For a job that has attracted some of the most withering ridicule in history, the identity of the next potential vice-president of the United States generates a remarkable amount of fevered interest every four years.
The most memorable testaments to the pointlessness of the role have come from men who have held it themselves. John Adams, the first, described it as “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived”, and nothing will eclipse for self-annihilation the verdict of Woodrow Wilson’s second-in-command, Thomas Marshall, who depicted it thus: “Once there were two brothers. One of them ran off to sea. The other became vice-president. And nothing was heard from either of them again.”
The differing career paths of those two officeholders after their escapades in futility may explain why the job remains a coveted prize. While Marshall suffered through two terms as vice-president and then went on to become a member of the Federal Coal Commission, Adams was elected the second president of the United States.
Almost two-and-a-half centuries after that feat, the vice-presidency is still one of the most effective means to make your way to the top of America’s greasy pole. Fifteen of 49 vice-presidents have gone on to become president – eight on the death in office of the incumbent; one through his resignation and the other six through subsequent election, including the current one, Joe Biden. In the 50 years since Gerald Ford became the last to suddenly replace his boss in office, five of the seven vice-presidents who have sought their party’s presidential nomination in an election have got it.
So with both presidential candidates for 2024 assured of their party’s nomination the quadrennial fever is upon us again. Kamala Harris, for all her flaws, is fixed on the Democratic ticket, but the Republicans have a vacancy with excellent prospects.
Those prospects may be even better this time not only because, at 78, Donald Trump would be the second-oldest man ever elected to the presidency (after the current incumbent) but because, having already served one term, he is constitutionally blocked from serving another after 2028. That means the race for the next Republican presidential nomination will begin almost immediately, with whoever is the vice-president in pole position.
As ever at this stage of the contest potential names fill the air like geese fleeing a hungry fox, and it would be journalistic misconduct to identify a firm favourite. Someone close to the former president told me last week that only Trump himself will know – and he won’t know until he has to decide, probably in the summer. But still, active consideration is under way, say campaign staffers, and names are filtering out from the deliberations.
As in almost all other respects, Trump is not like predecessors in this endeavour. The usual formula is to pick someone who can do one or more of three things: help the presidential candidate win over certain groups of voters or states he might not otherwise capture himself; provide some needed ballast that comes from governing experience; or offer political balance among the various factions of the party.
These have all been historically overblown. The attention absorbed by the presidential candidate himself is so large that the running mate hardly ever matters. In Trump’s case this is so obviously true that it is hard to imagine any such considerations weighing heavily in the candidate’s mind.
They may have been a factor in 2016 when Trump was still an unknown quantity in political terms and picked Mike Pence, both to reassure voters by choosing someone with governing experience and to provide comfort to doubtful Republicans that Trump really was one of them.
This time Trump will be looking for loyalty above all else, but those close to him think he may also want to make a splash and become a rare Republican who picks a female or ethnic-minority candidate.
Tim Scott, the African-American senator from South Carolina, who ran against Trump for the Republican nomination but quickly – and rather cringingly – came over to his team, is clearly auditioning. But he is a dull performer on the campaign trail. Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, is reliably Trumpy, telegenic and deeply conservative, though some very public missteps of late, including a role as the front woman for a cosmetic dentistry campaign, may make her too much of an attention-rival for Trump.
Elise Stefanik, a New York congresswoman, is another high-performing conservative, while Katie Britt, the Alabama senator, also a visually prepossessing figure, may have queered her pitch with a disastrously overwrought exercise in thespianism when she gave the official response to Biden’s state of the union speech last month.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was Trump’s press spokeswoman when he was president and is now governor of Arkansas, is another conservative with solid pedigree.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a high-octane Indian-American entrepreneur, established himself in the primary as a meticulous rebroadcaster of Trumpian ideology. Byron Donalds is an engaging African-American congressman from Florida but, because of a constitutional bar on the two candidates being from the same state, he, like Senator Marco Rubio, might not cut it as number two to the man from Mar-a-Lago.
Among the few white males on the whispering list is JD Vance, best-selling author of a memoir of dystopian family upbringing who is now a fluent populist senator from Ohio. And there’s always Nikki Haley, his last opponent in the primary, who still hasn’t endorsed Trump and once said he would be “suicide for our country”.
But she’s an ambitious woman. Could he resist forcing an implacable rival to make the most spectacular self-reversal in history?
The Times
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