Law professor Glenn Reynolds makes an interesting case.
I find his arguments fairly persuasive, actually. It’s certainly true that if you allow Vice Presidents to exercise significant executive authority–which has been a growing trend over the last few decades, actually–then you are in danger of creating de facto coups. Which is a little startling when you think about it, but it’s true. There actually was such an attempt when it became obvious that Richard Nixon was probably going to leave office, and there were efforts to prevent him from appointing a new Vice President. Those failed, which is how we got Gerald Ford, but otherwise, there would have been what amounted to a coup.
I’d never really thought about it before but the Vice Presidency actually carries a protection for the system that I’d never thought of before Professor Reynolds brought his arguments up.
(Note: Please read the linked piece at the top of this before commenting too much, it will really save time and confusion in discussing this issue.)
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Reynolds is right that involving the VP in executive branch activity exposes taints him in the event that the President faces impeachment for public misconduct, but there’s a downside to Reynolds’s proposal as well. Making the VP a senior advisor or deputy in the executive branch keeps him in the loop on major decisions and better prepares him to step in if the President dies. We’ve had nine Presidents die in office, but only one was forced out of office for public misconduct; we should optimize for the more likely case.
If you really want the VP pristine, then don’t have one. Instead, reconvene the Electoral College chosen in the last election to pick a replacement (use the old electoral college rather than a new election because it’ll be much faster, and because that ensures partisan control doesn’t switch). In the meantime (probably 2-3 months), a cabinet official designated in advance by the late President (probably the Secretary of State or the Chief of Staff) will become Acting President. That way, if the President dies suddenly in the middle of a crisis you get someone who can step in immediately to handle the crisis, but the long-term successor has hands which are clean of the previous administration and has been chosen specifically to fill the top role.
Maniakes:
That might be workable. But I frankly don’t see that to be a major improvement on the system we have today. Dean makes a good point about succession in the Nixon/Ford case, but we did amend the constitution to plug that loophole.
I think we have more important things to fix than the VP role in the executive branch.
I’d start with returning the judiciary to their role as interpreters of Law instead of creators of it.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Media’s Presidential Bias and Decline
I’d start with returning the judiciary to their role as interpreters of Law instead of creators of it.
Will never happen. It makes too much sense. I mean, the judicial branch interpreting law? Fah!
Also, I think it’s been clearly established that the VP can be in the executive branch or the legislative branch as President of the Senate arbitrarily as stated… oh wait.
I’m gonna have to open up a thread on the whole subject of the judiciary making law, because there’s a good argument to be made there. I’ll try to remember to open one up tonight or tomorrow, busy now.
But to the subject: Have to disagree with you somewhat, Eric, because you don’t always want to optimize for the most likely scenario if the costs of the less-likely scenario are much, much worse.
I’m not sure what Cosmic is referring to with the case of Bella Abzug’s attempted coup. I’m not sure what loophole got plugged; so far as I can see it’s still there and unaddressed. To be clear, if you’ve never heard about this, when it become known that Republican President Richard Nixon was likely in big trouble, Democratic Congresswoman Bella Abzug spearheaded an effort to block Nixon from appointing a successor to his disgraced Vice President Spiro Agnew. (Agnew had left office for reasons utterly unrelated to Watergate, basically because he got caught with tax evasion stemming from his time before becoming Vice President.) Had Abzug and her cohorts succeeded, when Nixon resigned or was impeached, this would have immediately made Democratic Speaker of the House Carl Albert the President of the United States. Abzug’s attempt was a clear effort to take the White House for her party. And the only thing that stopped it from getting much public attention at the time was that basically Carl Albert was an honorable man and said "no way."
Now here’s the thing: it’s not that it would have been tragic to have had President Carl Albert instead of President Gerald Ford. What would have been tragic would have been the damage to the American government and the American people. I gotta run so I can’t lay out all the damage that would have been done, but I think if you think hard on it you’d realize what the fallout from that would have been to the overall health of the nation, or what it would be if it happened today. We’d basically be reduced to Banana Republic status overnight.
I would also mention that keeping the Vice President in the loop on important policy items is not the same thing as granting him executive powers, which is what we’ve seen in the last few administrations.
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