veterans alike converged on washington, d.c. in the spring of 1971. more than 7,000 of them were arrested in a single day. american history tv and c-span's journal look back 50 years on the forces that collided on our capitol's streets. our guest is lawrence rlkts author of may day 1971, a white house at war, a revolt in theities streets and the untold history of america's biggest mass arrests. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. ♪♪

next, a conversation on the history of the vice presidency. we will hear from professor joel goldstein, author of the book "the white house vice presidency. the path to significant, mondale to biden" this event took place in 2016 at the gerald r. ford presidential library in ann arbor, michigan. good evening, again. the timing for tonight's program is prescient as is always the case at the ford library as we are on the verge of seeing who the current nominees for the presidency will select as their running mates. some of you picked up copies from an article of the "wall

street journal" recently as you entered the auditorium. it is on the impact the vice presidential nominee on the election results of for those of you who didn't pick up copies we are running extras right now and we will have them for you at the ends of the prom program. don't we will discuss not just the electoral process but the evolving role of the vice presidency. we have the author of the white house vice presidency, the path to significance from mondale to biden. dr. goldstein is a highly respected scholar of the vice presidency, the presidency, and constitutional law have the written widely in all three areas. he is consistently sought out by national and international media outlets for commentary and insight certainly during the presidential campaigns n. a 2012 article in the "new york times" he was quoted as saying, my wife says that i am an exotic plant that blooms every four years.

[ laughter ] professor goldstein is best known for his work on the vice presidency. it came out of his doctoral work, his dissertation and led to his first book, which was "the modern american vice presidency, the transformation of a political institution" over the years he has authored numerous book chapters and on the executive branch, executive law and admiralty law. he received a doctorate from oxford. and then a law degree from harvard where he was a note editor for the harvard law review. after law school he was a law clerk for a federal judge in massachusetts and then practiced admiralty law for 12 years in st. louis. he joined the st. louis university school of law in 1994, was associate dean of the pack you would for three years and was awarded the vincent

imultimate professorship in 2005. one scholar commented the american vice presidency is long overthieu for a robust evaluation and joel goldtine, the please help me welcome joel goldstein to the ford presidential library. [ applause ] >> thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. i'm delighted to be back at the ford library. i did research here and it is wonderful to to have the opportunity to be here. when most of you think about president ford, you think about him as our 38th president. i a man who served 25 years in the house of representatives who is the minority leader of the house of representatives for

eight years and was a good and decent public servant. when i think about him, i think about the fact that he was our 40th vice president, a position i held for nine months and was probably the least happy period of his public service. but he was an important figure in the vice presidency, he was the first vice president appointed to the position through the 25th amendment, which became part of the constitution in 1967. he was the second person to make an appointment of a vice president under the 25th amendment. he was the ninth and the most recent vice president to succeed to the president, to the presidency following an unexpected presidential vacancy and the only one of those people to succeed following a presidential resignation. and he's the only president in our history to seriously consider serving as vice president after he had already served as president.

and although president ford's presidency and vice presidency really came before the period that i've called the white house vice presidency, he played an important part in developing and creating the office that we have today. we live in a period now where we have a very robust vice presidency. and what is so striking about that, in addition to the rather checkered history of the vice presidency for most of our history, is that the vice presidency has grown to its current importance as a time when other major political institutions are being met with increasing dissatisfaction. if you think about the current situation, vice president biden is completing the final year of a very consequential and involved vice presidency. if you look at what he has done simply in the past week or so, he traveled to iraq to meet with its embattled prime minister and to support the military mission

against the islamic state. he went to italy where he met with officials of the italian government and he met with officials of the vatican, including pope francis. he spoke at a vatican conference on combatting disease. he's met privately with president obama on numerous times during the past week including receiving the president's daily briefing each day. he had a private lunch with the president today and did two other events with him. he joined the president's meeting with secretary kerry within the last week. he met with the leaders of el salvador and others to advance security in central america. and if you call vice president biden's predecessor dick cheney who first came to national attention as president ford's chief of staff, during his vice presidency many people said that

they thought that the vice presidency had become too powerful and spoke of an imperial vice presidency. and although i think that vice president cheney's power was exaggerated in the sense that i think he never was president or he never was co-president, and that his influence declined during the second term of president bush's administration, he clearly was a very, very significant vice president. but it didn't start with biden and cheney. in fact, the last six vice presidents over the last 40 years, ever since walter mondale was vice president, have really performed significant positions within the executive branch. the change in the vice presidency is institutional, it is not personal. the vice presidency has now become one of our government's most important and contributing institutions in the executive branch. not simply as a first presidential successor, but as a critical instrument of the

presidency on an ongoing basis. well it wasn't always this way. our first vice president, john adams, said that my country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the imagination of man contrived or his imagination conceived. i can do neither good nor evil. woodrow wilson was a political scientist before he became president and in 1885 he wrote about the chief embarrassment in discussing the vice presidency is that when you've said how little there is to be said about it, you've said all this is to be said. his vice president was thomas marshall. in retirement, mr. marshall said i don't want to work any more. but i won't mind being vice president again. and when president ford became our 40th vice president when he was sworn in that position on

december 6th, 1973, he referred to, quote, the limited powers and duties of the vice presidency. his vice president nelson rockefeller disparaged his final office as quote simply stand-by equipment in 1976. so how do we get from the office that president ford called the limited powers and duties of the vice presidency and rockefeller referred to as simply stand-by equipment, in the mid 1970s, to the very different robust office that we have today. what i want to do in the next few minutes is to give a brief overview of the vice presidency as it existed for most of our history then to sketch the office as it exists today. what i've called the white house vice presidency and then to make a few suggestions as to what i think we could learn from this transformation. the vice presidency wasn't one of the founding fathers' great

successes. it was created for reasons that are now obsolete. the founders were concerned that after george washington it would be impossible to elect a national president. they were worried that parochial considerations would force electors in the different states to vote for their state's favorite son rather than to elect a national president. so in order to combat that concern, what they did is they created the original presidential election system, and they gave each elector two votes for president, but they required that one those votes had to be cast for somebody that wasn't from the elector's home state. and so they hoped that what would happen, the second vote, not going to the home state's favorite son, would actually produce a national consensus of president. in essence, they created the

vice presidency to then to provide an incentive for electors to vote seriously so there could be a consequence to their vote. there would be somebody elected to the second office. hugh williamson from north carolina, a delegate to the philadelphia convention said the vice presidency wasn't wanted, it was created to facilitate a valuable mode of presidential election. well, alexander hamilton, who recently has experienced something of a resurgence, wrote in federalist 68 that the presidential system including the vice presidency is, if not perfect, at least excellent. i hesitate to take mr. hamilton on given his current standing. but i think history would demonstrate that he was wrong and that at least in that judgment. by 1796, national parties had begun to form and what they were doing was slating tickets of one

candidate for president, one candidate for vice president. in 1800, thomas jefferson and aaron burr were running together with the understanding that jefferson was the presidential candidate and burr was the vice presidential candidate. but they voted for each one of them so they ended up in a tie. although jefferson's votes were for president and burr's for vice president, it resulted in a tie. it took the house of representatives 36 ballots to break the tie. and to elect jefferson as the president. and after that, the jeffersonians were afraid that the federalists in the future could bargain with whoever was jefferson's running mate to make a deal with him and there by elect the running mate as the president. so they arranged to have the constitution amended and to enact the 12th amendment to the constitution which separated the

election of president and vice president so that the electors would vote not twice for president, but would vote once for president and once for vice president. well, that changed really was the original reason to have the vice presidency and the discussions over the 12th amendment, some people said we should really get rid of the vice presidency now but they decided it was simpler to keep it than to get rid of it and so the vice presidency continued. and it continued really entirely as a legislative office. the vice president's sole responsibility was to preside over the senate. at the philadelphia convention, roger sherman from connecticut said, if the vice president is not the president of the senate, he's not going to have anything to do. and so they agreed that the vice president would be the president of the senate and that is what our vice presidents really up until barkley who was president truman's vice president did. they spent most of the

professional time presiding over the senate. but the senate couldn't -- didn't elect the vice president and they couldn't remove the vice president. so the senate was never interested in letting the vice president have much control. so the vice president would propreside but have no power over the president. and he was to serve as a presidential successor but that was a contingent role. so the vice presidency was pretty insignificant. vice presidents had little to do so they look for other things to keep their -- themselves busy. richard johnson who was martin van buren's vice president spent much of his time when he wasn't providing over the senate running a tavern in washington. henry wilson who was euless grant vice president wrote history books and theodore

roosevelt who didn't want to be vice president and said that he would rather be just about anything other than vice president, it was too little work for a man of only 42 years old, thought that he might spend his vice presidency going to law school. in the 19th century and the 21st century, the presidential candidate didn't choose his running meat. the convention chose the running mate in order to balance the ticket either on ideology grounds or geographical grounds, sometimes you'd have presidential candidates and vice presidential candidates who disagreed and were on opposite side of major issues of the day. sometimes the vice presidency was used as part of a deal to secure the presidential nomination for a candidate. sometimes a politician from a swing state was chosen as the

vice presidential candidate. between 1904 and 1916, there were eight vice presidential candidates, five of them were from the state of indiana. oftentimes the vice presidential candidates in the 19th century were really putting undistinguished people. arthur, who was garfield's vice president before he succeeded president garfield, before he became vice president, the highest position that he ever held was the collector of customs in the port of new york. garrett hol bert who was mckinley's vice president had never held any public office other than state legislator in the state of new jersey. william king who was franklin pierce's vice president did have a lot of experience, but he was very sick when he was chosen to be vice president. in fact so sick that he resigned from the senate because he

couldn't continue to perform his role in the senate and he died soon after his election. being vice president wasn't a good career move for somebody in most of the 19th century. only three 19th century vice presidents were elected to a second term. and none after 1836. although five presidents in the period from 1828 to 1900 were elected to a second term, none with the same vice president. the four vice presidents that succeeded to the presidency in the 19th century, none were elected to their own term as president. the vice presidency wasn't a good presidential spring board. when daniel webster was offered a position on the the 1848 ticket with zachary taylor, he refused saying i don't propose

to be buried until i'm dead. it wasn't the wisest move of the great webster's career. he always wanted to be president. some months later zachary taylor died and willard fillmore became president. but from 1836 when martin van buren was elected as the sitting vice president to succeed andrew jackson, until 1988 when george h.w. bush was elected to succeed ronald reagan, no vice president was -- no sitting vice president was ever elected to the presidency other than john breckenridge in 1856, none was nominated to seek the presidency by a major party until richard nixon in 1960. and so at the beginning of the 20th century, there was a common joke that was told about the parents who had two sons, one

went off to sea, the other became vice president. neither was ever heard from again. but at beginning of the 20 blg century, the vice presidency took some baby steps forward and toward the executive branch. president warren harding invited his vice president calvin coolidge to meet with the cabinet. the move was controversial at the time but vice president coolidge did meet with harding's cabinet and that became something of a tradition. frank lip roosevelt used john garner as a legislative liaison and sent him on some foreign trips before they had a falling out during the second term. president roosevelt used his second vice president henry wallace, it made him the board of economic warfare during world war ii. but wallace ran into controversy with numbers of fdr's cabinet

and lost that position and was dropped from the 1944 ticket. president roosevelt's third vice president harry truman had very limited contact with president roosevelt during the 82 days of president truman's vice presidency. and in fact, president truman wasn't told about the manhattan project until some days after he had succeeded president roosevelt when one of his advisers took him aside and said, mr. president, i think there is something you need to know about. well, the changes in american government in politics that were associated with the new deal and with world war ii, ended up having an effect on the vice presidency. they strengthened the presidency, they weakened the political parties, and they had the effect of pulling the vice presidency into the executive branch. as the expectations of the presidency increases in a nuclear age and in the cold war,

as the president was expected to conduct a more robust foreign policy, and as technology made foreign travel more possible, vice presidents began to be sent on diplomatic missions. they began to take on other tasks in the executive branch. beginning in 1940, the president got the power really to designate who his running mate would be at the convention. so the office really began to move into the executive branch beginning with the vice presidency of richard nixon in 1953. vice president nixon's office was still at the capitol building but unlike his predecessors, nixon spent most of his time, almost no time presiding over the senate. he spent most of his time going to meetings in the executive branch, meeting with president eisenhower's cabinet, national security council, taking foreign missions for president eisenhower often times he would

go for a month or two months on a foreign trip. doing political work for the president, having executive branch commissions and so forth. and vice president nixon's successors lyndon johnson and spero ago new and rockefeller followed the nixon model. they moved into the executive office building, they took on more functions in the exec tv branch, chairing commissions, making trips for the president, doing political work. other than vice president agnew, i think people were among the leading political figures of their political generation. and the vice presidency became better presidential spring board and became attractive to able people for that reason. nixon and hubert humphrey were nominated by -- to seek the presidency and spiro agnew was the front runner in 1976 in

gallop polls until he had to resign from office. but even so, with this growth during the period from nixon to rockefeller, there still were limitations. the primary focus of the vice presidency was on providing a presidential successor. the executive branch work that vice presidents took on tended to be episodic and peripheral. the vice presidents weren't part of the president's inner circle and vice presidents tended to feel pretty underutilized and pretty frustrated with their positions. president eisenhower wanted to dump vice president nixon from the ticket in 1956. he suggested to him that he might chart his own course and that his political future might be brighter if he took a cabinet position. but vice president nixon had no desire to leave the vice presidency. later in august of 1960 when

vice president nixon was running for president and was suggesting that a reason people should vote for him instead of john kennedy from massachusetts was that he had such extensive experience as vice president. eisenhower was asked at a press conference if he could name a single idea that vice president nixon had contributed to the administration and vice president -- and president eisenhower got sort of irritated and he said i don't know if you give me a week, i might think of one. i don't know. at the first presidential debate, vice president nixon was asked about this because more than a week had passed and the president hadn't come forward and suggesting any idea. johnson said that kennedy treated him wfl but heed every minute that he was vice president. that every time he was in president kennedy's presence, he felt like he was a raven

hovering around his head. hubert humphrey, because president johnson had a miserable time as vice president, president johnson made sure that vice president humphrey had a miserable time as vice president, after vice president humphrey early on expressed some disagreement or some different views about how the united states should handle matters in vietnam, president johnson stopped inviting him to meetings to discuss vietnam. and some of you may recall, there was a political satirist named tom lear who wrote a song called "whatever became of hugh hubert" and my favorite line from the song was when something like second fiddle is the hard part i know, when they don't even give you a bow. president nixon detected spero ag nu, there were presidents

when president nixon would be talking to bob halderman and johner lickman and they would say agnew wants to meet with you and the president would say the president doesn't meet with the vice president. that is not his job. that is not part of the deal. president ford's nine months as vice president were probably the least happy time of his public service. he took on some commission work in the executive branch, commission on privacy, he did some legislative liaison, but he spent much of the time traveling around the country trying to help republican candidates who were being hurt by the watergate scandal and staying as far from it as he could. then when he designated nelson rockefeller as his vice president, president ford really wanted to try and do something with the vice presidency. he liked nelson rockefeller, he

admired his ability, he wanted to make use of him. he wanted to make vice president rockefeller's staff feel welcome. he felt that the ford vice presidential staff had not been included and he wanted to make sure that wasn't repeated. yet it didn't work out that way. it -- at governor's rockefeller's request, president ford made governor or vice president rockefeller the head of the domestic council. and vice president rockefeller thought that if he was head of the domestic council, he would be too domestic affairs what henry kissinger was to foreign policy. but there were all sorts of problems. the domestic cabinet officials didn't want to report to the president through the vice president. chief of staff donald rumsfeld thought that if henry kissinger was running foreign policy and nelson rockefeller was running

domestic policy, what did that leave for the president. and there were other problems in terms of this staff of the domestic council that had to report through the regular channels and not just through the vice president. and so the whole experiment of having the vice president running the domestic council didn't work. vice president rockefeller notwithstanding the good relationship between president ford and vice president rockefeller, he wasn't consulted on many important matters and ultimately he was dropped from the ticket in 1976 and the last time that a vice president hasn't been asked to run for re-election or election with the president. well, it is worth pausing to think about what -- why didn't the vice presidency really develop as it later did under

the ford/rockefeller regime. because president ford i'm convinced very much wanted it to happen. i think it didn't happen then in part because they started off with the wrong vision of the office. vice president rockefeller's idea was that he could be powerful if he had a particular piece of the government to run. and yet by taking that view of the office, he really ended up buying a bunch of problems for himself. he created competition with the president's staff. he created -- put the president in a position where if the vice president took an action that the president wasn't comfortable with, it created an awful awkwardness for the president. i think a second reason that the -- that the vice presidency didn't develop during the ford administration was that vice president rockefeller wasn't cut out to be number two.

he was an abled person, but he never been a number two. he had been governor of new york for 14 years and he wasn't suited by his experience or by his temperament to be a follower. third, the politics between the two of them were wrong. i mean, although they were personally compatible, politically he was not compatible with president ford on many major initiatives at a time when president ford was trying to cut the deficit and to rein in spending, vice president rockefeller was proposing ambitious spending proposals. and then on top of that. president ford was challenged in the republican primaries in 1976 by governor reagan. the conservatives in the republican party had no use for vice president rockefeller going way back to the 1964 campaign

and so vice president rockefeller became a serious political liability for the president. and then on top of that, there was conflict between the vice president and the president's staff. vice president rockefeller became convinced that the chief of staff donald rumsfeld and dick cheney were out to get him. when the vice president's residence was opened in -- in 1976 or 1975. rockefeller had a series of parties to sort of introduce people to the new vice president's residence and supposedly everybody in town was invited to one of those parties except for the chief of staff dick cheney. and then the other problem that the ford administration had was that vice president rockefeller wasn't there for the first four months of the ford administration. he was undergoing confirmation proceedings before the house and

the senate and so he wasn't able to participate at the ground floor of the planning of the early stages of the ford administration. but the time he came into the administration, relationships had already been formed and patterns of dealing had already been set. it was too late. well the change in the vice presidencily came with jimmy carter and walter mondale in 1977. and this is the creation of what i call the white house vice presidency. governor carter thought of himself as a fiduciary for the american people. he is a business man, small business man, he felt that the vice presidency had been a wasted asset. that it was a shame to have a senior official and not to be putting him to use. and he also thought it was immoral for a vice president not to be engaged and prepared. he was haunted by the experience of president truman of not having been included in

discussions during the roosevelt presidency. well governor carter secured the nomination early on, it was in early june of 1976, about five weeks before the democratic convention and he took the selection of a running mate seriously. he engaged in a serious vetting process. he had his closest confidant charles curvo, an atlanta lawyer, vet vice presidential candidates. he decided that he needed to run with a senator or a congressman to sort of balance off his own lack of experience in the federal government. although he initially have reservations about walter man dale, thought he was too liberal and bothered by the fact that mondale had pulled out early from the presidential race, when they met in early july, about eight days before the democratic convention, they hit it off. and carter became very impressed with mondale and he thought that mondale had the experience and the resources that carter

needed. he was popular with -- he knew his way around the district of columbia, he was popular in congress, he was popular with liberals. and governor carter took an inclusive approach to mondale and his campaign team even during the campaign. in the 1976 presidential campaign, governor carter, president ford agreed to debate and they invented for the first time the idea or the institution of a vice presidential debate which we've had in every presidential election since except for 1980. and during -- and during the vice presidential debate, mondale was deemed to have done much better than senator bob dole. afterwards carter's campaign manager said that mondale added about 3% to carter's ticket and carter in his speeches in the closing few weeks of the campaign almost mentioned

mondale as an asset

lose. and so he thought that governor palin make help him energize the base of the republican party and attract women who felt disgruntled because senator clinton had been mistreated by the democratic party and might then be attracted to the palin candidacy and i think it was a

miscalculation by senator mccain and i think it was bad politics as well. the best politics is to choose somebody who people could visualize serving as president. i mean, if you can't visualize somebody sitting in the oval office, then it's likely to hurt. it may hurt only at the margins, but the other way in which it hurts and i think in a way that political science aren't very good at measuring, is that it is part -- it is part of our opinion of the lecture, so when the people choose their running mate, particularly if their cho running mate, this is the first presidential decision. and if they choose somebody not viewed as being presidential, or they choose through a process that is not viewed as presidential, it sends a message about the values of other

decision-making that could be troubling. so i think it was a mistake on his part. the reason why presidential candidates might not choose people who are unqualified in the future, including the vice presidential debate and the fact that it is hard to hide a vice presidential candidate. >> hello, thank you for coming. i was actually going to be my question. so i'm really glad i had a back-up question. obviously we're in an election year this year. one like probably no one in this room has seen. with hillary clinton probably going to be getting the democratic nominee, the nomination, i kind of have an idea, i have sort of an idea who she might pick as her vice presidential pick. probably someone in washington now. i'm really, really curious who you think donald trump is going to choose as his vice presidential take in that do you think he's going to choose

someone from the inside, someone that has senate or congressional experience which he has indicated to make up for his -- and i don't want to be offensive, lack of public policy knowledge. >> i don't have a clue who he's going to pick. but -- but also if -- if you went back on may 5th of any presidential election year, and you tried to predict who the vice presidential candidate would be, and maybe you all are better prediktsors than i would be but i would be wrong virtually every time. it is hard to predict for a number of reasons. one is you don't know what the context is going to be when this election is going to be made. the selection will probably be made in july, sometimes before the two conventions. and so we don't know what the

situation will be. to what extent will the republican party -- we also don't know who will be the pool of available candidates. what will mr. trump's options be and what will he perceive as his greatest need and to what extent could he fulfill those needs by picking one of the options. so it is really difficult to figure it out. i mean, he said as you point out that he would pick -- he's likely to pick somebody who is a politician. a pattern that is really developed is that political outsiders or outsides to washington, governors are general like general eisenhower, always have picked outsiders. in 1938 dewey and earl warren

and since then they have picked somebody who has served in congress or served in the executive branch. so based on that, one would expect to perhaps mr. trump would follow that pattern. that would also be a way of bringing a national security credential on to the ticket. one of the difficulties he has is that there was one member of the senate who endorsed his candidacy and typically members of the house, i mean, representative ryan was a rare choice, but representatives are usually not taken. when they are taken, it tends to, with the exception of the ryan selection, it tends to indicate that the ticket is a weaker ticket and couldn't give a senator or an executive branch official or a governor. so go back to the short answer of i don't have a clue.

thank you very much. [ applause ] >> weeknight this is month we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on c-span3. tonight, we take a look back to when tens of thousands of anti-vietnam war protesters, young people and military veterans alike, converged on washington, d.c. in the spring of 1971. more than 7,000 of them were arrested in a single day. american history tv and c-span washington journal look back 50 years as the forces that collided on the capital streets. our guest is journalist lawrence roberts, author of mayday 1971, a white house at war. a revolt in the streets and the untold history of america's biggest mass arrest. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern and watch american

history tv every weekend on c-span3. former vice president and u.s. senator walter mondale died on april 19th at the age of 93. coming up on on c spn's america history tv, we'll look back at his life, starting with a 2015 conversation he had with former president jimmy carter. after that, mr. mon dale's 1984 democratic national convention speech when he ran for president against ronald reagan. c-span is our unfiltered view of government. we're funded by these television companies and more, including comcast. you think this is just a community center? no. it's way more than that. >> comcast is partnering with 1,000 community centers to establish lift zones so students can get what they need to be ready for anything. comcast supports c-span as a public service, along with these

other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. next, a 2015 conversation between walter mondale and former president jimmy carter, who served together in the white house from 1977 to 1981. this program was part of a tribute to the former vice president, hosted by the university of minnesota's humphrey school of public affairs. moderating the conversation is richard moe. mr. mondale's former chief of staff. >> i'm humbled tonight by president carter's sprens with us, despite his personal health challenges. i was honored to be his vice president and to be with him at the center of most of his central decisions. we succeeded over our years together where many other