Have you ever considered what the vice president does all day? My guess is probably not, but the framers of Constitution did. When they got to the point where they considered a vice president, his only role was as a backup president — a spare, so to speak.
Originally, he had no actual function, and few presidents have used vice presidents as advisors or even as part of their cabinet. Surprisingly very few have ever gone on to be president. If you don’t count the ones who took over for a president who died only six have made the jump.
The best example of this strange position was in the 1900 presidential election. New York Republicans pushed for Teddy Roosevelt as the vice presidential candidate, but not because they liked his politics. Just the opposite, he was doing so much damage and ruffling feathers as governor of New York that they wanted to get rid of him. While the leaders of the national party also feared his progressive ideas, it was decided that the best way to neuter this very popular man was to make him vice president. At the time, there was no position in government with less power than the office of the vice president. Of course it was a gamble, as Republican campaign manager Mark Hanna said at the time, “[T]here’s only one life between that madman and the Presidency.” Hanna proved prophetic as Roosevelt became president upon President McKinley’s death. And the presidency has never been the same.
Realizing they had a position with no real role, the Founders revisited Article I, Section III and added the fourth clause which reads, “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.” This not only gave the vice president something to do but solved a problem they had in the Senate. The issue was the job of the Senate president was to cast a vote in case of a tie.
The difference between the Senate and the House was that the states were even in the Senate, two senators each. If the Senate followed the same instructions as the House, then its members would have to vote for a speaker or president of the Senate. Such an arrangement would either mean that one state would have more or less power than other states. If the president of the Senate could only vote in case of a tie, then the state of the president would have less representation. If the president had a regular vote and could cast the tie-breaker, then the state had more power than the others. The dilemma was fixed by simply making the vice president the senate president.
This was not an easy decision, as it is the one breach in the separation of powers. In the British parliamentary system the founders were used to, members could serve in both the executive and legislative branches. For instance, the chancellor of the exchequer, our version of Secretary of the Treasury, is also a representative in Parliament. In our system, however, the Founders wanted a complete separation of branches and so members of the House or Senate cannot be cabinet members at the same time. The one exception is the vice president as president of the Senate. One Founder who opposed the new job for the V.P. was Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. He feared the Executive Branch would have too much influence on the Legislature. As a later Anti-Federalist, Gerry worried about the government becoming too strong in general and ultimately did not sign the Constitution. He wanted a total separation between the branches.
After the Founders gave the V.P. a job, they wanted to make sure the Senate could choose the rest of its officers. This clause is a bit surprising because it makes sense, but they must have wanted to guarantee it. Clause V reads, “The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.” The key position here is the president pro tempore. The pro tem’s job was to preside when the vice president was away. Of course, this put them back to the beginning of more or less power for a state, but in this case when the pro tem was in charge he was allowed to vote as a member of the Senate as well as if there was a tie.
It was four years after the Constitution was ratified that Congress passed a law in 1792 that stated, “in case of removal, death, or inability of both the President and the Vice President of the United States, the President of the Senate pro tempore, and in the case there shall be no President of the Senate, then the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall act as President of the United States until the disability be removed or a President shall be elected.”
In British royalty terms, our nation now had an heir and a spare to the presidency. This order will however change with the Succession Act of 1947 that puts the Speaker of the House in front of the Pro Temp. It should be noted that Clause V did not make the Pro Temp vice president of the U.S. if the V.P. took over for the president. That issue was not addressed and added some confusion when President William Henry Harrison died in office and then-Vice President John Tyler did not have a vice president meaning the pro tem ran the Senate.
James Finck is a professor of American history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at HistoricallySpeaking1776@gmail.com.
