Vice President of the United States of America

The Vice President of the United States of America becomes the President upon the death, resignation, or removal by impeachment of the former President. Should the Vice President be unable to assume the Presidency, next in line is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, followed by the President pro tempore of the United States Senate. (If none of these individuals is able to become President, succession proceeds through the Cabinet. See: Presidential line of succession)

The Vice President must have the same constitutional qualifications as the President and cannot come from the same state. (In fact, this second requirement is not a constitutional requirement. What the Constitution provides is that if the candidates for President and Vice President come from the same state, the electors from that state could not vote for both. This might result in the Vice Presidential candidate receiving insufficiently many electoral votes for election even if the Presidential candidate is elected.) In practice the second requirement is easily circumvented by having the Vice President change the state of residency as was done by Dick Cheney who changed his legal residency from Texas to Wyoming in order to serve as Vice President for George W. Bush.

The Vice President serves as the President of the Senate (Article I, Section 3). This job basically amounts to taking care of procedural matters, and the ability to cast a vote in the event of a tie. There is a strong convention within the United States Senate, that the Vice President not use his position as President of the Senate to influence the passage of legislation or act in a partisan manner, except in the case of breaking tie votes.

Since the adoption of the 25th Amendment in 1967, "Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress." (Prior to that time, if the Vice President died in office, resign, or succeeded to the Presidency, the office of Vice President remained vacant until the next Presidential election.)

Gerald Ford was the first Vice President selected by this method, after the resignation of Spiro Agnew; after succeeding to the Presidency, Ford nominated Nelson Rockefeller as Vice President.

The 25th Amendment also provides means for the Vice President to temporarily become Acting President upon the temporary disability of the President. This procedure has been activated twice: once on July 13, 1985, when Ronald Reagan underwent surgery to remove cancerous polyps from his colon, and then on June 29, 2002, when President George W. Bush underwent a colonoscopy[?] requiring sedation.

Prior to this amendment, Vice President Richard Nixon replaced President Eisenhower on an informal basis three times for a period of weeks each time when Eisenhower was ill.

Normally candidates for President will name a candidate for Vice President when they are assured of the party's nomination. Since the Presidential candidate is now generally known before the party convention, this announcement is now typically made in the first day or so of the party convention. Generally the choice of running mate is made by the Presidential candidate alone and often is done to create balance on a ticket. It is common for the Vice Presidential candidate will come from a different region than the President or appeal to a different part of the party.

The formal powers and role of the Vice President with a healthy, functioning President are limited to the Presidency of the Senate, including a casting vote in the event of a deadlock. This was important in 2001, as the Senators were divided 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats and thus Dick Cheney's casting vote gave the Republicans the Senate majority. This ended when Vermont's James Jeffords[?] resigned from the Republican Party and aligned himself to the Democrats (though without actually joining them).

Their other function is as a spokesperson for the administration's policy, and as an adviser to the President. Their influence in this role depends almost entirely on the characteristics of the particular administration. Cheney, for instance, is widely regarded as one of George W. Bush's closest confidantes. Often Vice Presidents will take harder-line stands on issues to ensure the support of the party's base while deflecting partisan criticism away from the President.

Historically, the office of Vice President has been viewed as political suicide. The natural stepping stone to the Presidency was long considered to be the Secretary of State. It has only been fairly recently that this notion has reversed; indeed, the notion was still very much alive when Harry S Truman became the Vice President for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

See United States Constitution. See Acting President[?].

United States Vice Presidents

No.	Vice President	Years in Office	Political Party	Notes
1	John Adams	1789-1797	Federalist
2	Thomas Jefferson	1797-1801	Democratic-Republican
3	Aaron Burr	1801-1805	Democratic-Republican
4	George Clinton	1805-1812	Democratic-Republican	Died in office.
5	Elbridge Gerry	1813-1814	Democratic-Republican	Died in office.
6	Daniel D. Tompkins	1817-1825	Democratic-Republican
7	John Caldwell Calhoun	1825-1832	Democratic-Republican	Resigned to take a seat in the Senate, having been chosen to fill a vacancy.
8	Martin Van Buren	1833-1837	Democrat
9	Richard Mentor Johnson	1837-1841	Democrat
10	John Tyler	1841	Whig	Tyler succeeded to the Presidency when William Harrison died a month into office.
11	George Mifflin Dallas	1845-1849	Democrat
12	Millard Fillmore	1849-1850	Whig	Fillmore succeeded to the Presidency after Zachary Taylor died in office.
13	William Rufus DeVane King	1853	Democrat	Died in office.
14	John Cabell Breckinridge	1857-1861	Democrat
15	Hannibal Hamlin	1861-1865	Republican
16	Andrew Johnson	1865	Democrat	Johnson succeeded to the Presidency when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
17	Schuyler Colfax	1869-1873	Republican
18	Henry C. Wilson	1873-1875	Republican	Died in office.
19	William Almon Wheeler	1877-1881	Republican
20	Chester Alan Arthur	1881	Republican	Arthur succeeded to the Presidency after James Garfield was assassinated.
21	Thomas Andrews Hendricks	1885	Democrat	Died in office.
22	Levi Parsons Morton	1889-1893	Republican
23	Adlai Ewing Stevenson	1893-1897	Democrat
24	Garret Augustus Hobart	1897-1899	Republican	Died in office.
25	Theodore Roosevelt	1901	Republican	Roosevelt succeeded to the Presidency after William McKinley was assassinated.
26	Charles Warren Fairbanks	1905-1909	Republican
27	James Schoolcraft Sherman	1909-1912	Republican	Died in office.
28	Thomas Riley Marshall	1913-1921	Democrat
29	John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.	1921-1923	Republican	Coolidge succeeded to the Presidency after Warren G. Harding died in office.
30	Charles Gates Dawes	1925-1929	Republican
31	Charles Curtis	1929-1933	Republican
32	John Nance Garner	1933-1941	Democrat
33	Henry Agard Wallace	1941-1945	Democrat
34	Harry S Truman	1945	Democrat	Truman succeeded to the Presidency after Franklin Roosevelt died in office.
35	Alben William Barkley	1949-1953	Democrat
36	Richard Milhous Nixon	1953-1961	Republican	Actually took over the Presidency three times when Eisenhower was ill.
37	Lyndon Baines Johnson	1961-1963	Democrat	Johnson succeeded to the Presidency after John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
38	Hubert Horatio Humphrey	1965-1969	Democrat
39	Spiro Theodore Agnew	1969-1973	Republican	Resigned while under investigation for accepting bribes in his previous position as governor of Maryland.
40	Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr.	1973-1974	Republican	Appointed to replace Agnew, Ford succeeded to the Presidency after the resignation of Richard Nixon.
41	Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller	1974-1977	Republican
42	Walter Frederick Mondale	1977-1981	Democrat
43	George Herbert Walker Bush	1981-1989	Republican
44	James Danforth Quayle III	1989-1993	Republican
45	Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.	1993-2001	Democrat
46	Richard Bruce Cheney	2001-present	Republican

Note: There was no provision (until 1967) for the appointment of a successor upon death or elevation of the Vice President, so the position remained vacant until the next election and inauguration.