ShareThisThis week, Vice President Joe Biden jets to Europe for the annual military security conference in Germany. Given the exceptional, perhaps unprecedented, negative state of relations across the Atlantic, this trip is more than routine diplomacy.
Biden is also assuming a high profile in domestic policy. He has emerged as point man in selling the Obama administration economic stimulus package on Capitol Hill and has initiated a policy study aimed at helping the beleaguered middle class.
The vice president's controversial immediate predecessor Dick Cheney gathered unprecedented power. During the heat of the last presidential campaign, Biden indicated Cheney's low standing in opinion polls as well as great power by calling him "one of the most dangerous vice presidents" in American history.
Some instant analysts have even suggested Biden may be starting down the same power-grabbing road. Such preoccupation with Cheney as Darth Vader masks the fact that since World War II the vice presidency has steadily become much more consequential.
Recent presidents have generally treated their vice presidents as partners. This was true of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Each vice president went on to secure nomination for president, though only Bush won the White House. His vice president, hapless Dan Quayle, also is the exception to the trend for occupants to gain by holding the office. Quayle's curiously mild personality and challenged syntax made him an easy early target for media and political critics.
Vice presidents, who occupy a very visible and usually respected post, should thank the real founder of the modern version of the office -- Richard Nixon.
Just as FDR established the very powerful modern presidency, Nixon transformed the vice presidency from a relatively low visibility understudy's office. Roosevelt's two-time vice president, John Nance Garner of Texas, colorfully described the role he unhappily filled as not worth "a pitcher of warm spit". His boss's imperious manner, secretive style and calculating unpredictability added to his woes.
Both President Roosevelt and Vice President Nixon were extremely aggressive and effective in using the media, print as well as electronic. Nixon, after forcing his way on the 1952 ticket with Dwight D. Eisenhower, saved himself from being forced off in the midst of a controversy over finances by making a maudlin but enormously successful public appeal over the new medium of television.
Nixon's extensive overseas trips kept him in the public eye while establishing credentials for foreign policy expertise. His equally relentless domestic travels developed strong ties with the GOP grass roots while making news at state and local levels.
After a presidential tenure largely successful in policy terms -- though disastrous personally and politically -- Nixon turned to prolific production of books. As with the man, they often combine wooden style with superb policy content. Nixon's 1994 book "Beyond Peace'' argues that the United States' most important Middle East enemy by far is Iran, and warns that preoccupation with Iraq could easily involve us in very serious trouble. Such policy skill, in and out of office, is encouraging reconsideration of his standing in history.
Democrats and others still reserve special denigration for Nixon, an exceptionally controversial politician. Nonetheless, his disciplined devotion to domestic and foreign policy elevated the vice presidency and set the standard for successors, including Joe Biden.
(Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College in Wisconsin. Contact him at acyr@carthage.edu.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
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