In The Washington Post, house-Trumpist Marc Thiessen argues that VP Harris’ chances of moving to the White House are dim, as only one sitting VP in the past 188 years has been elected president. His serious argument is that sitting VPs are associated with the president and if that president is unpopular, this unpopularity transfers to their VP. Biden is unpopular, Harris is part of the Biden administration, hence she is also unpopular. It is a sound argument, except that right now no one in U.S. politics is particularly popular.
As a Veepologist we are interested in the deeper question Thiessen has echoed: does the vice presidency put someone in a good position to become president? On the surface, it is evident that VPs are rarely elected to the presidency. We can boil down a library of methodology texts with the simple rejoinder: Compared to what?
The United States has had 46 presidents and 49 vice presidents. Nine VPs have become president through presidential death or resignation, 6 have been elected in their own right, 4 of whom were directly from the vice presidency to the presidency (Nixon and Biden had some time off between the vice presidency and becoming president.) If we exclude the nine VPs who became president through death or resignation) than six out of 37 elected presidents had been vice presidents first. That would indicate a 16% of any given VP being elected president. Not good, a .160 batting average would have you sent back to the minors. But again, compared to what? What other position in American politics is a better stepping-stone to the presidency?
Martin Van Buren, a sitting VP elected to the White House. And a dapper dude.
Governors? (Americans like governors because they have “executive experience” that equips them for the presidency. I kind of doubt it, and there are other reasons why we promote governors.) But which governors. Comparing one vice president to dozens of governors is not valid. Is there a particular governorship that is a direct springboard to the presidency? Ten individuals have gone directly from the statehouse to the White House, so hardly a blow-out comparison. But they represent eight different states. Only two states, Ohio and New York, have sent two governors directly to the White House (Hayes and McKinley from Ohio and Cleveland and FDR from NY.) Five individuals moved from the cabinet to the White House, and three of them were Secretary of State. But that hasn’t happened since 1824, although we came close in 2016 with Hillary Clinton. We have also elected four generals (I’m not quite sure how to classify Jackson and Harrison here as they held positions between being generals and becoming president.)
So overall, it is true that vice presidents becoming president (outside of death or resignation) is rare. But becoming president is rare. In any given election cycle, there are several dozen individuals who could mount a credible campaign for the presidency. The odds of becoming president for anyone are very low. Vice presidents, looking across U.S. history seem to have better odds of becoming president than anyone else.
Thiessen looks at a particular timeframe, the past 188 years. But if we looked at the past 192 years he would find that two sitting vice presidents were elected, so it seems a bit arbitrary. At the very least vice presidents would be tied with governors of New York and Ohio in their prospects of being elevated to the White House. Note, in that timeframe we also elevated three generals to the White House (Taylor, Grant, and Eisenhower.) All three of these generals won their wars, so that particular promotion seems unlikely in the near future.
But there are two more caveats to Thiessen’s analysis. First, no one expected VPs to be the electoral successors between Van Buren and really until after FDR. Vice presidents were chosen by the party, not the candidate, primarily as a sop to party factions. They generally knew it was a path to political ignominy. Really the comparison should be the last 84 years (when FDR changed party rules so he could install his chosen running mate.) But here’s the other thing – three sitting VPs (Nixon, Humphrey, and Gore) all came incredibly close to being elected president. Close enough that if I were advising an aspiring politician who wanted to eventually reach the presidency, I’d have to say – try to become vice president.