HISTORY’S GUIDE TO THE US VICE-PRESIDENCY
Emily Minson and Gavin Clancy
It’s a Presidential election year in the United States.
There are mutterings over the long-term health of the Democrat President, and whether he can see out another term in office.
Meanwhile, there are similar mutterings over the suitability of the Vice-President, and especially whether the VP has broad electoral appeal.
Moreover, there are particular concerns over whether the incumbent Vice-President could or should fill the top role. After all, the primary responsibility of the Vice-President is to “be ready at a moment’s notice to assume the Presidency if the President is unable to perform his or her duties” through death, resignation, or temporary incapacitation.
Sounds like contemporary political discussion in the US?
Actually, this scenario played out 80 years ago.
In Europe, events were turning in World War 2, after the D-Day landings in June 1944.
In the United States, events were happening behind the scenes, as the Democrats prepared to re-endorse President Franklin D Roosevelt for an historic fourth term.
Roosevelt was 62 and unable to walk unassisted, as a result of polio suffered in the 1920s.
His Vice-President since 1941 was Henry Wallace, a former Secretary of Agriculture.
But when the Democrats met for their National Convention in July 1944, Wallace was on shaky ground, as delegates moved against him.
Ultimately it was the comparatively little-known Missouri Senator Harry Truman who leapfrogged Wallace and other contenders to be elected as Roosevelt’s running mate.
Truman was seen as a steady pair of hands, while Wallace – according to Truman’s biographer David McCullough* – was regarded as “too remote, too controversial, too liberal – much too liberal.”
Of course, it wasn’t the first, or last, occasion on which a Vice-President was replaced as a running mate to a President seeking re-election. Eighty years prior to Truman’s ascent, President Abraham Lincoln went with a new VP candidate, in 1864; in 1976, President Gerald Ford replaced Nelson Rockefeller with Senator Bob Dole in his ultimately unsuccessful re-election bid.
In Harry Truman’s case, however, events took a dramatic turn after being elected on Roosevelt’s re-election ticket in November 1944.
In April 1945, barely three months into Roosevelt’s fourth term, Truman – as the incumbent Vice-President - was sworn in as US President, after the sudden death of FDR.
History records that Harry Truman led the US out of World War 2, as well as during the start of the Cold War period and, after being re-elected in 1948, the conflict in Korea.
His sudden rise as Vice-President, and subsequent elevation to the Presidency, shows that surprises can and do happen, even at the highest levels of office in the US.
Emily Minson is a Partner of Lunik, based in San Francisco; Gavin Clancy is a Melbourne-based Senior Consultant of Lunik.
*Truman, by David McCullough, published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 1992.