Kamala Harris The vice president of the United States (VPOTUS) is the second-highest officer in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, after the president of the United States, and ranks first in the presidential line of succession. TheKamala Harris vice president is also an officer in the legislative branch, as the president of the Senate. In this capacity, the vice president is empowered to preside over the United States Senate, but may not vote except to cast a tie-breaking vote. The vice president is indirectly elected together with the president to a four-year term of office by the people of the United States through the Electoral College.[10] Since the passage of the Kamala Harris Twenty-fifth Amendment (in 1967) to the US Constitution, the vice president may also be appointed by the president to fill a vacancy, via majority confirmation by both the Senate and the House.
The modernKamala Harris vice presidency is a position of significant power and is widely seen as an integral part of a president’s administration. While the exact nature of the role varies in each administration, most modern vice presidents serve as a key presidential advisor, governing partner, and representative of the president. The vice president is also a statutory member of the United States Cabinet and National Security Council and thus plays a significant role in executive government and national security matters. As the vice president’s role within the executive branch has expanded, the legislative branch role has contracted; for example, vice presidents nowKamala Harris preside over the Senate only infrequently
Kamala Harris is the 49th and current vice president of the United States. She is the first African American, first Asian American, and first female occupant of the office. She assumed office at noon (EST) on January 20, 2021
Facts Early vice presidents and Twelfth Amendment
- Style:Madam Vice President (informal)The Honorable (formal)Madam President (within the Senate)Her Excellency (diplomatic)
- Status:Second highest executive branch officerPresident of the Senate
- Member of:Cabinet,,National Security Council,National Space Council,National Economic Council
- Residence Numbe:r One Observatory Circle
- Seat: Washington, D.C.
- Appointer: Electoral College, or, if vacant, President of the United States via congressional confirmation
Kamala Harris:History and development
Kamala Harris No mention of an office of vice president was made at the 1787 Constitutional Convention until near the end, when an eleven-member committee on “Leftover Business” proposed a method of electing the chief executive (president). Delegates had previously considered the selection of the Senate’s presiding officer, deciding that “the Senate shall choose its own President”, and had agreed that this official would be designated the executive’s immediate successor.Kamala Harris They had also considered the mode of election of the executive but had not reached consensus. This all changed on September 4, when the committee recommended that the nation’s chief executive be elected by an Electoral College, with each state having a number of presidential electors equal to the sum of that state’s allocation of representatives and senators.
Recognizing that loyalty to one’s individual state outweighed loyalty to the new federation, the Constitution’s framers assumed individual electors would be inclined to choose a candidate from their own state (a so-called “favorite son” candidate) over one from another state. So they created the office of vice president and required the electors to vote for two candidates, at least one of whom must be from outside the elector’s state, believing that the second vote would be cast for a candidate of national character. Additionally, to guard against the possibility that electors might strategically waste their second votes, it was specified that the first runner-up would becomeKamala Harris vice president.
The resultant method of electing the president and vice president, spelled out in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3, allocated to each state a number of electors equal to the combined total of its Senate and House of Representatives membership. Each elector was allowed to vote for two people for president (rather than for both president and vice president), but could not differentiate between their first and second choice for the presidency. The person receiving the greatest number of votes (provided it was an absolute majority of the whole number of electors) would be president, while the individual who received the next largest number of votes became vice president. Kamala Harris If there were a tie for first or for second place, or if no one won a majority of votes, the president and Kamala Harris vice president would be selected by means of contingent elections protocols stated in the clause
Kamala Harris:Early vice presidents and Twelfth Amendment
the first two vice presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom gained the office by virtue of being runners-up in presidential contests, presided regularly over Senate proceedings and did much to shape the role of Senate president.[19][20] Several 19th-century vice presidents—such as George Dallas, Levi Morton, and Garret Hobart—followed their example and led effectively,Kamala Harris while others were rarely present.
The emergence of political parties and nationally coordinated election campaigns during the 1790s (which the Constitution’s framers had not contemplated) quickly frustrated the election plan in the original Constitution. In the election of 1796,Kamala Harris Federalist candidate John Adams won the presidency, but his bitter rival, Democratic-Republican candidate Thomas Jefferson, came second and thus won the vice presidency. As a result, the president and vice president were from opposing parties; and Jefferson used the vice presidency to frustrate the president’s policies. Then, four years later, Kamala Harrisin the election of 1800, Jefferson and fellow Democratic-Republican Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes. In the contingent election that followed, Jefferson finally won the presidency on the 36th ballot, leaving Burr the vice presidency. Afterward, the system was overhauled through the Twelfth Amendment in time to be used in the
Kamala Harris:19th and early 20th centuries
Kamala Harris For much of its existence, the office of vice president was seen as little more than a minor position. John Adams, the first vice president, was the first of many frustrated by the “complete insignificance” of the office. To his wife Abigail Adams he wrote, “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man … or his imagination contrived or his imagination conceived; and as I can do neither good nor evil, I must be borne away by others and met the common fate.” Thomas R. Marshall, who served as vice president from 1913 to 1921 under President Woodrow Wilson, lamented: “Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected Vice President of the Kamala Harris United States. And nothing was heard of either of them again.” His successor, Calvin Coolidge, was so obscure that Major League Baseball sent him free passes that misspelled his name, and a fire marshal failed to recognize him when Coolidge’s Washington residence was evacuated. John Nance Garner, who served as vice president from 1933 to 1941 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, claimed that the vice presidency “isn’t worth a pitcher of warm
piss”.Harry Truman, who also served as vice president under Franklin Roosevelt, said the office was as “useful as a cow’s fifth teat”. Walter Bagehot remarked in The English Constitution that “he framers ofKamala Harris the Constitution expected that the vice-president would be elected by the Electoral College as the second wisest man in the country. The vice-presidentship being a sinecure, a second-rate man agreeable to the wire-pullers is always smuggled in. The chance of succession to the presidentship is too distant to be thought of.
When the Whig Party asked Daniel Webster to run for the vice presidency on Zachary Taylor’s ticket, he replied “I do not propose to be buried until I am really dead and in my coffin.” This was the second time Webster declined the office, which William Henry Harrison had first offered to him. Ironically, both the presidents making the offer to Webster died in office, meaning the three-time candidate would have become president had he accepted either. Since presidents rarely die in office, however, the better preparation for the presidency was considered to be the office of Secretary of State, in which Webster served under Harrison,Kamala Harris Tyler, and later, Kamala Harris Taylor’s successor, Fillmore.
Kamala HarrisIn the first hundred years of the United States’ existence no fewer than seven proposals to abolish the office of vice president were advanced.The first such constitutional amendment was presented by Samuel W. Dana in 1800; it was defeated by a vote of 27 to 85 in the United States House of Representatives. The second, introduced by United States Senator James Hillhouse in 1808, was also defeated.During the late 1860s and 1870s, five additional amendments were proposed.One advocate, James Mitchell Ashley, opined that the office of vice president was “superfluous” and dangerous.