WI: More active Vice President in the Senate

JJohnson

Banned
According to the US Constitution, the US Vice President is the President of the Senate. John Adams didn't make too much of an impression, and after the custom set in, the Vice President never made any real appearance except to break ties. The question is, what if the Vice President had, either Adams or Jefferson, been more effective in the Senate? What would the role of the President of the Senate have become with a more active VP?
 
Presiding over a legislative body can be incredibly powerful: you decide (or define and enforce the rules that decide) who speaks, when, and for how long, and what gets voted on and how.

My understanding is that John Adams was initially very active as President of the Senate, but in so doing became quite a nuissance to the Senators, who voted in rules of procedures which stripped the President of the Senate of an active role in managing procedings.

If you replace Adams with someone with more legislative finesse (Madison?), the VP would have a better shot of maintaining a significant legislative role.
 
Presiding over a legislative body can be incredibly powerful: you decide (or define and enforce the rules that decide) who speaks, when, and for how long, and what gets voted on and how.

My understanding is that John Adams was initially very active as President of the Senate, but in so doing became quite a nuissance to the Senators, who voted in rules of procedures which stripped the President of the Senate of an active role in managing procedings.

If you replace Adams with someone with more legislative finesse (Madison?), the VP would have a better shot of maintaining a significant legislative role.

Yes, that is pretty much on-key. Its not that Adams didn't make an impression, its that he almost made too much of an impression. With, when coupled with the fact that Washington didn't support him in his efforts, pretty much undermined what power the Vice-President had in the actual Senate.

Perhaps if Adams hadn't pushed so hard for official titles for the President (which alienated even more of the Senate, and caused him to be tarred as a psuedo-monarchist), he might have been able to solidify more power in the hands of the Vice-President.

On a sidenote; the last Vice-President that made any attempt to really turn the VP into a powerful position in the Senate was LBJ (who seemed to wish to maintain his powers as Senate Majority Leader when he made the move to the Executive branch). Despite his overwhelming power in the Senate at the time, even he wasn't able to overcome centuries of tradition, as well as the Legislative branch's genuine hostility to meddling by th Executive.
 
If you replace Adams with someone with more legislative finesse (Madison?), the VP would have a better shot of maintaining a significant legislative role.
Madison was from Virginia, so none of the Virginia electors could have voted for him along with Washington, making him unlikely. I guess he could get a majority of other electors, but I doubt many would be willing to vote for two people from the same state. Who else could have been a better legislating VP than Adams?
 
John Jay of New York who came in second to Adams in the election. Although rather humorless and sometimes vain, he had been very effective at the New York ratifying convention in winning over anti Federalists to the Constitution and later was an effective Governor of New York.
 
John Hancock also ran for VP. Most of the electors who would otherwise had supported him instead voted for Adams, at least in part because it was well-known that Hancock's health was failing and he wouldn't be able to take more than a minor ceremonial role (he'd already refused election as President of the Confederation Congress due to his health). If Hancock had been in better health (and he could easily have been -- he was only 52), he'd fit the bill pretty well.
 
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