“A No Man's Land Somewhere Between the Legislative and Executive Branch”: John C. Calhoun, John Nance Garner, and the Creation of the Modern Vice Presidency

ABSTRACT The transformation of the vice presidency into a powerful position in the executive branch is tied to the rise of the imperial presidency. This paper challenges the standard view of this transformation, which casts it as a positive development for the vice presidency and for the federal government at large. It resurrects and reevaluates the original constitutional possibilities granted to the vice presidency to be a national figure with an important role to play, independent of the President. It argues that Presidents did not raise the vice presidency from constitutional obscurity but rather crushed a rival and valuable conception of the office, a conception best exemplified by John C. Calhoun and John Nance Garner. The modern vice presidency was forged in direct backlash to that idea; Calhoun and Garner exemplified exactly what presidents did not want in that office. Their reactions against it led first to the selection of the Vice President by political conventions and then to direct selection by the presidential nominee. In cutting off alternative constructions of the office, these new procedures transformed the vice presidency into a dependent executive office, and they shut down an important source of pluralism in the constitutional design.