The Vice President

Unlike the president, who has a host of responsibilities delineated in the Constitution, the vice president has few responsibilities delineated in the Constitution. The primary responsibility of the vice president is to wait until he is needed to fill in for the president should the president be incapacitated or die in office. It has historically not been a very exciting life for vice presidents. In fact, most vice presidents have looked back on their tenure as a rather boring existence. John Adams, vice president to George Washington, said of his job, “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” ¹ Little had changed by the 1940s, for Harry Truman only met twice with President Roosevelt during his two and a half months as vice president. ² As late as 1960 the job of the vice president had not improved. Clinton Rossiter wrote in his epic The American Presidency in 1960 that “the vice presidency is a hollow shell of an office — it is a disappointment in the American constitutional system.” ³