170 Presidential politics
Department and the Office of Management and Budget with their more re-
stricted and more immediate responsibilities. Undoubtedly, it has served as
an invaluable educative influence on presidents and their staffs, working for
more flexible and farsighted economic policies. It has meant that the influ-
ence of skilled economists has been brought to bear right at the apex of the
American administrative machine.
The vice-president
Throughout most of the history of the United States the vice-presidency was
an office of little significance. John Garner, vice-president to Franklin D. Roo-
sevelt, said of the office: ‘It isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit!’ The Constitu-
tion gives two functions to the vice-president – to preside over the Senate, a
task normally delegated to a senior Senator, and to succeed the president if
the president dies in office, is removed by impeachment or resigns. The latter
is by no means an insignificant matter. No fewer than nine vice-presidents
have succeeded to the office of president: four presidents died in office, four
were assassinated, one resigned. Whilst the president continues in office the
actual role of the vice-president depends entirely on what the president asks,
or allows, the vice-president to do. Some presidents have virtually ignored
the vice-president, or treated him as a possible rival. Some vice-presidents
have been entrusted with responsibilities of some importance. Al Gore, Clin-
ton’s vice-president, had a higher profile than most holders of the office. He
was given the task of advising the president on government waste and on
environmental questions, and was prominent in promoting the Kyoto Treaty
on carbon emissions, although the Senate rejected the treaty in a unanimous
vote.
It is, however, Vice-President Richard Cheney who is considered in the
words of American scholar, Stephen Hess, to be ‘the most powerful Vice-
President we’ve ever had.’ It appears that Cheney has been a hard-liner on
foreign policy in the administration, and advocated the invasion of Iraq in
order to remove Saddam Hussein and to destroy his ‘weapons of mass de-
struction’. He played a leading role in trying to exempt the CIA from the
McCain Anti-Torture Amendment, outlawing torture by US personnel. His
Chief of Staff, I. Lewis Libby, was indicted in October 2005 on charges of per-
jury and obstruction of justice for allegedly having lied to a grand jury about
conversations with reporters concerning a CIA operative, Valerie Plame,
whose identity was revealed by the press. The magazine Time said of him,
‘Cheney makes his own rules, he decides what intelligence matters, what
secrets are worth keeping, and what force is worth using’.
The problem of the presidency
In September 1974 Richard Nixon became the first president of the United
States to resign from office. He did so after it became clear that he would
be impeached if he did not resign, and after some of the most extraordinary