VeepCritique on Life Support

The truth is, I've barely blogged anywhere at all recently. But I can't quite bring myself to kill VeepCritique. My main venue online remains TerrorWonk (not that it has been exactly bursting at the seams with posts lately.)

I was hoping to do some punditry, while also following all things VP, and the national security process from this venue. But there are enough pundits in the world, and most national security process stuff I do is probably better off over at TerrorWonk.

So, I'll keep this going with occasional posts - mostly VP trivia, commentary on news about the Vice President (if there is any), and stuff about getting a PhD. Should be fun.

Gupta as Surgeon-General: Vice President of Health

The Surgeon General is a position not unlike the vice presidency. It has prestige and profile, but not much power – beyond that of the bully pulpit.

In that light, appointing CNN correspondent/neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta would be an interesting move. It is obviously an effort to revive the role as a spokesperson on national health issues, a la C. Everett Koop. Gupta, as a TV journalist already has the skills for this role. He also has a dash of Washington experience, having done some writing for Hillary as a White House Fellow. No doubt Gupta hopes to play a substantive policy role as well, he is supposed to sit on the Daschle led healthcare reform commission.

Gupta, having risen to the top of two very difficult professions, is obviously blazingly smart, focused, and capable. But will that translate into his being an effective policy player – as opposed to primarily being a spokesman? Being smart often is not enough, Bill Frist, a Harvard and Princeton-educated cardiac surgeon was less effective as Senate Majority Leader than former Ole Miss cheerleader Trent Lott.

More important to playing a substantive role, is the reality that the Surgeon General has no institutional base. His role is symbolic rather than administrative. (He heads the Public Health Service Commission Corps, which employs over 6000 medical professionals that perform duties in various federal agencies but is not really an agency in its own right.) On a panel with heavyweights like HHS Secretary Tom Daschle (who is also technically his boss) he might not be able to play much of a role. Gupta’s high public recognition might give him some base of influence, but that has to be wielded carefully. Floating trial balloons and advocating inside positions via the media can be effective strategies – but insiders who play those cards too often will soon find themselves outsiders.

Or, like most Vice Presidents, could Gupta use the Surgeon General position as a steppingstone? There isn’t much upward mobility for a neurosurgeon-TV star (astronaut maybe?) But if he catches the politics bug, Gupta is young enough, and capable enough that a political career is possible and he could conceivably go far. John Adams said about the Vice Presidency, “In this I am nothing, but I may be everything.” For a Surgeon-General Gupta a more apt line might be, “In this I’m not much, but I could become anything.”

Teddy Roosevelt Meets his Match

Ninety years ago today, Teddy Roosevelt died at his home in Oyster Bay. He was sixty. Besides the grim reaper, there were few forces that could contain TR's energy. As VP he came face to face with two of them.

Theodore Rex did many tremendous things in his fascinating life. He authored dozens of books, was a war hero in the Spanish-American War, governor of New York, and he was an able President who won the Nobel Peace Prize while in office (for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War). With all of this on his resume, it is easy to forget that he was also vice president. He didn't really want to be, he had said,

I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than Vice-President.

Still, Roosevelt took the job figuring it would set him up for the Presidency (his plans came to fruition early when President McKinley was assassinated in September 1901.) But the Vice Presidency, boring to most politicians, was absolutely painful to a man of Teddy Roosevelt's energies. So he took a vacation during which, according to the Senate Historical Office's invaluable Vice Presidents of the United States, 1789-1993:

The lack of pressing business as vice president allowed Theodore to spend time playing football with his sons and sparring with his tempestuous older daughter, Alice.

It is unclear if these were verbal jousts or actual fisticuffs Teddy would have preferred the latter, especially since Alice became Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the Washington society figure who famously said,

If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.

Alice clearly had her father's number, once remarking

My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.

When he became President, TR stated,

I can be President of the United States, or I can attend to Alice. I can't do both.

Fathers of daughters, from King Lear to the present can no doubt relate.

Enough Veep

At a New Year's Eve party I was talking to a few friends in the kitchen. I saw my wife standing in the doorway, about to come in. Then she heard me say, "Vice President" and she turned around and walked out.

Slides to Aaron Mannes Presentation on VP's role in national security affairs

Last week I gave a talk at the Hudson Institute, previewing my case study on the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission and the vice president and foreign policy for the Project for National Security Reform. The case study is embargoed until it is published, and the audio is off record. But I was permitted to distribute my presentation slides. While the slides are only the barest bones of my presentation (and don't included any of my jokes) they provide an overview of the changing role of the Vice President in the national security process, the nuts and bolts of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, and some points about the advantages and disadvantages of an active vice presidential role in foreign policy.

Dreams of Power

No more blogging before bedtime for me.

When my alarm went off this morning I was very surprised. I thought I was awake and working - I'd been dreaming about the National Security Council.

Joe & the King, Joe gets a Job

President-elect Obama has a truly unenviable task. Biden, however, has the luxury of following one of the least popular VPs ever. But maybe if he works at it...

But it remains an open question what Biden will do. He has stated that he wants to be "Counselor-in-Chief." An appropriate role, more or less filled by several of his predecessors, but whether or not he will be called upon to do so is a open question. Obama has stocked his cabinet with heavyweights, inspired by Lincoln's "Team of Rivals." It is worth remembering that Lincoln's VP (Hannibal Hamlin) was not a player.


Vice President-elect Biden just appeared on Larry King Live and talked about his role in the administration. He discussed his role heading The White House Task Force on Working Families. This commission is intended to strengthen the middle class. While it will include cabinet secretaries and other power players, it is unclear what it will actually do. This may be a throwback to the many well-intentioned, but essentially powerless commissions VPs have chaired since the 1960s. They can play a valuable political role, but rarely do they exercise real power. Considering that the issues before this committee will be the responsibilities major departments like Health and Human Services - and that the task force will include power players like HHS Secretary Tom Daschle and National Economic Advisor Larry Summers - it is tough to see Biden exercising much real power from this post.

In the interview, Biden mentioned taking a leading role in preventing the proliferation and infiltration of WMD. Again, a worthy cause. But the foreign policy team is also full of heavyweights. Hillary at State is likely to command center stage wherever she goes. Gates has several advantages in any power struggle: he is already in place and is considered to have been a success as SecDef. The National Security Advisor, James Jones, is a four-star general. Again, tough to see where he will have a spot in this line-up.

That being said, if Biden has the President's ear then he has the President's ear - and in any administration that is what matters most. However, smart VPs who did have this influence kept quiet about it.