Download or read book The Vice Presidents written by Carole Chandler Waldrup and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-10-14 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Nance Garner once colorfully described the office of vice president of the United States as not worth "a pitcher of warm piss," and no doubt many of the 45 men elected to it would agree. Though it is the second highest elective office in the United States, there is but one constitutional duty: to preside over the Senate. Historically, vice presidents have often been relegated to attending state funerals and heading mostly ceremonial committees. Unless, of course, the president dies or resigns; they are then thrust into the presidency, often with little or no preparation. From John Adams to Albert Gore, Jr., this reference work provides biographies of 45 vice presidents of the United States. Despite the fact that many think of the office as a stepping stone to the White House, only 14 have actually served as president. Outside the public spotlight, many vice presidents led fascinating lives and served their country with distinction, though little has been written about them. The biographies herein focus on their work as vice president, their relationship with the president under whom they served, and their role in the White house. Their lives after the end of their terms are also examined fully. A bibliography follows each biography.
Download or read book Picking the Vice President written by Elaine C. Kamarck and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Picking the Vice President Has Changed—and Why It Matters During the past three decades, two important things have changed about the U.S. vice presidency: the rationale for why presidential candidates choose particular running mates, and the role of vice presidents once in office. This is the first major book focusing on both of those elements, and it comes at a crucial moment in American history. Until 1992, presidential candidates tended to select running mates simply to “balance” the ticket, sometimes geographically, sometimes to guarantee victory in an must-carry state, sometimes ideologically, and sometimes for all three reasons. Bill Clinton changed that in 1992 when he selected Al Gore as his running mate, saying the experience and compatibility of the Tennessee senator would make him an ideal “partner” in governing. Gore's two immediate successors, Dick Cheney and Joe Biden, played similar roles under Presidents Bush and Obama. Mike Pence seems to also be following in that role as well, although the first draft of history on the Trump Administration is still being written. What enabled this change in the vice presidency was not so much the personal characteristics of recent vice presidents but instead changes in the presidential nomination system. The increased importance of primaries and the overwhelming need to raise money have diminished the importance of “balance” on the ticket and increased the importance of “partnership”—selecting a partner who can help the president govern. This book appears as Joe Biden prepares to choose his own running mate. No matter who wins the November 2020 elections, what Elaine Kamarck writes will be of interest to anyone following current affairs, students of American government, and journalists whose job will be to cover the next administration.
Download or read book First in Line written by Kate Andersen Brower and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An intimate, compulsively readable account of the dynamics that have shaped—and sometimes destroyed—relations at the top of the American political hierarchy.... [and] a valuable addition to the literature of the modern presidency.” — Wall Street Journal From the author of the New York Times bestsellers First Women and The Residence, an intimate, news-making look at the men who are next in line to the most powerful office in the world—the vice presidents of the modern era—from Richard Nixon to Joe Biden to Mike Pence. Vice presidents occupy a unique and important position, living partway in the spotlight and part in the wings. Of the forty-eight vice presidents who have served the United States, fourteen have become president; eight of these have risen to the Oval Office because of a president’s death or assassination, and one became president after his boss’s resignation. John Nance Garner, FDR’s first vice president, famously said the vice presidency is "not worth a bucket of warm piss" (later cleaned up to "warm spit"). But things have changed dramatically in recent years. In interviews with more than two hundred people, including former vice presidents, their family members, and insiders and confidants of every president since Jimmy Carter, Kate Andersen Brower pulls back the curtain and reveals the sometimes cold, sometimes close, and always complicated relationship between our modern presidents and their vice presidents. Brower took us inside the lives of the White House staff and gave us an intimate look at the modern First Ladies; now, in her signature style, she introduces us to the second most powerful men in the world, exploring the lives and roles of thirteen modern vice presidents—eight Republicans and five Democrats. And she shares surprising revelations about the relationship between former Vice President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama and how Vice President Mike Pence and President Donald Trump interact behind closed doors. From rivals to coworkers, there is a very tangible sense of admiration mixed with jealousy and resentment in nearly all these relationships between the number two and his boss, even the best ones, Brower reveals. Vice presidents owe their position to the president, a connection that affects not only how they are perceived but also their possible future as a presidential candidate—which is tied, for better or worse, to the president they serve. George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan had a famously prickly relationship during the 1980 primary, yet Bush would not have been elected president in 1988 without Reagan’s high approval rating. Al Gore’s 2000 loss, meanwhile, could be attributed to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Current Vice President Mike Pence is walking a high-stakes political tightrope as he tries to reassure anxious Republicans while staying on his boss’s good side. This rich dynamic between the president and the vice president has never been fully explored or understood. Compelling and deeply reported, grounded in history and politics, and full of previously untold and incredibly personal stories, First In Line pierces the veil of secrecy enveloping this historic political office to offer us a candid portrait of what it’s truly like to be a heartbeat away.
Download or read book Accidental Presidents written by Jared Cohen and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This New York Times bestselling “deep dive into the terms of eight former presidents is chock-full of political hijinks—and déjà vu” (Vanity Fair) and provides a fascinating look at the men who came to the office without being elected to it, showing how each affected the nation and world. The strength and prestige of the American presidency has waxed and waned since George Washington. Eight men have succeeded to the presidency when the incumbent died in office. In one way or another they vastly changed our history. Only Theodore Roosevelt would have been elected in his own right. Only TR, Truman, Coolidge, and LBJ were re-elected. John Tyler succeeded William Henry Harrison who died 30 days into his term. He was kicked out of his party and became the first president threatened with impeachment. Millard Fillmore succeeded esteemed General Zachary Taylor. He immediately sacked the entire cabinet and delayed an inevitable Civil War by standing with Henry Clay’s compromise of 1850. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded our greatest president, sided with remnants of the Confederacy in Reconstruction. Chester Arthur, the embodiment of the spoils system, was so reviled as James Garfield’s successor that he had to defend himself against plotting Garfield’s assassination; but he reformed the civil service. Theodore Roosevelt broke up the trusts. Calvin Coolidge silently cooled down the Harding scandals and preserved the White House for the Republican Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. Harry Truman surprised everybody when he succeeded the great FDR and proved an able and accomplished president. Lyndon B. Johnson was named to deliver Texas electorally. He led the nation forward on Civil Rights but failed on Vietnam. Accidental Presidents shows that “history unfolds in death as well as in life” (The Wall Street Journal) and adds immeasurably to our understanding of the power and limits of the American presidency in critical times.
Download or read book The White House Vice Presidency written by Joel K. Goldstein and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-03-03 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I am nothing, but I may be everything," John Adams, the first vice president, wrote of his office. And for most of American history, the "nothing" part of Adams's formulation accurately captured the importance of the vice presidency, at least as long as the president had a heartbeat. But a job that once was "not worth a bucket of warm spit," according to John Nance Garner, became, in the hands of the most recent vice presidents, critical to the governing of the country on an ongoing basis. It is this dramatic development of the nation's second office that Joel K. Goldstein traces and explains in The White House Vice Presidency. The rise of the vice presidency took a sharp upward trajectory with the vice presidency of Walter Mondale. In Goldstein's work we see how Mondale and Jimmy Carter designed and implemented a new model of the office that allowed the vice president to become a close presidential adviser and representative on missions that mattered. Goldstein takes us through the vice presidents from Mondale to Joe Biden, presenting the arrangements each had with his respective president, showing elements of continuity but also variations in the office, and describing the challenges each faced and the work each did. The book also examines the vice-presidential selection process and campaigns since 1976, and shows how those activities affect and/or are affected by the newly developed White House vice presidency. The book presents a comprehensive account of the vice presidency as the office has developed from Mondale to Biden. But The White House Vice Presidency is more than that; it also shows how a constitutional office can evolve through the repetition of accumulated precedents and demonstrates the critical role of political leadership in institutional development. In doing so, the book offers lessons that go far beyond the nation's second office, important as it now has become.
Download or read book Wreath Layer Or Policy Player written by Paul Kengor and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since World War II, American vice presidents have played an ever-increasing role in the nation's foreign policy. This study of the foreign-policy activities of five key vice presidents--Richard Nixon, Walter Mondale, George Bush, Dan Quayle, and Al Gore--provides the first comprehensive analysis of the role of the vice president in foreign-policy affairs. In order to bring readers to a better understanding of this role, Paul Kengor asks incisive questions: Did the vice presidents' involvement in foreign policy actually benefit the administration? If so, what useful lessons can be drawn from their experiences? Is there good reason to approve or reject an enhanced role in foreign policy for future vice presidents? How, specifically, might the vice president be used in conducting the nation's international affairs? The answers to these questions are crucial reading for scholars of the presidency and foreign policy, for policy makers, and for all of us assessing vice presidents past and future.
Download or read book Veeps written by Bill Kelter and published by Top Shelf Productions. This book was released on 2008 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Veeps' tells the sordid, head-scratching, perversely-entertaining stories of the men the US has chosen over the years to become Vice President including the rogues, cowards, drunks, featherweights, doddering geriatrics, bigots, and atrocious spellers.
Download or read book The Vice Presidents written by L. Edward Purcell and published by Facts on File. This book was released on 1998 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brief biographies of all 45 United States Vice-Presidents to date.
Download or read book Write it when I m Gone written by Thomas M. DeFrank and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a series of private interviews, conducted over sixteen years with the stipulation that they not be released until after his death, the former president offers a revealing, reflective self-portrait as he describes his relationships with Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton; experiences on the Warren Commission; and opinions on the Bush administration, the Iraq war, family, and aging. 150,000 first printing.
Download or read book Cheney written by Stephen F. Hayes and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During a forty-year career in politics, Vice President Dick Cheney has been involved in some of the most consequential decisions in recent American history. He was one of a few select advisers in the room when President Gerald Ford decided to declare an end to the Vietnam War. Nearly thirty years later, from the presidential bunker below the White House in the moments immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001, he helped shape the response: America's global war on terror. Yet for all of his influence, the world knows very little about Dick Cheney. The most powerful vice president in U.S. history has also been the most secretive and guarded of all public officials. "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?" Cheney asked rhetorically in 2004. "It's a nice way to operate, actually." Now, in Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President, New York Times bestselling author and Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen F. Hayes offers readers a groundbreaking view into the world of this most enigmatic man. Having had exclusive access to Cheney himself, Hayes draws upon hundreds of interviews with the vice president, his boyhood friends, political mentors, family members, reticent staffers, and senior Bush administration officials, to deliver a comprehensive portrait of one of the most important political figures in modern times. The wide range of topics Hayes covers includes Cheney's withdrawal from Yale; his early run-ins with the law; the incident that almost got him blackballed from working in the Ford White House; his meteoric rise to congressional leadership; his opposition to removing Saddam Hussein from power after the first Gulf War; the solo, cross-country drive he took after leaving the Pentagon; his selection as Bush's running mate; his commanding performance on 9/11; the aggressive intelligence and interrogation measures he pushed in the aftermath of those attacks; the necessity of the Iraq War; the consequences of mistakes made during and after that war; and intelligence battles with the CIA and their lasting effects. With exhaustive reporting, Hayes shines a light into the shadows of the Bush administration and finds a very different Dick Cheney from the one America thinks it knows.
Download or read book Do Running Mates Matter written by Christopher J. Devine and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American vice presidency, as the saying goes, “is not worth a bucket of warm spit.” Yet vice presidential candidates, many people believe, can make all the difference in winning—or losing—a presidential election. Is that true, though? Did Sarah Palin, for example, sink John McCain’s campaign in 2008? Did Joe Biden help Barack Obama win? Do running mates actually matter? In the first book to put this question to a rigorous test, Christopher J. Devine and Kyle C. Kopko draw upon an unprecedented range of empirical data to reveal how, and how much, running mates influence voting in presidential elections. Building on their previous work in The VP Advantage and evidence from over 200 statistical models spanning the 1952 to 2016 presidential elections, the authors analyze three pathways by which running mates might influence vote choice. First, of course, they test for direct effects, or whether evaluations of the running mate influence vote choice among voters in general. Next, they test for targeted effects—if, that is, running mates win votes among key subsets of voters who share their gender, religion, ideology, or geographic identity. Finally, the authors examine indirect effects—that is, whether running mates shape perceptions of the presidential candidate who selected them, which in turn influence vote choice. Here, in this last category, is where we see running mates most clearly influencing presidential voting—especially when it comes to their qualifications for holding office and taking over as president, if necessary. Picking a running mate from a key voting bloc probably won’t make a difference, the authors conclude. But picking an experienced, well-qualified running mate will make the presidential candidate look better to voters—and win some votes. With its wealth of data and expert analysis, this finely crafted study, the most comprehensive to date, finally provides clear answers to one of the most enduring questions in presidential politics: can the running mate make a difference in this election?
Download or read book Second Best written by James E. Hite and published by Cognella Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2012-05-30 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The vice president of the United States is perhaps the most overlooked officer of the American government. The vice presidency, however, has been on the ascent for many years and the form and function of the institution today is of considerably more significance than the office the Framers envisioned at the Federal Convention of 1787. "Second Best: The Rise of the American Vice Presidency" traces the historical trajectory of the vice-presidential institution, telling the story of the vice presidency, and those who have held the office. It is an infinitely more colorful narrative than most would imagine; and yet, the vice presidency continues to be an enigma to most of the public. James E. Hite is a faculty member of Portland State University s Extended Campus program, and also teaches as an adjunct faculty member of political science at Mt. Hood Community College and Clackamas Community College. Professor Hite lives with his family in Oregon, where they divide their time between Neskowin and Portland.
Download or read book Number One Observatory Circle written by Charles Denyer and published by . This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though just a heartbeat away from the presidency, it was years into the modern era before America's vice presidents began to gain the respect the office deserved. There was probably no more obvious reflection of their insignificance than their living accommodations, not to mention ill-fitted security protocols that were reinvented each time a new vice president was elected. That all changed in 1974 when Congress authorized an official, temporary residence for the vice president of the United States -- the stately, Queen Anne-style mansion built in 1893, and perched ever so slightly on a hilltop on the grounds of the US Naval Observatory. With its location still largely unknown to the general public, the home sits quietly in the Northwest section of our nation's capital, just minutes from the historic and world-renowned Georgetown neighborhood. Now commonly known as "Number One Observatory Circle," the 9,150 square-foot mansion, designed by architect Leon Dessez, has served as the official full-time residence for every vice president since Walter Mondale. It's a home filled with incredible history and charm, yet blanketed with modern-day security features rivaling those of the White House. Journey through the pages of history with Charles Denyer as he unlocks the doors to the residence of America's vice presidents, providing never-before-seen photos and intimate interviews with past residents and other notable figures.
Download or read book Vice President Kamala Harris written by Malaika Adero and published by Union Square & Co.. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first fully illustrated book on Kamala Harris’s life and work, a retrospective that celebrates and honors her barrier-breaking achievements. When Kamala Harris became vice president of the United States, she made history as the first woman, first Black person, first South Asian American, and first Caribbean American to hold the office. This stunning book covers Harris’s life from her childhood in Berkeley to her Howard College years, charting the many firsts she has carried with her throughout her legal and senatorial careers. It also explores Harris’s presidential campaign, her family (her husband, Doug Emhoff, is the first Second Gentleman and the first Jewish vice presidential spouse), the inauguration and her first months in the White House, and includes sidebars giving historical context to Black and female representation in government. Harris’s inspiring journey is brought to life with 120 photographs, quotes, highlights from notable speeches, and insightful commentary from Malaika Adero.
Download or read book Vice Presidents of the United States 1789 1993 written by and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ranking the Vice Presidents written by Ian Randal Strock and published by Carrel Books. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With all eyes on their Presidential bosses, the Vice Presidents of the United States have often been relegated to the background. But they are an intriguing group, and now—in this unprecedented and meticulously researched volume—the forty-seven men who have held this position take center stage. Anyone interested in going beyond the headlines and learning about the history of powers behind the Oval Office will want to pore over this one-of-a-kind reference. Here you will find the information you never knew you needed to know about the Vice Presidents, such as who lived the longest, who got married in office, who won the Nobel Prize, and who was charged with treason. Packed with facts, trivia, and lists about all of America’s VPs as well as many of the country’s high-ranking political appointees, Ranking the Vice Presidents presents the hidden history of the nation’s second-in-command.
Download or read book Why Presidents Fail And How They Can Succeed Again written by Elaine C. Kamarck and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Failure should not be an option in the presidency, but for too long it has been the norm. From the botched attempt to rescue the U.S. diplomats held hostage by Iran in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter and the missed intelligence on Al Qaeda before 9-11 under George W. Bush to, most recently, the computer meltdown that marked the arrival of health care reform under Barack Obama, the American presidency has been a profile in failure. In Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again, Elaine Kamarck surveys these and other recent presidential failures to understand why Americans have lost faith in their leaders—and how they can get it back. Kamarck argues that presidents today spend too much time talking and not enough time governing, and that they have allowed themselves to become more and more distant from the federal bureaucracy that is supposed to implement policy. After decades of "imperial" and "rhetorical" presidencies, we are in need of a "managerial" president. This White House insider and former Harvard academic explains the difficulties of governing in our modern political landscape, and offers examples and recommendations of how our next president can not only recreate faith in leadership but also run a competent, successful administration.
