Random Thoughts

Most Americans, I believe, know that the United States came into existence when colonists fought against Great Britain and won the American Revolutionary War in the late 18th century.

I also think that it is safe to say that most of us know that our national government was created when the “Constitution of the United States” went into effect in 1789.

But throughout my career teaching U.S. history, I have found that most of my students do not realize that there was an 8-year gap between the two events.

During that period (1781 to 1789), the “United States of America” was governed by a document called the Articles of Confederation, which was our first constitution. The constitution we have now is our second one.

And it was in this second constitution that the “Founding Fathers” created the executive branch to be run by the United States president and vice president. The Articles of Confederation did not provide for an executive branch.

As we saw earlier, the presidency is an extremely powerful position, but the vice presidency is not. Presidents, for example, can sign or veto bills passed by Congress; vice presidents have no such power.

Moreover, presidents appoint numerous important governmental officials (judges, ambassadors, Cabinet members, and others); vice presidents do not. Presidents can take lots of actions through the issuance of executive orders; again, vice presidents have no such power.

So, what do vice presidents do? The short answer is: not much! The Constitution allows them to preside over the U.S. Senate, but they rarely do. They also can vote to break a tie in the Senate should one occur.

Breaking a Senate tie can be an important and powerful duty. Such an occurrence can lead to the vice president being a temporary (and decisive) senator.

The vice president, therefore, has some powers but not many. We will look further at the office of the vice presidency and whether it is necessary (or not) for the functioning of the U.S. government next week in part 5 of this article.