In the months leading to the 1998 midterm elections, a period when Republicans were gearing up to impeach President Bill Clinton over his dalliance with a White House intern, I travelled the country with Vice President Al Gore as he campaigned with Democrat candidates. The main reason was to chronicle anything he might say about Clinton’s behaviour.
Alas, he stuck to boilerplate messages about issues and avoided remarks about his libidinous boss. On most days, I had nothing newsworthy to write.
That got me thinking about how little consequence most vice presidents have in the daily churn of events – as a number two, as a policy shaper or as a news maker. Most are more Mike Pence than Dick Cheney, dutiful cheerleaders for the party and the policies their administration is pushing.
That’s changing. With another presidential election next year, voters have a new and urgent reason to take a hard look at the other person on the presidential ticket. In each case, the VP candidate will have a realistic chance to become president before the four-year term is out. And it’s not a far-fetched possibility: eight times a US president has died of illness or assassination. That’s about one in six, the last being John F Kennedy in 1963, shot to death in Dallas.
Biden’s age has become a major factor in the race
The likely rematch of President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, would present voters with the oldest contenders ever. Trump would be 78 on election day; Biden would turn 82 two weeks later. Each is apparently healthy but beyond the average life expectancy of a US male, now 76.1 years. Thus, an unusual spotlight is cast on the running mates.
Biden, who announced in April his intention to seek another term, is sticking with the incumbent, Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and black Jamaican father who broke barriers as the first woman, first person of colour and first Asian- and Caribbean-American to become vice president. A former attorney general of California and US senator, she strengthened Biden’s appeal in 2020 among women, minorities and independents, and they won more votes, 81 million, than any previous ticket.
That was then.
Now, Biden’s age has become a major factor in the race. Maybe the factor. Polls have consistently shown that sizable numbers of voters, including many Democrats, prefer a younger candidate. But who? There’s no viable option. And if the leading determinant is nominating someone who can beat Trump, Biden has no peer. He did it before – although polls are mixed on whether he can do it again, owing to Biden’s low approval numbers.
Harris is younger (60 on election day), personable and quick on her feet. But for reasons that have nothing to do with age, she is not widely perceived as having the gravitas to serve as president should the need arise. Some of that may be due to racism, sexism or lack of executive experience, but her public persona has been largely shaped by staff unrest during her early months in office and the near impossibility to show substantial progress in the portfolio Biden handed her – border issues, voting rights and abortion access – a formidable challenge for anyone.
Nor has she been helped by a fractured political landscape that includes Republicans who believe America should remain the province of white Christians.
Bob Shrum, a long-time Democrat presidential campaign consultant who teaches political science at the University of Southern California, says much of the criticism directed toward Harris is undeserved and, in the end, probably inconsequential.
“At the end of the day, people vote for the president although this time there is an asterisk to take a closer look at the vice president,” he told me. As a result, he said: “People will pay attention to the vice president debate in ways they haven’t in the past.”
And even that might not make a difference. Lloyd Bentsen, a four-term Democrat senator from Texas running with Michael Dukakis in 1988, crushed his Republican opponent, Dan Quayle, in their VP debate. But the ticket of George H W Bush and Quayle won easily.
As frail as Franklin D Roosevelt was in 1944, running for a fourth term with a third different running mate, “people didn’t take a look at Harry Truman”, Shrum said. Roosevelt died a year later, and Truman as president left the office of vice president vacant until he and Alben Barkley, an influential member of Congress from Kentucky, won in 1948. After Truman declined to seek re-election in 1952, Barkley launched a campaign for president, only to withdraw within two months after labour leaders declared him too old at 74 for the office. The winner was Dwight D Eisenhower, who was only 62.
Trump, who announced his candidacy in November, has not yet picked a running mate. That person, too, would bear scrutiny, and not just for Trump’s age. He has other potential disruptors, including numerous legal entanglements and his weight, 240lb, which medical experts say is more than 30lb beyond healthy for his age and six-foot-two height.
As for what he wants in a running mate, Trump values loyalty to him above all else, which means he would likely pick someone from MAGA world, a person who echoes his accusations of election fraud in 2020 and believes the only way to Make America Great Again is to keep hard-right Republicans in power. It’s not his nature to consider someone more moderate.
A woman would make sense to offset Harris’s appeal to female voters, someone such as Kari Lake of Arizona, a key battleground state. Telegenic and outspoken, a former television news presenter who supported Trump’s election complaints, she lost a close race for governor last year, then sued to overturn her defeat and lost — just as Trump did his more than 60 times. Another possibility is Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor who is challenging Trump for the nomination. But she may not be loyal or right-wing enough to satisfy Trump and his base.
Shrum laughed when I mentioned Lake as a possible Trump running mate. “I don’t know who he’d run with,” he said. “But picking Lake would guarantee Biden carries Arizona.”
It’s also safe to assume that Trump would not pick someone who could command more media attention than he does.
Whoever he names would ascend to the presidency if Trump’s legal challenges forced him out of office. Multiple investigations are bearing down for his efforts in trying to overturn the 2020 election, for his role in the 2021 attack on the Capitol, for the secret government documents he kept at his Florida home and for his efforts in Georgia to subvert election results there.
Already, Trump is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in New York, and a New York jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation brought in a recent civil case by E Jean Carroll, a former magazine writer who accused him of rape. The jury awarded her damages of nearly $5 million.
Despite all that, or maybe because of it, his support is growing. Polls show he is far ahead of all other announced and potential rivals, including his nearest challenger, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, whose poll numbers are falling.
It’s true, as Shrum said, voters vote for the president. This time, though, they might be voting for two of them.
A lioness in winter
As history’s longest-serving woman in the US Senate and the oldest current member, turning 90 this month, Dianne Feinstein of California is promising to retire at the end of her term next year. To a growing number of her colleagues, it’s about time.After an accomplished career that has won her respect and admiration from members of both political parties, her most recent years have been marked by concern over her cognitive abilities and physical condition. Calls for her to resign are growing, and already three influential House Democrats – Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee – have begun campaigning for her seat.Feinstein’s health has become deeply troubling for the Biden administration. Early this year she returned home to San Francisco for treatment of shingles and encephalitis. Returning to Washington in mid-May, she appeared frail and thin and moved around the Capitol in a wheelchair. “My doctors have advised me to work a lighter schedule,” she said, conceding she is still affected by her condition. “I’m hopeful those issues will subside as I continue to recover.” While seeking treatment and convalescing, she missed dozens of votes and deprived Democrats of their one-seat majority on the Judiciary Committee. With Republicans blocking efforts for another Democrat to take her seat on a temporary basis, at least a dozen Biden nominees to the federal bench were denied a hearing. Once approved by the committee, a nominee goes before the full Senate for confirmation.“I want to treat Dianne Feinstein fairly,” Senator Richard J Durbin of Illinois, the committee chairman, said in a television interview during her absence. “I want to be sensitive to her family situation and her personal situation. And I don’t want to say that she’s going to be put under more pressure than others have been in the past. But the bottom line is: the business of the committee and of the Senate is affected by her absence.”
Despite the calls for her resignation, Feinstein has legions of supporters in Congress from both parties who say wishing her out reeks of ageism and sexism.
“If it were a dude, would they be saying you need to step down, or you need to recuse yourself from a committee?” Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, told Axios.
Despite her health issues, Feinstein has resisted calls to step down before her term ends. If she were to relent, however, California governor Gavin Newsom would appoint a replacement to serve out the remaining months of her term. He has promised it would be a black woman, and the obvious choice would be Lee, who represents an Oakland area district.
But that might become a promise he can’t keep. Appointing Lee would create an advantage in the Senate race, allowing her to run as an incumbent, thus tilting the race in her favour despite the fact that Schiff and Porter have raised much more money.
The oldest senator ever, by the way, was Strom Thurmond, a Democrat-turned-Republican from South Carolina who served past his 100th birthday before retiring in 2003. He died five months later.
Michael Janofsky is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. He previously spent 24 years as a correspondent for The New York Times
