Would Congress Confirm A New Vice President?
Today's assassination attempt on Dick Cheney raises the intriguing question of whether the 110th Congress would confirm a Republican as Vice President under the 25th Amendment. With South Dakota Democratic Senator Tim Johnson still unable to report for duty, the Democrats hold a razor-thin 50-49 advantage on the days when Joe Lieberman decides that he feels like being a Democrat. And with so many of the senators, both R and D, running for president, the outcome of actual votes in the Senate on any given day is a true toss-up. This is, therefore, one of those times when the Vice President's only constitutional duties -- presiding over the Senate and breaking ties -- actually makes a difference.
The last time that the 25th Amendment was called into play, the Vice Presidency was vastly different from what it is today. Nelson Rockefeller was the last Vice President who was really a seat-warmer. (Dan Quayle might have been a lightweight, but he had a West Wing office and Poppy Bush did give him an actual policy portfolio.) When Rockefeller left office, Jimmy Carter is rightly credited with having raised the profile of the VP office by giving Walter Mondale a West Wing office and relying on him as a trusted advisor.
Dick Cheney has vastly magnified the influence of the office, yet he operates in the shadows. I wonder, therefore, whether a Democratic Congress might rationally decide that it is better to have no Vice President at all than it would be to fill the office if it were to become vacant for the remainder of the 110th Congress.
The last time that the 25th Amendment was called into play, the Vice Presidency was vastly different from what it is today. Nelson Rockefeller was the last Vice President who was really a seat-warmer. (Dan Quayle might have been a lightweight, but he had a West Wing office and Poppy Bush did give him an actual policy portfolio.) When Rockefeller left office, Jimmy Carter is rightly credited with having raised the profile of the VP office by giving Walter Mondale a West Wing office and relying on him as a trusted advisor.
Dick Cheney has vastly magnified the influence of the office, yet he operates in the shadows. I wonder, therefore, whether a Democratic Congress might rationally decide that it is better to have no Vice President at all than it would be to fill the office if it were to become vacant for the remainder of the 110th Congress.
posted by Craig J. Albert @ 10:27 AM
4 Comments:
At 4:40 PM,
egarber said…
Just out of curiosity -- with no thinking about how it could impact this issue -- can the Senate filibuster nominations /appointments?
At 5:31 PM,
Craig J. Albert said…
Yes, under current practice. This was the core question in the debate in the 109th Congress over judicial nominations, with Republicans arguing for a rules change to effectively bar filibusters on judicial nominations. Depending upon which side of the aisle you were standing on, that was called either the "nuclear option" or the "constitutional option". Words and labels are powerful things.
There's an interesting twist, though, in that Vice Presidential nominations have to be approved by a majority vote of both houses (unlike all other nominations, which only go to the Senate), and the House does not have a filibuster mechanism.
At 6:09 PM,
egarber said…
Right. I knew about the judicial debate.
I should have asked more specifically about the VP.
Thanks.
At 8:11 PM,
Howard Wasserman said…
Of course, things can get bottled up in committees in the House to the same effect. This actually is what happened with Rockefeller's nomination, which was held up for 6-8 months.
The issue you raise about keeping the VP vacant in order to ensure control over the Senate is an interesting one. The usual reason a Dem Congress would have for keeping the VP vacant in a Republican administration is to keep the Democratic Speaker next in line for the presidency.
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