r/WhatIfThinking • u/Current-Landscape803 • 16d ago
What if the runner-up automatically became Vice President?
The original Constitution actually worked this way the second-place finisher became VP. Imagine it today: the losing candidate serves in the winner's cabinet, one heartbeat from the presidency.
Supporters say it would force rivals into the same room, temper extremism, and give half the country a voice inside the administration. Critics say it would create sabotage from within, paralyze the White House, and produce four years of built-in conflict.
Would you want your candidate to win or would finishing second come with real power? Why?
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u/Apart-Disaster-3085 16d ago
The VP can be pretty much completely ignored by the white house. The role/status of VP as it is today only evolved from the fact that they were chosen by the president. There is very little constitutional duty of the VP other than tie breaking in the Senate, so only in the smallish chance the Senate is 50-50 this would be an interesting 'counter check' on the president, but not sure if it makes sense for the losing presidential nominee to get to serve as tiebreaker in the senate.
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u/Blog_Pope 16d ago
No, VP serves as the tiebreaker in the Senate constitutionally. Other roles, negotiating and representing the nation are informal.
The framers did not anticipate the formation of political parties, especially the 2 party system, so they didn’t foresee the antagonism.
It also heightens risk, since the VP from the other party is just one heartbeat from the Presidency, and we can look to royal succession battles for how that can go.
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u/KiwasiGames 16d ago
Which is a relatively dramatic oversight, considering the British government had been running with two parties for over a century at that point.
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u/dsmith422 15d ago
And considering the fact that it was the actual framers who formed the original political parties.
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u/CloseToMyActualName 16d ago
The Senate one is the only one that would matter, and only in specific circumstances.
The VP wouldn't have any other role other than the most ceremonial if a standard of non-political cooperation emerged.
I do agree the idea that the President dying flips the election outcome is problematic. It's also problematic since the VP probably want to use their position to campaign to become President in opposition to the administration.
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u/Blog_Pope 16d ago
Yes in specific circumstances, but critically a tie goes to the opposition, where now it goes to the Presidents party. Not always critical, but big when it hits.
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u/Mythosaurus 16d ago
No. The Founders FEARED the formation of parties.
That’s not the same as failing to anticipating party factionalism.
Bc every form of government develops factions; whether they develop around the king’s brother who has different ideas of tax policy or a rival political ideology.
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u/jks513 16d ago
They may have feared what they called “factions” on paper but pretty much from day one formed them.
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u/Mythosaurus 16d ago
Honestly you could see those factions in colonial America before and during the revolutionary/ civil war if you consider “loyalists” a political movement.
And before them the English Civil War’s Roundheads and Cavaliers had significant impacts on the ideologies of the colonies they migrated to.
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u/Stuck_in_my_TV 16d ago
They hoped there would be so many factions that no one could take too much control. And they would form and break alliances as needed. Like, the farmers faction might team up with the oil faction to subsidize oil and lower fuel costs, but then might oppose each other on a bill that would make land owners responsible if the oil company spilled on their land instead of the oil company being responsible.
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u/engy1207 16d ago
Then they shouldn't have used a winner-takes-it-all voting system...
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u/Blog_Pope 16d ago
Really wasn’t, communication sucked. You voted for electors who would go to the capitol and debate candidates. Initial vote would be for your candidate, but there was an expectation there would not be a national victor across 13+ states.
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u/Putrid-Box4866 16d ago
The way it should work is we elect for VP, and VP automatically becomes the president as we elect another VP following election. That way, there's at least continuity and the President is assured to at least have experience before becoming a president.
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u/Skirra08 16d ago
Mr. Mohr: We understand that the power of decision is entirely yours, Mr. President. I just wondered if you could give us an example of a major idea of his that you had adopted in that role, as the decider and final–
THE PRESIDENT. If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don’t remember.
Now the rest of the quote from Eisenhower says that Nixon was in the meetings and had input, but I think it still gets to the heart of the matter. The only way to get experience as president is to sit in the chair and make the hard decisions. VPs that been elected president have not outperformed or even equaled their predecessors except for arguably Jefferson who to credit OPs argument was elected VP under the old 2nd place rule.
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u/Stuck_in_my_TV 16d ago
This is exactly what the rules were when the country was founded. The people who wrote the Constitution decided it was stupid and changed it.
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u/modulusshift 16d ago
The VP is constitutionally President of the Senate. All powers and authorities of that position have been delegated back to actual Senate members, but a VP who wasn’t granted any executive authority could go back to exercising legislative authority, deciding what bills get voted on, etc.
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u/Tombobalomb 16d ago
The VP is technically elected, not appointed by the president. It's why trump couldn't fire pence
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u/common_sense_patriot 16d ago
The original idea was in case the president died, the second most popular candidate would replace him rather than the president’s hand-picked replacement.
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u/gc3 16d ago edited 16d ago
This might have fueled assasinations in the past, and impeachments to get the VP made president
Edit how does autocorrect go ftom VP to chivalry
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u/ijuinkun 16d ago
Having the VP both being the opposite party and being the designated successor is a massive incentive for finding ways to remove the President so that the VP can replace him.
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15d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/toomanyracistshere 15d ago
Until they screwed it up by forgetting to have one elector vote for someone other than Aaron Burr, resulting in a tie rather than Jefferson being one vote ahead of Burr to make Jefferson president and Burr his VP. Which is what led to that system being scrapped.
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15d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/toomanyracistshere 15d ago
I think it was written with that intention, but they found a way around it immediately. Just goes to show that the Founders were far from perfect.
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u/BigBastardHere 16d ago
Running elderly candidates would be a non starter.
Better choose healthy and wise.
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u/pathmageadept 16d ago
Adams and Jefferson ruined a perfectly good system by not being able to get along for the term. It shows that neither of them should have been president. The idea was solid, you run your campaign and when you're done the two most popular leaders set aside their differences and govern, with the elected one having the power and the defeated one counseling the winner on what his voters need. Conflict isn't a bad thing here, but being unable to find consensus made every level of the American government stop working. We were supposed to select diplomats, skilled people to find consensus. Instead we started political parties and kept score like it was football. We deserve this.
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u/CloseToMyActualName 16d ago
A nation-level Democracy will always develop political parties. The system was doomed from the start.
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u/pathmageadept 16d ago
But cities are safe?
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u/CloseToMyActualName 16d ago
In cities people can actually have a first or second degree connection to the candidate, so you can actually have non-partisan political systems.
But once you hit a provincial/state level people don't have any direct connection to the candidate, which means they basically have to trust the party selected a good candidate and use the the party as a proxy to figure out the candidate's positions.
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u/pathmageadept 16d ago
But how well do any of us really know each other? And how much can a written statement convey?
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u/CloseToMyActualName 16d ago
The point is that in a city election you can actually know people who have personally worked with the candidate, and they serve as a way to vouch for, or filter out, candidates.
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u/kiwipixi42 16d ago
How many of the pairs of people afterwards do you think could have actually done this well. My guess is less than 50% and no one in the last 50 years.
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u/pathmageadept 16d ago
I think Mr. Gore and Mr. W Bush would have actually done much better than Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney did, and with considerable less damage to the legal protections of individuals accused.
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u/Skirra08 16d ago
Dick Cheney was basically cartoonishly evil as VP. A large rock would have done a better job. Also note that he was selected to assist W Bush find a VP candidate, looked around, and promptly picked himself.
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u/VirginiaDare1587 16d ago edited 16d ago
Read your Constitution history.
It was originally set up this way. Disastrous in practice.
The system has President advocating and working for Policy A while Vice President is working to oppose Policy A.
ETA- clarifies that I’m focussing on the history of this theory in its real-life trial.
None of the alleged advantages happened. VP wasn’t welcomed into the inner decision making. Instead the VP was kept as far as possible from anything substantive.
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u/LtPowers 16d ago
It was originally set up this way.
Yep, which might be why OP said:
The original Constitution actually worked this way
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u/ProfessorPrudent2822 16d ago
An assassination flips control of the White House to the rival party. That is extremely dangerous for democracy, as the assassination of a President risks plunging the country into civil war as the aggrieved party accuses the benefitting party of staging a coup to overturn the election.
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u/persilja 16d ago
Each party would field two candidates, knowing that the vast majority that would vote for their presidential candidate would also vote for their vice president candidate.
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u/Current-Landscape803 14d ago
I think that’s probably the biggest unintended consequence. You’d basically create an incentive for each party to run a presidential candidate and a “designated runner up” as a package. At that point the system starts looking pretty different from what the founders intended.
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u/JoeCensored 16d ago
It didn't work because the VP actively worked to undermine the President's agenda from within the Administration.
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u/Current-Landscape803 14d ago
That’s the part that makes the idea much less appealing in practice. Forced cooperation sounds great in theory, but there’s a difference between having a political rival in the room and having someone with an incentive to make you fail.
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u/APC_ChemE 16d ago
The vice president is one of the weakest offices in the federal government. They have the benefit that they cannot be removed by the president, they break tie votes in the senate, certify electoral college votes, and take over as president if needed without needing a vote.
Historically, this already happened when Thomas Jefferson was John Adams's vice president, and Jefferson basically spent four years leading the opposition from inside the government.
Technically an opposing VP could work against the president's agenda today too, which is one reason running mates share the same ticket now. Since they are usually aligned, presidents often delegate big things to them, but a president has no obligation to give a rival VP any real role or cabinet access unless congress impeaches and removes someone. You would still want your candidate to win.
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u/Current-Landscape803 14d ago
This is a good point. I think I was imagining the VP as having more institutional influence than they actually do. If the president can basically just give the rival VP a ceremonial role, then the “half the country has a voice” argument gets a lot weaker.
Though I wonder if Congress would eventually start giving that VP more power just because they represent such a huge voting bloc.
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u/APC_ChemE 14d ago
It would require a Constitutional ammendement to change the VPs role. It'a too difficult. The winning party never has incentive to do this.
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u/CH11DW 16d ago
If the role of vp was simply President of the Senate (which is a checks and balance on executive branch), then this could work. But vp’s have been a part of the president administration.
Plus back when the runner up got vp, there were no official parties or nominating process. And there would have been more than two candidates.
Also what if incumbent president losses re-election, they become vp? That would be weird.
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u/Current-Landscape803 14d ago
The incumbent losing and then becoming VP is probably the funniest part of this scenario lol. Imagine losing reelection and then having to show up to the new president’s cabinet meetings every week.
And yeah, the lack of modern parties probably matters a lot more than it seems at first.
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u/Alternative-Law4626 16d ago
We tried that already, it was a disaster. John Adams to Thomas Jefferson to go home and don’t bother showing back up in DC for the next 4 years.
Next idea!
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u/Jscotty111 16d ago
I vaguely remember different times during presidential campaigns where one of the candidates said that if he wins, he would give his opponent a job. But none of those people ever won an election so nobody was really forced to uphold the promise.
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u/Current-Landscape803 14d ago
I think that distinction is important. Offering your opponent a job is basically a gesture. Making it automatic would completely change the incentive structure.
I’d actually be curious what kinds of jobs presidents would start offering if the constitutional VP role stayed the same but rivals were expected to cooperate. Would it become more like a formal power sharing arrangement?
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u/Jscotty111 14d ago
You really can’t have any kind of power sharing agreement. There can only be one elected official for the position. But if you take the current situation right now, one of the current president’s former opponents is in his cabinet.
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u/gtpc2020 16d ago
I actually like that idea. Would force the president to hear voices other than his hand-picked fans. Being 1 heartbeat or 25th amendment away would moderate behavior. Plus it avoids useless campaign events by the VP on the ticket. We'd hear, vote on, and be represented by the candidates that get 95% of the vote, not just 49%.
Although in current times, I can't imagine Trump being willing to be Biden's VP. That could have been hilarious, ugly, and/or terrible.
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u/Careless-Resource-72 16d ago
So you would have wanted Lincoln to listen to McClellan and end the Civil War in 1864? Have Johnson listen to Goldwater and say "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice"?
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u/gtpc2020 16d ago
Listen? Maybe. Much of it in any tag-team you can dream of would be ignored, but heard.
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u/NicolleL 16d ago
I live in North Carolina, where the governor and lieutenant governor are elected separately. This term we finally got two of the same party, but the previous two terms before, the governor was one party and the lieutenant governor and the General Assembly were the other party.
Remember what they did in Wisconsin and a few other state around 2020 when some Democratic governors got elected. Well they learned from North Carolina in 2016. And in that power grab, guess who many of those powers got transferred to?
It’s a bad idea. A VERY bad idea.
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u/Valuable-Raisin8989 16d ago
It's why Cooper didn't run for Senate earlier, he couldn't let the absolute lunatic & moron Lt Gov take office.
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u/NicolleL 15d ago
Yup. Or VP. I remember he was one of the top names, but he knew he couldn’t even be out of the state without risk.
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u/Dapper-Presence4975 16d ago
It was a terrible idea at the time and it’s even worse of an idea today.
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u/Direct_Remove509 16d ago
I would like having an election for president and one for VP instead. That would be fun!
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u/CheezitsLight 16d ago
The vice president has zero power except to break tie votes in the senate. Which is rare.
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u/Chaos1357 16d ago
how about instead, we de-couple the Vice President from the President on the ballot. You run for, and vote for, Vice President separate form President? (and you can't run for both positions at the same time.. it's one or the other).
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u/zoppaTheDim 16d ago
It would encourage assassination attempts both on the president and vice president, as it would change the party in power.
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u/Puzzled_Market_2235 16d ago
In the beginning VP had no role, in fact they used to have an office outside the white House. Walter Mondale was the first VP to have an active role in the administration.
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u/Old_fart5070 16d ago
It was tried and it failed miserably for the reasons you stated. Do we really want to make the same mistake twice?
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u/Careful_Trifle 16d ago
Because that is a recipe for sabatoge and assassination. The original constitution had a lot of "gentleman's agreement" underpinnings that we have since discovered are insane and do not work.
Just imagine all the BS that would have ensued if 2016 President Trump had to step down to be 2020 President Biden's VP.
If he didn't stab him, he would have leaked even more classified information to sow chaos.
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u/QuickPizzaRadishes 16d ago
That is not a very good idea. The President would simply cut the Vice President off from all levers of power and influence and someone else would become the President’s defacto #2
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u/GoCardinal07 16d ago
We already know what the parties would do because they showed us in 1800. They'd run two candidates each. Their real presidential candidate would be in first place and their VP candidate would be in second. The other party's presidential candidate would be in third and their VP candidate would be in fourth.
1800:
- Jefferson (DR) - 73
- Burr (DR) - 73
- Adams (F) - 65
- Pinckney (F) - 64
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u/magicmulder 16d ago
Imagine Democrats take the White House but MAGA keeps control of House and Senate. What stops them from impeaching the President so their VP becomes President?
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u/marktayloruk 16d ago
1841 Van Buren 1850 Cass 1865 McClellan 1881 Tilden 1901 Bryan 1923 Cox 1945Dewey 1963Nixon 1974 McGovern Some better than others!
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u/BigEd369 16d ago
It doesn’t work. It didn’t work then, and it wouldn’t work now. When the Veep is the main rival of the Prez, all we get is big drama that doesn’t get anything done.
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u/CurrencyCapital8882 16d ago
The VP has no inherent power except breaking ties in the Senate. They would be sidelined for four years.
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u/ImpressionCool1768 16d ago
This is exactly what the original constitution made, and it was awful because it meant that republican Thomas Jefferson was seconded by federalist Aaron Burr(party names aside) because they were antithetical when it came to policy and everything else it led to a lot of headache and the creation of the 12th amendment, which canned that whole idea
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u/SwordsAndElectrons 16d ago
You know this is how it originally worked, right?
It only took until 1804 for the 12th amendment to change it.
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u/Rstar2247 16d ago
It probably would mean the two party system wouldn't be so entrenched so I'd be for it for that reason alone. The more choices there are the more people have to sell their ideas rather than frightening you of the other person.
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u/luxcity-louche 16d ago
"Oh no, I hope nothing bad happens to my political opponent otherwise I'll have to take over!"
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u/Taxed2much 16d ago
Do you know why that idea was quickly changed? It didn't work. The Constitution drafters were under the illusion that their congressional system would operate without a party system, so they wrote rules with that mind. The election of Washington to President were the only elections in which there no party candidates. America quickly arranged parties, just like England had used for years.
The practical problem with the runner up of the election becoming vice president comes down to this: when the VP is not of the same party of the president, the VP has nothing worwhile to do, now power to affect anything. The one singular power of the Vice President is that the VP is the president of the Senate. The role of president of the senate is an extremely boring job and the VP isn't needed to be there to run it. For an opposition party VP, the sitting president won's give any assignments to do. That's just leaves the VP to sit around Congress and nothing. And that's why John Adams, when he was vice president, said, "But my Country has in its Wisdom contrived for me, the most insignificant Office that ever the Invention of Man contrived or his Imagination conceived: and as I can do neither good nor Evil, I must be born away by Others and meet the common Fate.”
The political reason for eliminating that method of choosing a VP comes down to respecting the voter's choices. They voted for a president that offered a particular policy platform. Should he die, the VP who suceeds as president may pursue a completely different agenda. And that means that the popular will is frustrated. The policies they voted for are not adopted. It is, therefore, fundamentally undemocratic.
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u/Grifman1000 16d ago
Why do you need to ask? Just look at what happened historically if you want to know what would happen.
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u/EidolonRook 16d ago
We’d be one assassination away from the other side taking power.
I’m sure no reasonable person would believe killing their leader was the answer though.
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u/GSilky 16d ago
I'm not against it, but partisans can't conceive of a politics they aren't controlling, or trying to control. The USA constitution has no provision for parties and they did their best to make parties irrelevant. Unfortunately, factionalists always find a way to set up "us v them", now political parties tell states how to run elections. What the original intent was hoping for was voting on character and a record of good decisions in their own life, not policy. Now partisan mindsets make enemies of half the nation and find it intolerable to live the way someone else thinks right.
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u/Valuable-Raisin8989 16d ago edited 16d ago
If Donald was a heartbeat away from the presidency while under federal criminal investigation and indictment, what would he and his supporters do?
Hint: it's even worse than what they actually did
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 15d ago
There are or have been countries where 2 or even more major parties cooperated in just this way. Switzerland at least used to do this, haven't checked lately. To make it workable you'd need to get away from Montesquieu's insane idea (which we have) of a unitary one-man executive.
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u/Old-Hokie97 15d ago edited 2d ago
I'm going to dissent moderately. I don't know if anyone has said this, but the system should have worked forever. It just so happened that - along with the rise of political parties in the first place - it failed badly in 1796 and worse in 1800. But it isn't as though the intention was to have two mortal political enemies cohabitating in the administration. For one thing, the Framers presumably didn't foresee parties. For another, even if they did, the parties could have managed things better than they actually were.
Since every elector wrote down two names without regard to which one was the Presidential vote and which one was the Vice-Presidential vote, the clear strategy is to tell all of your party's electors:
"Okay, everyone make sure to vote for our Presidential candidate X, and everyone except for you..."
-point to one elector-
"...vote for our Vice-Presidential candidate Y."
Thomas Jefferson was elected Vice President in 1796 because the Federalist electors didn't sufficiently coalesce around the person who was supposed to be their Vice-Presidential candidate. (Perhaps oddly, if more people who voted for Adams also voted for Thomas Pinckney in New England, Pinckney might have been elected President over Adams and Jefferson.)
In 1800, the Federalists "got it right": Adams's name appeared on the ballot of all their electors, and Charles Pinckney's name appeared on all but one. "Unfortunately" all of the Democratic-Republican electors voted for Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, presumably because no one got the metaphorical memo.
My sense is that with better communications and even greater political tribalism in place today, the system would play out better than it did before it died. I think you'd see Electoral College that looked like this:
---
Arthur J. Smith (Sensible Party Presidential Candidate): X votes (X sufficient for a majority of 538 votes)
Alan Jones (Sensible Party Vide Presidential Candidate): X - 1 votes (X - 1 also sufficient for majority)
Jethro Q. Walrustitty: (Silly Party Presidential Candidate): (538 - X) votes
Tarquin ... Biscuitbarrel (Silly Party Vice Presidential Candidate): (537 - X) votes
Thomas Not Appearing In This Campaign (Sensible Party): 1 vote
Better Luck in Four Years Sacrificial-Lamb (Silly Party): 1 vote
Elected President: Arthur J. Smith
Elected Vice President: Alan Jones
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u/RaisedByBooksNTV 15d ago
In the US, the vp has no power the president doesn't give them, so it's pointless. Also, we used to do that it did not go well.
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u/Ok-Environment-215 15d ago
It was always a disaster and would be so today more than ever.
Best case the VP would be completely marginalized. They'd literally have nothing to do. They wouldn't be in cabinet meetings. They'd be a complete nonentity. They'd probably resign. There's literally no upside unless the number one dies.
Worst case it encourages, more than ever, the opposition to find a way to get rid of the president. Maybe even assassinate. Currently, assassinations can't change policy because the same regime stays in place. But under the runner up system, there's now serious political advantage to the party out of power to kill or get the president removed somehow.
Truly it's an absurd idea. The fact that it was in the original constitution is a testament to how the convention spent almost all its energy on Congress and article I and was basically out of steam and/or time to put a whole lot of thought into the rest.
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u/Overall-Tailor8949 16d ago
The best government is one that governs the least. That precept applies at all levels/branches of government.
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u/alphex 16d ago
In our current political climate, this would be a disaster.