The vice presidential bucket brigade

Kamala Harris knows being vice president of the United States is not all bad. You get an annual salary of $235,100, free room and board, and if the sitting president is incapacitated or dies, you become president. She also knows that it is a frustrating job of little clearly defined responsibility and no programmatic freedom. The high point of the year is sitting behind the president at the State of the Union address and standing to applaud.

In addition, you have Secret Service protection and an airplane that says United States of America on its sides. Marines salute you as you get aboard. But you are not co-president. You are no more than what the president allows you to be. Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president, John Nance Garner, famously said unambiguously, “Being Vice President is not worth a bucket of warm spit.”

I ’ve seen the bucket up close. In 1964, my boss, then-Sen. Huber Humphrey was chosen by President Lyndon Johnson to be his running mate. Humphrey had been in the Senate since 1948, was a leading liberal with a deserved reputation of getting things done. He was the Senate’s chief voice for civil rights legislation, prime mover on nuclear disarmament, among other topics of liberal distinction. Some said he talked too much and spoke too often. His wife once told him, “Hubert, you don’t have to be eternal to be immortal.” He didn’t listen to her.

When, at his first National Security Council meeting, he questioned our Vietnam policies, he got a better understanding of his new role.

He was excluded for a year from any foreign policy discussion, and just about everything else, as well. Until he became a cheerleader for the war.

Harris complains about being our chief Border Patrol officer, an unpleasant job. Humphrey was sent to Vietnam where bombs were falling, and American troops were dying.

Humphrey’s office, like vice presidents before him, was in the Executive Office Building, a short walk from the White House. But Humphrey often said, “It could be in Baltimore.” In four years as his press secretary, I was in the White House four times, and two of those were to have lunch with him at the Navy mess.

When he was asked years later by Walter Mondale whether he should accept the vice-presidential nomination offered by Jimmy Carter, Humphrey told him not to accept unless he had an office in the White House. Carter agreed and Mondale saw him every afternoon, and their staffs were collegial, if still not equal, and they both understood it.

Al Gore, like Mondale, had his office in the White House. John Nance Garner would not have recognized the modern vice presidency. Proximity provides visibility, even when you are silent, credibility when you speak and the right to succession when you are judged as a future candidate.

Harris has managed to miss the lessons on both the old and new vice presidents. Stay off the front page, including stories of staff anger and departures.

In 2024, President Joe Biden needs a national convention of calm and without controversy. If Harris continues as she has, he won’t have it. There are Democrats who wouldn’t want her as president ever, and not even as vice president again.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.