The American Vice Presidency is an all-inclusive examination of the vice presidency throughout American history. The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power The problem was corrected in the 12th Amendment, providing for separate nomination and election of each office. In the period before the creation of parties, no consideration was given to the possibility of the two winners reflecting rival views and policies, as happened in the third election with John Adams, nominally a Federalist, as president and Thomas Jefferson, known as an anti-Federalist, as vice president, serving together. In creating the Electoral College to choose a president, the founding fathers decided each elector should submit two names, with the runner-up becoming vice president. The office of the vice presidency was an afterthought. From all this I concluded that the selection of a vice presidential nominee, the first and most important decision a presidential nominee faces, should be examined in terms of the qualifications of the presidential nominee himself. These experiences, and traveling with and reporting on every vice president starting with Richard Nixon brought home the same conviction, along with reflections on some of the least impressive choices. I personally witnessed one assassination of a presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy in 1968 in Los Angeles, the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford in 1975 in Sacramento, and an assassination hoax against Ronald Reagan three months later in Miami, as well as standing a death watch for George Wallace in 1972 at a hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland. to explain how the role of the vice president has changed, and to offer some advice for the next president in selecting the 48th.ДЄs a longtime reporter on presidents I came to appreciate the importance of presidential succession and the wise selection of running mates. We asked Witcover to detail some of the backstories of the nation's vice presidents. Says Biden: вЂњThe way the world has changed, the breadth and the scope of the responsibility an American president has virtually requires a vice president to handle serious assignments, just because the presidentвЂ™s plate is so very full.вЂќ The authorвЂ™s interviews with Walter Mondale, Al Gore, Joe Biden and Dick Cheney offer insightful commentary on the modern vice presidency.

Wheeler of New York, are now largely forgotten. Though many of them like Aaron Burr, Spiro Agnew, Adlai Stevenson or Nelson Rockefeller, are well-remembered for either notorious or distinguished careers, many others, like William R. WitcoverвЂ™s new encyclopedic volume The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power, published by Smithsonian Books, traces the evolution of the office and features 47 biographical essays, one for each American vice president. The position, he writes, held 'little significance or utility in governing the nation's affairs.' In the early years of the young republic, the vice president was often the subject of lame jokes and ridicule, and with reason, says renowned political journalist Jules Witcover. But the founders concluded that the officeholder would be short on duties, or as one constitutional convention delegate noted 'without employment.' So they devised one extra role, to serve as the president of the Senate with just one task-cast the final tie-breaking vote. The VP would be a kind of president-in-waiting, should the president die or become disabled.

The country's founders saw it as a backstop measure. The office of the vice president has an underwhelming past.

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