The fanfare and publicity surrounding Tim Walz for his first fortnight as Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick has sparked renewed interest as to whether the second person on the ticket makes any difference when it comes to the result of the election. The conventional wisdom on the role and significance of the US vice-presidential office – in the words of Franklin D Roosevelt’s VP, John Nance Garner – is that it’s “not worth a bucket of warm spit”.
Garner’s experience is also instructive. Having previously been speaker of the House of Representatives he felt frustrated and sidelined being FDR’s vice-president for eight years, eventually resigning to go back to Texas in 1941. Yet had he stuck with the job his reward would have been to become president when Roosevelt died in office in 1945.
Indeed, the chances of such a succession are actually quite high. Out of America’s 45 presidents, nine assumed office unexpectedly: eight on the death of the sitting president (four of them due to the assassination of the incumbent). One, Gerald Ford, took office when the incumbent, Richard Nixon, resigned over Watergate in 1974.
