A History of the US Vice Presidency for Veep Day

Happy National Veep Day, the 50th anniversary of Gerald Ford becoming President! I wrote yesterday, "I have something special planned in addition to writing more about Walz and Vance." That's The History Guy recounting A Most Insignificant Office: A History of the US Vice Presidency.

The history, prior to the 1967 ratification of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, of what John Adams, the first man to hold the office, described as “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived” deserves to be remembered.

I don't recall even hearing about many of these Vice Presidents before. I didn't even remember that Elbridge Gerry, who I knew as the namesake of gerrymandering, ended his political career (and his life) as Vice President. That means I learned a lot of new things today. As I'm fond of writing, it's always a good day when I learn something new. Again, I hope my readers agree.

Follow over the jump for graphs of JD Vance's ideology from Voteview and On The Issues along with equivalent graphs for Tim Walz.

As promised, here is the graph displaying JD Vance's ideological placement at Voteview.


Vance's first-dimension DW-Nominate score is 0.849, which is more conservative than 96% of the 118th Senate and more conservative than 91% of the Republican conference/caucus currently in the chamber.  Only Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Tommy Tuberville, and Eric Schmitt are more conservative.  He also appears to have the most negative second-dimension ideological score among Senate Republicans, even lower than Susan Collins. That means he's anti-Establishment, which expresses itself as isolationism, at least when it comes to Ukraine. Only Democrat Jeff Merkley has a more negative second-dimension ideological score, which expresses itself as contrariness on approving appointments.


Vance is less conservative according to On The Issues, where he has an economic score of 75 and a social score of 20, which still qualifies him to be considered a Hard-Core Conservative.

For completeness, I'm sharing the equivalent graphs for Walz, beginning his ideological position according to Voteview that I prepared for Kamala Harris selects Tim Walz for VP.

I didn't know Walz had been a member of Congress, so I didn't know about his Voteview score of -0.275, which was more conservative than 86% of Democrats in the 115th Congress while also being more liberal than 61% of the House. Based on the comments about Walz having had an A grade from the NRA at the beginning of his time in the House and having an F grade now, he has probably moved to the left since he became Governor. Still, he definitely has a more moderate reputation than Harris, who was the second most liberal member of the Senate when she became Vice President. Balance!

Next, his ideological position according to On The Issues I prepared for The Daily Show examines 'Harris Hunts for a VP' and the Veepstakes from left to center.

Governor Tim Walz sits in the ideological middle of the pack with an economic score of 20 and a social score of 83, just enough to break the tie with Buttigieg. On The Issues still considers both to be Hard-core Liberals. They would get the Democratic base even more enthused, but I don't know if they would appeal to swing state independents beyond them being white men from the Midwest.

That's what Walz looked like on paper. He looks a lot more effective in person.

That's a wrap for this year's celebration of National Veep Day. Stay tuned for World Lion Day, when I plan on examining nominated nature documentaries like I did on 'Incredible Animal Journeys' leads Outstanding Nature Documentaries at the News & Doc Emmy Awards for International Tiger Day.