For the 1960 presidential election, two-term Vice President Richard Nixon faced off against John F. Kennedy. At one point during the campaign, reporters asked then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Can you think of a major contribution that Nixon has made to your administration?” Eisenhower replied: “Well, if you give me a week I might think of one.” Nixon lost that election.
offer impartial advice” so that Carter wouldn’t be “shielded from points of view that [he] should hear.” Carter agreed and subsequently made Mondale an integral part of his inner circle.
WHERE DOES THE VICE PRESIDENT Many vice presidents since In addition to the Vice President’s Office in the W Mondale have the Vice President and staff maintain a set of offic often offered Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB), loc points of view the West Wing on the White House premises. that didn’t align with that of the president. Bill Clinton and Al Gore, for instance, disagreed over the amount of power and influence entrusted to first lady Hillary Clinton; they also disagreed over the handling of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney disagreed, at times, over Iraq, as well as the use and nonuse of presidential pardons. In 1976, Jimmy Carter picked Walter Mondale as his running mate. In a memo sent to Carter after winning the election, Mondale argued that “[t]he biggest single problem of our recent administrations has been the failure of the President to be exposed to independent analysis not conditioned by what it is thought he wants to hear or often what others want him to hear.” Mondale’s vision for the role of vice president was “to
In contrast, Mike Pence has proved to be a loyal ally to a president who has a track record of being unwilling to listen to dissent. In the wake of the January 6 insurrection, Democrats and even a few Republicans called on Pence to remove Trump from office by invoking the 25th Amendment. Pence ultimately avoided taking such action.
THE ‘LAST VOICE IN THE ROOM’ Following Mondale’s model, when Joe Biden agreed to be Barack Obama’s running mate, he said that he wanted to be the “last man in the room” whenever important decisions where being made so he could give Obama his unfiltered opinion. When Biden picked Harris as his running mate, he said he “asked Kamala to be the last voice in the room,” to “[c]hallenge [his] assumptions if she disagrees,” and to “[a]sk the hard questions.”
WHERE DOES THE VICE PRESIDENT LIVE? Located on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory (USNO), the white 19th Century house at Number One Observatory Circle in northwestern Washington, D.C., was built in 1893.
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As Harris begins her trailblazing term as a vice president of many firsts, she has an opportunity to either follow the past as a vice president who is largely ignored, to follow Pence as a deferential foot soldier, or to pick up Mondale’s mantle by making sure that the president isn’t shielded from points of view that he should hear. Joshua Holzer is assistant professor of political science at Westminster College. Courtesy of The Conversation. THIS PAGE: Vice President Walter Mondale, right, was an active part of President Jimmy Carter’s administration (AP Photo/Harvey Georges photo). The Vice President's residence at One Observatory Circle, photographed in December 2017 (D. Miles Cullen photo). The interior of the Vice President's office in the White House (White House Museum photo). OPPOSITE PAGE: Harris attends the San Fransisco Pride Parade in 2019 (Quinn Dombrowski photo).
