A mostly boring vice-presidential debate may in retrospect loom far more important if, God forbid, one of the VP candidates has to step up to the presidency in a crisis. If the Republicans win, it’s easy to imagine that Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, 40, who is number two to 78-year-old Donald Trump, may succeed to the presidency over the next four years, before their terms end in January 2029. Trump is under multiple indictments. If he’s convicted of multiple felonies, what will Republicans do? After the 2024 election, they may come to realize that he will be an extreme liability in future elections if he’s still in office, performing in an erratic fashion, in mental decline.
Fate can be surprising and fickle. No one expected Lyndon Johnson to suddenly succeed the seemingly youthful and vigorous John F. Kennedy. Kamala Harris’s VP nominee, Tim Walz, needs to be prepared as well, as this video from PBS American Experience explains.
“America’s first vice president, John Adams, called his job “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived.” But that would change dramatically over the next two and a half centuries. Discover how the vice presidency has evolved over time.”
Official Website: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexpe… | #VicePresidentPBS
Discover the dramatic period that forced America to reckon with the role of the vice president—and what happens when the president is unable to serve—in this extended clip from THE AMERICAN VICE PRESIDENT.
THE AMERICAN VICE PRESIDENT explores the little-known story of the second-highest office in the land, tracing its evolution from a constitutional afterthought to a position of political consequence. Focusing on the fraught period between 1963 and 1974, when a grief-stricken, then scandal-plagued America was forced to clarify the role of the vice president, the film examines the passage and first uses of the 25th Amendment and offers a fresh and surprising perspective on succession in the executive branch.