Trump’s 2028 Hint and the Long Struggle Over Vice Presidential Power

Is it too early to speculate about the 2028 presidential and vice presidential nominees?

Well, no, it isn’t. We know this not only because we’re RealClearPolitics and that’s what we cover, but also because President Trump himself recently conjectured aloud that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio would make for a formidable future Republican Party ticket – in either order.

Trump’s idle chat made news mostly because he swatted away the idea of his seeking a (constitutionally prohibited) third term. But a possible Vance-Rubio ticket was an interesting trial balloon in its own right.

First, it neatly sidestepped the awkward subject of a possible Don Jr. or Eric Trump candidacy in 2028. Also, in just the first year of his second term, Trump was subtly acknowledging the lame-duck status that bedevils all two-term presidents. But perhaps most interesting of all, Trump was subtly conferring a level of status to the job of presidential running mate that has potentially significant implications for the MAGA movement and perhaps the future of the executive branch itself.

The vice presidency of the United States is an exclusive club – by definition – although not necessarily by any prestige and power that automatically comes with the job. On the contrary: Every political buff has his favorite quotation about its insignificance. (I’ll reprise some of the best below.) But that’s a dated perspective. And Richard Bruce Cheney, eulogized Thursday in a warm and affecting memorial service at Washington National Cathedral, is one of the biggest reasons why.

If the modern American presidency dates to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the same cannot be said for the modern vice presidency. In the 82 days he served as vice president under Roosevelt, Harry Truman had only three official meetings with FDR. Nor was there much in the way of other communication. Before heading to Europe shortly after his 1945 inauguration, Roosevelt issued written instructions to Truman on how (and how much) he could communicate with his boss.

“If you have any urgent messages, which you wish to get to me, I suggest you send them through the White House Map Room,” Roosevelt wrote in a hurried note to Truman. But only if the matter was “extremely” urgent. “I ask,” FDR added, “that you make them as brief as possible.”

There was World War II to win, yes, and America was still reeling from the Great Depression. But even so, the job as FDR’s No. 2 was actually a comedown for a well-liked U.S. senator. Before being talked into it by party bosses, Truman noted privately, “The vice president simply presides over the Senate and sits around hoping for a funeral.”

The funeral came, of course, and on April 12, 1945, Harry Truman replaced FDR and became the 33rd U.S. president. The list of issues Truman knew next-to-nothing about included the development of the atom bomb and the promises FDR made to Churchill and Stalin at Yalta.

In 2002, I was writing about the vice presidency and went to see Dick Cheney at the White House. Over lunch in his office the vice president mentioned the contrast with Truman. Cheney was particularly struck by the dearth of Truman’s face-to-face meetings with Roosevelt.

“Just those three,” he said, shaking his head. When I asked how many times he had met with Bush, Cheney reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper.

“Let’s see,” he said while glancing at the schedule. “Three, four, five, six – seven.”

At that he paused. “Seven times,” he said. “Today.”

Balancing Act

Historically, vice presidents were chosen to “balance” the ticket, which generally meant ideological and geographic balance – and, in the Republic’s early days, offsetting pro-slavery candidates with anti-slavery men.

In the late 20th century, a demographic component was added to the idea of ticket balancing. In 1984, Walter Mondale chose a female running mate; in 1988, George H.W. Bush decided he needed a younger man and tapped young Dan Quayle for the job. The starkest example of this factor came in 2020 when Joe Biden made it clear that only women were under consideration as his running mate – and a black woman at that. In the end, Biden went one better: Kamala Harris’ father was black; her mother was from India. The last Democratic Party ticket with two white males was in 2004. There may never be another like it.

Meanwhile, a competing trend emerged in the 1970s and again in the 1990s when Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton introduced another variable: Lacking any Washington experience, these two southern governors opted for a vice presidential nominee who could not only help them get elected, but – after the campaign was over – help them govern. This was a new wrinkle altogether. The Walter Mondale model hasn’t been followed by every subsequent nominee, but it certainly was by Clinton when he chose Al Gore – and in 2000 when a third Southern governor, Republican George W. Bush, chose Dick Cheney.

There was a built-in design flaw with this model, however; namely, it exacerbates the tensions between the desires of the president (and his staff) and the vice president’s future political ambitions. The risk is having a rival court within the executive branch. The Founders, after much deliberation, had vested great power in a single person. But a vice president with authority of his own poses a problem, which is why after getting excited about a Dream Ticket or Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan in 1976 (and Reagan-Ford in 1980), Republicans backed away from the idea.

In 2000, George W. Bush weighed this dilemma and approached it purposefully. He’d watched his father negotiate the trick of trying to keep his own political operation intact while serving as Reagan’s veep. He’d also seen Mondale struggle to keep his own identity while serving under Carter. It didn’t work very well. When his own time came, Mondale lost 49 states to Reagan. Al Gore fared better at the ballot box 16 years later when he was the Democratic Party standard-bearer – Gore lost the closest election in U.S. history – but in the end found his chances compromised when a scandal not of his own making tarnished the second Clinton-Gore term.

So George W. Bush made a pick with an additional twist. He wanted an active, capable veep – but he chose a man who had no interest in running for president himself after four or eight years as the No. 2. (This was Barack Obama’s intention, too, but Joe Biden pulled a switcheroo.)

Here’s is how Dubya explained it at Cheney’s memorial service Thursday.

“Twenty-five years ago, I had a big choice to make – a big job to fill. I wanted to know all my options, so I enlisted the help of a distinguished former White House chief of staff and secretary of defense to lead my search for a running mate. Dick Cheney and I went through the files name by name. We talked over the various qualities I was looking for in a vice president – preparedness, mature judgment, rectitude, and loyalty. Above all, I wanted someone with the ability to step into the presidency without getting distracted by the ambition to seek it.”

‘A Bucket of Warm Spit’

That’s the line attributed to John Nance Garner, who traded being speaker of the house to be the first of Franklin Roosevelt’s three vice presidents. Actually, “Cactus Jack” Garner employed a more earthy phrase – and he used it in 1960 to fellow Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was weighing an offer to become John F. Kennedy’s running mate. Despite the warning, LBJ took the job. Most, but not all, American politicians do. Here are some other colorful quotes about the position.

• “It’s not a crime, exactly,” humorist Finley Peter Dunne wrote. “You can’t be sent to jail for it, but it's kind of a disgrace. It's kind of like writing anonymous letters.”

• Daniel Webster, explaining why he turned down the 1848 vice presidential nomination, said, “I do not propose to be buried until I am dead.”

• Former vice presidents themselves have uttered the best put-downs. “I never wanted to be vice president of anything!” growled Nelson Rockefeller.

• Hubert H. Humphrey once joked: “There is an old story about a mother who has two sons. One goes to sea and the other becomes vice president of the United States. Neither is ever heard from again.”

• The job has been especially tough on politicians who had powerful jobs before being coerced into the vice presidency. “Worst damn-fool mistake I ever made,” Garner said. “I gave up the second-most-important job in government for one that didn't amount to a hill of beans.”

• Occasionally, sitting presidents have contributed to the canon of contempt for the vice presidency. Dwight D. Eisenhower, asked by a reporter to name a “major” contribution made by his vice president, Richard M. Nixon, paused before snapping in exasperation, “If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don't remember.”

• The source of such tension is no mystery: The vice president’s chief purpose is to replace the president if he dies or is incapacitated. Ronald Reagan reminded people of the strain that this puts on even the easiest of relationships when he referred in 1988 to Vice President George H.W. Bush (albeit lightheartedly) as his “bodyguard.”

• Vice presidents are aware of it, too. Lyndon B. Johnson, a vice president who became president because of an assassination, was quoted by historian Robert Dallek on this very point: “Every time I came into John Kennedy’s presence,” LBJ said, “I felt like a goddamn raven hovering over his shoulder.”

• John Adams, the nation’s first vice president, put it this way: “I am vice president. In this, I am nothing. But I may be everything.”

But there was another way. The Dick Cheney way. And though he was the only living veep not in attendance at Washington National Cathedral Thursday (apparently, he wasn’t invited), JD Vance paid homage to the mourned man in an interview.

“My condolences go to Dick Cheney and his family,” Vance told Breitbart News. “Obviously there’s some political disagreements there, but he was a guy who served his country, and we certainly wish his family the best in this moment of grieving.”