. These conflicts would have been part of the history our founding fathers studied (and lived) and a feature of the European political life they have wished to avoid.
Conan the Grammarian at October 3, 2008 12:20 PM
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