Will the Veteran Overshadow the Novice?
John Adams, the nation’s first vice president, called the post “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, Thomas R. Marshall, claimed that the vice president “is like a man in a cataleptic state. He cannot speak. He cannot move. He suffers no pain. And yet he is conscious of all that goes on around him.”
Many observers believe that Vice President Dick Cheney will break that mold. Charged with overseeing the transition and the selection of the Cabinet, Cheney seems poised to dominate politics and policy in the new administration. He possesses precisely the experience--as congressman, White House chief of staff and defense secretary--that relatively inexperienced President George W. Bush lacks: mastery of the complexities of world affairs and of the even more byzantine intrigues of Washington. According to the New York Times, Cheney has “clearly emerged as this administration’s prime minister.” CNN reporter Garrick Utley predicts that he may be “the most influential vice president ever to take office.”
But can an essentially powerless official, a constitutional seat warmer, exert genuine power in the White House and on Capitol Hill? Historical experience suggests it will be difficult, if not impossible, for Cheney to transform the office that Marshall viewed as “a monkey cage, except that visitors do not offer me peanuts.”
To be sure, recent trends suggest a substantial role for Cheney. Over the past 40 years, vice presidents have occupied increasingly important roles in policymaking. Ever since 1960, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower scuttled Richard M. Nixon’s campaign by suggesting that “he couldn’t recall” a single important contribution Vice President Nixon had made, presidents have made a point of assigning high-profile policymaking assignments to their No. 2s.
President John F. Kennedy granted Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson nominal authority over civil rights and space policy, the two most high-profile issues of the time. Although he mercilessly abused his vice president, LBJ used Hubert H. Humphrey to broker the deal that allowed passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. And Bill Clinton put Al Gore in charge of the National Performance Review, his “reinventing government” initiative, and made Gore the point man in diplomatic relations with Russia. Even Dan Quayle, the least respected vice president of the modern era, exerted real influence as chair of the U.S. Commission on Competitiveness, becoming the scourge of environmentalists and a boon to business interests. More important, the political calculus of running-mate selection has changed radically, setting the stage for more genuine collaboration between presidents and vice presidents.
Historically, presidential candidates selected running mates to “balance the ticket.” They looked for someone from a different region, a different background or a different faction of the party. Often, the running mate was the president’s primary opponent for his party’s nomination. In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the aristocratic Eastern New Dealer, tapped conservative Texan John Nance Garner. JFK selected his principal Democratic rival, Johnson, in 1960. Two decades later, California conservative Ronald Reagan called on George Bush, then regarded as a preppy moderate, even though Bush had denounced Reagan’s domestic platform as “voodoo economics” and suggested that Reagan was unfit for world leadership.
Still, the structure of U.S. government allows little scope for even the most ambitious and talented vice president. And the exigencies of contemporary politics--the demands of the permanent campaign--make it even more important that no member of the executive branch appear to outrank the president. It is especially wrong to assume that a seasoned, respected No. 2 will overshadow a callow chief executive. Usually, the White House makes sure to put such an imposing VP in his place. In 1961, for example, Johnson towered over the Washington scene. As Senate majority leader, he had been the most powerful Democrat in the country and had compiled a long list of legislative achievements. JFK, the former Massachusetts senator, had little going for him but his youthful good looks.
Johnson believed he could turn a ceremonial post into one with real authority. He attempted to win real power in both the legislative and executive branches of the government. Johnson convinced the new majority leader in the Senate to let him keep the “Taj Mahal,” the plush offices he had held as Senate leader, and to name him presiding officer of the Senate Democratic Caucus. But LBJ’s former colleagues rebuffed him. They would not breach years of tradition and accept a non-senator as their leader. Even with a 50-50 deadlock, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and the Republican Senate leadership are unlikely to grant Cheney any real influence on Capitol Hill.
LBJ also failed at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. He drafted an executive order for Kennedy’s signature, one that would, in effect, have made him assistant president. It conferred upon the vice president “general supervision” over a number of areas of the national government and required that he receive copies of every briefing paper and top-secret document that crossed the president’s desk. Kennedy was not about to surrender so much authority and never signed the order.
After Reagan locked up the Republican nomination in 1980, many politicians and pundits, even within his own party, believed that he, too, lacked sufficient gravitas to occupy the Oval Office. GOP leaders even pushed for a “dream ticket,” with former President Gerald R. Ford as Reagan’s running mate, suggesting the two might operate as co-presidents. Reagan rejected that idea, but many thought his eventual running mate, Bush, possessed a more substantial record and a steadier hand than the president. But like Kennedy, Reagan quickly established that he was in charge and banished the elder Bush to ceremonial obscurity.
When LBJ left Capitol Hill, he asked his Senate chauffeur to follow him to his new position. The driver balked. “He liked to drive the majority leader because there was a man with real power. He said the vice president doesn’t have any power at all.” LBJ convinced him otherwise, but a few months later Johnson acknowledged the wisdom of his driver: “That’s a smart man, my chauffeur.”
Cheney has shown little of Johnson’s hubris. Old hand that he is, Cheney recognizes that his influence endures as long as he uses it to burnish his boss’ reputation. But should a few more news stories appear, lauding Cheney as “prime minister” or “co-president,” the vice president might find himself assigned important state visits to distant South Sea islands.
Vice presidents have become more important players in U.S. politics. Many of them have eventually become their party’s standard-bearer for president. But even though the office may no longer be worth less than a bucket of warm spit, as Garner memorably phrased it, it remains a lonely, ineffectual job. Rather than enhancing Cheney’s power, George W.’s inexperience suggests that the vice president will have to play a more than usually subservient role. Cheney has promised to be Bush’s “utility infielder,” but the former baseball executive in the White House will likely consign him to the end of the bench. There, Cheney will find the company of his predecessors.