(Crossposted from Brainstorm)
The first presidential debates occurred 48 years ago, in 1960. The first vice presidential debate didn’t take place until debates resumed in 1976, 16 years later. How come?
The answer is that three very significant things happened to the vice presidency during those 16 years.
1. Half of the six vice presidents in this period went on to become president: Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded to the office when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 and 1972, and Gerald R. Ford succeeded to the office when Nixon resigned in 1974. Half is higher than the historical average, which for all other periods has been less than one in three.
2. The 25th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1967. It’s often referred to as the presidential disability amendment but it’s first and foremost an amendment about the vice presidency. Section 1 makes explicit what the original Constitution only halfway implied, namely, that when the president dies, resigns, or is impeached and removed, the vice president is to become president for the remainder of the four-year term. Section 2 provides a method for filling vacancies in the vice presidency, 16 of which had occurred during the nation’s first 36 presidencies. Tellingly, the premise of this provision is that we need a vice president at all times, something that previous generations obviously had doubted. Finally, Section 3 makes the vice president the crucial figure when questions about presidential disability arise, both in determining whether a disability exists if the president cannot or will not do so and in serving as acting president during a time of disability.
3. By 1976 the vice presidency had gained some of the institutional resources that made it possible for the vice president who was elected that year, Walter F. Mondale, and his successors to play an influential role in government. Johnson gained for the office an impressive suite of rooms in the Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House (previously the vice president’s only office was in the Capitol), and Spiro T. Agnew won a line item for the vice presidency in the executive budget. Between the two of them they freed vice presidents from their previous dependence on Congress for office space and operating funds.
Ford, who was concerned about where the Watergate crisis was headed and feared becoming too dependent on Nixon, insisted on the right to hire his own staff for press relations, speechwriting, scheduling, and advice on public policy — that was a big deal because otherwise he would have had to rely on the president’s staff for those things. For political reasons, Nixon needed Ford, and so Ford got what he asked for. Nelson A. Rockefeller secured a weekly place on the president’s calendar and enhanced the symbolic aspects of the office — a vice presidential mansion, a better plane to serve as Air Force Two, even a redesigned seal of office (no longer an eagle at rest, but an eagle at full wingspread with a claw full of arrows and a starburst at its head.)
The first vice presidential debate turned out to be significant in its own right. The viewership for the debate was 43 million, more than saw one of the presidential debates in 1996 and two of the presidential debates in 2000.
The nominees were Mondale and Bob Dole. The Carter campaign took the debate seriously and so did Mondale, who prepared and rehearsed thoroughly. The Ford campaign took the debate seriously too but Dole did not. He didn’t read his briefing books, nor did he participate in debate drills or rehearsals. On debate night Dole alternated between flippancy and aggressiveness. His worst moment came when he was asked about critical comments he had made about about Ford when Ford pardoned Nixon. Caught off guard, Dole said he didn’t think Watergate should be an issue “any more than the war in Vietnam would be . . . or World War II, or World War I, or the Korean War — all Democrat wars all in this century.” He added that 1.6 million Americans had been killed and wounded in “Democrat wars.” Mondale replied: “I think that Senator Dole has richly earned his reputation as a hatchet man tonight. Does he really mean that there was a partisan difference over our involvement in the fight against Nazi Germany?”
Based on its own polling, the Carter campaign concluded that the debate had been very helpful. Not long afterward it ran a commercial showing Mondale and Dole, with a voice-over asking: “What kind of men are they? When you know that four of the last six [actually seven] vice presidents have wound up as presidents, who would you like to see a heartbeat away from the presidency?”
With the exception of 1980, vice presidential debates have taken place in every election since that first encounter. I recommend them highly for three reasons.
First, they are important because they help us to evaluate the candidates for vice president. The vice presidency has become a significant office in and of itself —much more so in 2008 than even in 1976 — and there’s a reasonable chance that the vice president will become president.
Second, as surrogates the candidates for vice president help us to evaluate the presidential candidates. Sarah Palin will have a lot more to say about Barack Obama and John McCain than she will about herself and Joseph Biden, and Biden will have a lot more to say about Obama and McCain than he will about himself and Palin.
Third, vice presidential debates tend to be more freewheeling and perhaps even more illuminating in some ways than the presidential debates. The vice presidential candidates are free to let ‘er rip — they don’t have to worry about seeming “presidential.”