![]() ![]() ![]() President Carter, who had been an engineer, often sought optimal technocratic solutions without considering politics. The specific issues addressed and roles played by the vice president are shaped by a combination of events and the president’s needs and interests. In addressing these challenges, insider vice presidents have proven invaluable. In office, outsider presidents often wrestle not only with difficult policy choices, but also with the complexities of policymaking and running large bureaucracies. Bush, perhaps the ultimate insider president, had a vice president who exercised less influence than his predecessors and successors. Outsider presidents have consistently chosen figures with deep Washington experience as their vice presidents. ![]() senator, he only served four years in the Senate before being elected president and can be categorized as an outsider. Five of the last seven presidents had never held office in Washington before their election as president. The most important factor in shaping the vice presidential role is that over the past four decades, voters have preferred outsider candidates for president. The vice president’s role has continued to expand as vice presidents and their staffs take on major White House assignments. Previous vice presidents had worked across the street in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and only rarely saw the president. Carter systematically expanded his vice president’s role, giving Mondale and his staff access to the policy process, instituting private lunches between the president and vice president, and providing the vice president an office in the West Wing, steps from the Oval Office. While vice presidential influence may have reached its apogee in the Bush-Cheney administration, the rise of the vice presidency (excellent studies have been conducted by Paul Light and Joel Goldstein) began with the Carter-Mondale administration. Over the past four decades, vice presidents have played increasingly critical roles helping presidents understand the other players and execute moves in the two-level game. The one person who has the combination of policy experience and political experience is the vice president. The President hears from policy people and political people and has to make decisions to balance both. VPs have run for office they are political animals. Bush’s second national security advisor, explained to me in an interview: Vice presidents can be uniquely helpful in these two-level games. Putnam writes, “The political complexities for the players in this two-level game are staggering.” A good move on one board may be disastrous on the other board. On one board, the leader is playing with domestic constituencies, while on the other the players are the other countries, each of whom has their own domestic board to play. According to Putnam, when leaders engage in international negotiations, they are playing on two boards simultaneously. In his classic essay, “Two-Level Games,” Robert Putnam illustrates how politics and national security interact. Besides the president, only the vice president and the White House chief of staff can bring politics and national security together, as Clinton administration national security advisor Tony Lake explained to me. Despite the vice presidency’s status as “ the most insignificant office” for most of American history, since the late 1970s, vice presidents have emerged as important and unique advisors and surrogates to the president - particularly on national security affairs. ![]()
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