PHOTO: VP elect Kamala Harris
By Massa Kanneh
Since the formation of the United States Kamala Harris stands to be the first Female Vice President elected to the second highest office, on November 7, 2020.
Harris is the third Female majority party Nominee in the U.S History, following Republican Saran Palin In 2008 and Democrat Geraldine Fararro In 1984.
During a Foreign Press Center virtual briefing, Joel Goldstein, Professor of Law Emeritus from the St. Louis University School of Law, and author of the book, The White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden, said for the past Centuries the Vice Presidency dormant, until during Richard Nixon Vice presidency.
According to Professor Goldstein, the Constitution gives the vice president two roles, as Vice president, he/she is the president of the Senate and that he or she is first in line of presidential succession in case the president dies, resigns, is removed, or in case of a presidential incapacity.
However, the Vice President is also clothed with the Authority to count and announce Presidential and Vice Presidential ballots.
According to Professor Goldstein, ever since the vice presidency of Nixon from 1953 to 1961, vice presidents have spent very little time presiding over the Senate.
To showed Vice President spent little time presiding over Senate, Professor Goldstein revealed that Mike Pence has broken 13 tie votes in the Senate.
According to Professor Goldstein for quarter century beginning with the Richard Nixon vice presidency, the vice president really became a part of the Executive Branch.
The real change took place with the vice presidency of Walter Mondale in 1977.
Mondale was President Jimmy Carter’s vice president. And President Carter, for the first time, brought the vice president into the West Wing of the White House, gave him access to all of the president’s meeting, invited the vice president to attend any meeting on the president’s schedule, made sure that the vice president got all of the documents that the president got.
Which included the vice president’s staff on all sorts of White House meetings.
Professor Goldstein added that Vice President Mondale and President Carter conceived of a new role for the vice president of an across-the-board presidential advisor on all matters of policy and politics, diplomatic and domestic personnel, and a troubleshooter on high-level matters that mattered.
Part of the move of the vice presidency into the Executive Branch was really a reflection that in a nuclear age, it was important that the person next in line of succession be knowledgeable.
Goldstein disclosed that when President Roosevelt had died, nobody had previously told President Truman about the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb, and he wasn’t first told about that until after he became president. And so afterwards, there was a thought that the vice president really needed to be more closely involved.
“The second really importance of the role of the vice presidential candidates is that one of the two candidates will be the vice president, and that’s become a very significant and consequential position in American life” said prof. Goldstein
According to Professor Goldstein another reason why the vice choice of vice presidential candidates is important has to do with the succession issue. I mentioned earlier that nine of our 45 presidents were vice presidents who succeeded to the presidency.
And then finally, he said the vice presidency has become the best presidential springboard in American life. Fourteen out of 45 American presidents were vice presidents before they became president.
In nine instances, as I’ve mentioned, they were vice presidents who succeeded to the presidency.
In the 19th century, vice presidents who succeeded were not elected to a term of their own, but in the 20th century, four of the five vice presidents who succeeded at the presidency were elected to their own term Goldstein said.
Four sitting vice presidents have been elected president directly and, in addition, three others were almost elected president and narrowly lost. And then Richard Nixon in 1968 as a former vice president was elected president and, of course, that’s the effort that Vice President Biden makes in this year’s election.