Even as the Wall Street Journal reports that he is drawing closer to entering the 2016 presidential race, Joe Biden will soon find he will be running against history’s headwinds.
The vice presidency has grown more prominent in recent decades but it hasn’t proven to be an effective launching pad for a presidential campaign. In 1988, George H.W. Bush was the first vice president to win the presidency in his own right without taking office on the president’s death since 1836 when Andrew Jackson handed the White House to Martin Van Buren. Richard Nixon, of course, bounced back in 1968 after losing the 1960 presidential election and spending years in the political wilderness.
But there have been plenty more vice presidents who stumbled in their White House bids. In recent decades, Hubert Humphrey, Spiro Agnew, Nelson Rockefeller, Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle and Al Gore tried to vault from the vice presidency to the Oval Office and all of them failed in their efforts.
It’s almost impossible for a vice president to show leadership without breaking with the president. Van Buren and Bush pulled it off but then they served under popular presidents.
But when vice presidents try to distance themselves from their bosses, it usually blows up in their faces. In the aftermath of the Lewinsky scandal, Gore did not showcase Bill Clinton like he should have on the campaign trail. Dan Quayle attempted a political comeback in the 2000 election but didn’t even make it to the Iowa caucus. Walter Mondale got run over by Ronald Reagan. Trying to woo over conservatives, Gerald Ford made Rockefeller walk the plank. With Nixon hoping to replace him with John Connally, Agnew resigned under a cloud. Humphrey was bogged down by an increasingly unpopular LBJ and deteriorating conditions at home and in Vietnam. Ike loathed Nixon and did little to help him in 1960.
There are signs that Biden could be facing a problem which troubled plenty of vice presidents over the years: he is seen as a good subordinate but not a leader in his own right. A Quinnipiac University poll of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania released last week had some good news for Biden as he was ahead of Donald Trump in all three states. But, when voters were asked if he was a strong leader, Biden scored worse than Trump, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.
With more than 30 years in the Senate and two previous presidential bids before Barack Obama named him vice president, Biden’s had his chances to leave an impression with the voters that he’s a leader though, admittedly, that is far harder as a legislator than as a governor. Waiting in the wings for Hillary Clinton to stumble doesn’t exactly reinforce Biden’s leadership credentials.
Of course there have been some vice presidents who have exceeded the office and four of them -- Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and LBJ -- went on to win terms in their own rights after taking office when presidents died. But, even if the office gets more notice in the Beltway, it’s still not the best of perches for presidential candidates. Even the men who held the vice presidency often never thought much of it. It’s telling that, in 1912, conservative New York Republican “Sunny Jim” Sherman, William Howard Taft's understudy, was the first vice president to be nominated for a second term since John C. Calhoun decided to flip to Jackson in 1828 instead of staying with John Quincy Adams. In retrospect, Sherman shouldn't have sought a second term. He was in bad health already and died before the election.
Vice presidents have not exactly put together an enviable track record when they seek the top job. Even with Hillary Clinton’s stumbles, Biden could find it tough to change voters’ minds that he is anything but No. 2.
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or follow him on Twitter: @KevinDerbySSN
