Reagan and the Vice Presidency
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.1981.tb00046.x |
| Date | 01 April 1981 |
| Author | Michael Turner |
| Published date | 01 April 1981 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Other Neo-Faseist Strategies: Some Conjeetures
29
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(1980),
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*************
REAGAN AND THE VICE PRESIDENCY
MICHAEL
TURNER
Amidst
all
the analyses and counter-analyses
to
come from
the
1980
Presidential
and Congressional elections,
it
would be unfortunate
if
students of
American
politics
lost sight of a
fresh
item
on
the
political agenda: the question of restructuring
the role of the Vice President within the modern Presidency. This issue was brought
into sharp focus at
the
Republican Convention
at
Detroit in
the
course of the
abortive Reagan-Ford negotiations to persuade
the
former President
to
become a
Vice
Presidential nominee.
Gerald
Ford's determination not
to
become
"a
figurehead
Vice President" forced on to
the
American agenda
a
problem which has received
scant attention in recent
years:
what to do
with
the Vice President
(1)
?
While
the
response of Presidential nominee Reagan and
his
staff may have been prompted
more by
a
concern to enlist Ford
as
a
Vice Presidential running-mate
(2)
than
by a
desire
to
resolve
a
long-standing political anomaly,
their
response
was
nonetheless of considerable interest and ought not to
be
allowed
to
vanish
with
the death of the "dream ticket"
at
Detroit.
To
come to
terms
with
Ford's insistence that
he
"play a meaningful role across
the board
in
the basic and crucial decisions that have to be made", Reagan's
senior staff proposed a fundamental restructuring of the Vice Presidency
(3).
Essentially, their proposal
was
to
vest in
the
Vice President the coordination
and management functions
associated
with the
mite
House
chief
of staff; making
the
Vice
President
the
operations director
of
the
Executive Office of
the
President.
He
would therefore undertake
the
day-to-day
White
House supervision of
the
work
of
the
National Security Council,
the
Office of Management and Budget,
the
Domestic Policy Staff, and the Council of Economic Advisers.
As
part of this
function,
it
was
envisaged that
the
Vice
President would have a role in generating
policy proposals from executive departments and agencies; thus ensuring
that
he
would
be
in
the
mainstream of
the
administration. In addition to their restructuring
of Executive
Office
coordination and management functions under the Vice President,
the
Reagan staff further proposed having a single White House staff which would
serve
the
needs of both the President and the
Vice
President. Finally,
it
was
intended that the Vice President should be located in a White House office
(a privilege accorded previously
to
only two Vice Presidents: Agnew (for a brief
period) and Mondale)
.
Perhaps
the
first thing that should be said about
the
Detroit poposals
is
that
substantively they present a restatement of proposals to restructure
the
Vice
Presidency which
date
back to
1920.
Franklin
D
Roosevelt
(1920)
argued in
campaigning that
year
for
the
Democratic
Vice
Presidential nomination that:
There
is
hardly any limitation upon
the
ways in which
the
Vice
President might
be
of service to
the
President.
He
might serve
as an executive aide to
the
President
...
(and) could serve in
relation to the determination
of
large matters
of
policy
that
do
not belong in
the
province of a member of the President's cabinet.
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