Joe Biden's Vice President Could Be the Most Powerful in History

[Celerity]

He’d need to maintain a healthy partnership with his deputy—without worrying that she’ll outshine him.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/07/joe-bidens-vice-president-powerful-history/614161/



If Joe Biden wins in November, his running mate could become the most consequential vice president in modern American history. The woman Biden picks could be seen as a potential president-in-waiting, a signal for the Democratic Party’s agenda in the years to come, and perhaps the most significant player trying to help Biden manage a country—and a federal government—in crisis. Under normal conditions, the presidency and its manifold obligations are already too much for one person to handle. As Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden redefined the office by assuming a level of responsibility that his predecessors never had. If elected, Biden would likely follow a similar model, and potentially expand the authority of a constitutionally insignificant office beyond precedent. Those responsibilities will be even more weighty as the country combats the coronavirus pandemic; endures the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; and reckons with questions of race, policing, and discrimination reignited by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “Joe Biden’s vice president will most likely be the most powerful vice president in history because the trend is toward more powerful vice presidents, Joe Biden knows the value of having a vice president with lots of responsibility, and Joe Biden is going to inherit an epic disaster,” Dan Pfeiffer, a former Obama senior adviser and co-host of Pod Save America, told me.

At the same time, with Biden planning to serve as a “transition candidate” for a new wave of younger and more racially diverse Democratic politicians, she’s also likely to face a degree of attention and scrutiny that few vice presidents ever have. The task for Biden come January would be to maintain a healthy partnership with his vice president—without worrying that she’ll outshine him. “History tells us that consequential presidents and vice presidents come out at times where they’re tested and tried, and I can’t imagine a period of time where the president and vice president are going to be tested more than in January 2021,” Michael Feldman, a senior adviser to former Vice President Al Gore, told me. “There’s just no chance that the person who he picks is not a consequential vice president or consequential historical figure. They just will be.” For most of American history, the vice presidency was an insignificant office famously described as a “bucket of warm piss” and as “useful as a cow’s fifth teat” (or “a fate worse than death,” according to the HBO comedy Veep). That changed in 1976, when Walter Mondale accepted Jimmy Carter’s VP offer and laid out a vision for how the vice president could play a more intimate and active role in White House politics. Mondale, who would be leaving a safe Senate seat and a position on a select committee conducting one of Congress’s first major oversight investigations of the intelligence community, made clear to Carter that he wanted real authority, and he didn’t want to be bound to a singular policy area.

“The one thing that was not always true was that the vice president had power—it was only to the extent that the president allowed it,” Mondale told me. “I was able to help a lot because Carter had not been in Washington … and I had quite a bit of experience there.” Carter agreed to Mondale’s terms. He integrated Mondale’s staff with his own, gave him an office in the West Wing, set up weekly lunches for the two to discuss the president’s agenda, included Mondale in the flow of national-security paperwork, and assigned him to be his chief troubleshooter to manage relationships on Capitol Hill, in state governments, and with labor unions. “Mondale didn’t want to be in charge of any specific program or department, because he thought that would be infringing on somebody else’s turf,” Richard Moe, Mondale’s chief of staff and a former Carter senior staffer, told me. “He wanted to be a general adviser and to take specific assignments when required.” To this day, vice presidents have kept their White House offices and weekly lunches (though Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s are no longer one-on-one), and successive administrations have expanded the Carter-Mondale model of power-sharing. Gore, for example, championed environmental reforms and the “information superhighway,” an effort to expand the internet’s reach. Dick Cheney wielded tremendous influence on national security and the War on Terror.

But Biden’s vice presidency was the biggest leap forward from the Carter-Mondale model yet. Unlike previous veeps, Biden sustained a high level of influence with the president throughout their two terms in office, Joel Goldstein, a vice-presidential scholar at St. Louis University, told me. As Goldstein has previously written, much of that prestige was derived from Biden’s public loyalty to Obama, which he accomplished “without surrendering his public identity and becoming lost in the president’s shadow.” “It was a natural role for Biden because it involved a lot of dealing with governors and mayors and legislators, and Biden likes that,” Goldstein told me. “He was good at it.” In addition to his weekly lunches with Obama, Biden’s schedule was packed with time with the president, in keeping with his request to be the “last man in the room.” On any given day, Biden would start the morning by joining Obama for the Presidential Daily Briefing in the Oval Office after making the crosstown drive from the Naval Observatory. He might have additional meetings in the Oval Office with Obama and a Cabinet secretary, or a Situation Room briefing with intelligence-agency heads. Depending on the day, he’d head out of town for an address, a tour, or a foreign visit, or stay in Washington for meetings with legislators. While previous vice presidents did wield authority over special projects, they weren’t in charge of the defining issues for an administration, such as Biden’s role in implementing the Recovery Act after the Great Recession and leading efforts to whip Republican support to pass the Affordable Care Act. Biden also received major foreign-policy assignments throughout both terms, including his role as a chief adviser and surrogate as the administration debated its Afghanistan policy in 2009.

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[iamateacher]

1. Susan Rice

I love all the possible candidates, but she is the obvious choice. I do like Tammy Duckworth though... Heck, they are all great, especially compared to Pence, who never had an original thought he didn't pray away.

[Hortensis]

2. Bad headline. All power is vested in the PRESIDENT, who delegates

parts of his job to others to handle under presidential authority. This title offends me because a VP couldn't get on WH grounds without the president's authorization, or his congressman's as a tourist.

Biden's extremely experienced and has already spent 8 years in the WH as VP carrying out assignments authorized and approved by Obama. And nothing else. He knows how the job is done. And not.

A very big part of his agenda is restoring proper function and use of power. The Republicans' history of incompetent presidents and overreaching power-grabbing VPs should not mislead anyone into believing anything like that would happen under a Biden administration.

We do already know that, as he did for Obama, his VP will be working with him on a heavy portfolio of important projects. He's said he wants a VP who will be the strong workmate and trusted friend to him that he was to Obama.

[smirkymonkey]

3. I really wish he would just get on with it and pick someone.

And I still think his best bet would be Kamala Harris.

What is he waiting for?