The Vice-Presidency

Since he became President four weeks ago, Lyndon Johnson has proved one thing to everybody's satisfaction: he is an expert at doing things. Columnists and news magazines are still marveling at the vigor of the man who often works an 18-hour day, and who, in James Reston's words, "has done everything except cut the grass on the White House lawn."

The spate of activity in the White House has raised a question: just where has Lyndon Johnson been for the last three years?

Only when he treated Konrad Adenauer to a barbecue at the LBJ Ranch or invited a camel driver from Pakistan to come to Washington did Johnson emerge from behind the wall of obscurity that surrounds the vice-President. The brilliant administrator, the manager of Senators has spent his time touring Scandinavia and mending Democratic fences in Texas. The few jobs assigned to him seemed to be sinecures created to give the vice-President something to do.

Before Johnson accepted the vice-Presidency, students of the Constitution had often criticized the parties for nominating nonentities for the office. Now they saw the other side of the coin; a man of Presidential qualities found his time wasted on errand-boy duties that others could as easily have performed.

President Kennedy's death has made it clearer than ever that the vice-President must be equipped to take over instantly as chief executive, retaining the trust of his predecessor's advisers and supporters--in short, he must himself be of Presidential calibre. Yet men of great abilities will continue to turn down the vice-Presidency if it remains the job it is today. The man who is theoretically the nation's second highest-ranking official earns his pay simply by presiding over the Senate once in a while, by attending Cabinet and National Security Council meetings, and by doing what special jobs the President may assign him. The office will not attract the kind of men who must fill it.

An obvious answer to the problems of the office is to give the vice-President more statutory jobs--make him head of the nation's space program, for example. This seems logical, but it is difficult to think of a job the vice-President could do without undercutting the authority of some Cabinet Member or agency director (in this case, the Secretary of Defense and the head of NASA). More importantly, the parties should be permitted to choose vice-Presidential candidates without considering their fitness for directing a specific program--they ought to think only of choosing a man qualified to be President.

A second way to reform the vice-Presidency would be to abolish the office altogether and to have some other officer, the Secretary of State or the Speaker of the House, for example, succeed to the Presidency in the event the chief Executive dies. This has obvious draw backs--the man best suited to be Secretary or Speaker at a given time is not necessarily best suited to become President.

There is a third means for remodeling the vice-Presidency. The vice-President's only current Constitutional duty--that of presiding over the Senate--might be abolished by Constitutional amendment and the vice-President permitted to serve in any office in the executive branch. Thus the man elected vice-President could be appointed Secretary of State, Attorney General, Director of the Bureau of the Budget, special Presidential adviser--or to any other office the President and he thought wise. At the very least, if the chief executive felt his number two man was not fit to hold any high office, he could attend cabinet meetings and head special committees--the same things the vice-President does now.

This plan, too, has its disadvantages. If a President made his vice-President Secretary of State and then decided he was not the man for the job, he would be hard put to find a graceful way to fire him. But something must be done to attract more able men to the vice-Presidency. The nation was lucky enough to have its most capable vice-President in years waiting in the wings when John Kennedy died. But the nation cannot depend on luck to save it the next time.