What Does the U.S. Vice President Do?

The vice president serves directly beneath the president and assumes the responsibilities of the presidency if the incumbent president dies or leaves office before the end of their term, as stated in the United States Constitution. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment further states that the vice president must serve as acting president in the event the incumbent president becomes temporarily incapacitated.

The vice president also serves as president of the Senate, may preside over Senate sessions, and may cast tie-breaking votes when the elected senators reach a stalemate. In common practice, however, a vice president tends to spend little time in the Senate and primarily focuses on executive branch duties alongside the president and cabinet members.

The Constitution provides almost no official duties for the vice president apart from assuming the presidency in the event of impeachment, resignation, or death in office. Most consistently, the vice president serves as key counsel for the president. The vice president attends cabinet meetings and leads them when the president is out of the country, and they play an active role in fundraising, presiding over public events, and representing the United States abroad,

Decades of custom have added responsibilities to the role of vice president, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs. Congress formalized this aspect of the job in 1949 when it made the vice president a statutory member of the executive branch's National Security Council, giving the vice president an ongoing seat in conversations about foreign affairs.

As the U.S. Constitution dictates, the president is at the top of the executive branch of government. The vice president is the president of the Senate, which falls under the legislative branch. As such, the vice president can serve as the presiding officer of the Senate at any time. When the vice president is not present, the Senate’s president pro tempore (the most senior member of the majority party) presides. In modern practice, the vice president typically spends little time presiding over the Senate unless a tied vote seems imminent.

The Constitution confers minimal powers onto the vice president, so the vice president's power and scope of duties tend to emanate from the president. The role of vice president started out small and has gradually expanded under both Republican and Democrat presidents over the last century.

• 1700s and 1800s: The vice president's duties were few and far between. The first vice president, John Adams, called it "the most insignificant office," while President Abraham Lincoln's vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, was said to refer to himself as "the most unimportant man in Washington."
• 1910s and ’20s: President Woodrow Wilson leaned heavily on his vice president, Thomas R. Marshall. Marshall handled White House business while Wilson traveled to France to negotiate the end of World War I.
• 1960s: President John F. Kennedy relied on Vice President Lyndon Johnson's vast experience in Congress and made him something of a Capitol Hill emissary.
• 1970s and ’80s: President Jimmy Carter gave his vice president, Walter Mondale, his own office in the west wing of the White House, a tradition that continues today. Prior to this, vice presidents largely worked out of a building across the street from the White House.
• 1990s and 2000s: As vice president, Al Gore helped guide President Bill Clinton's environmental policy. President George W. Bush tasked Vice President Dick Cheney with broad military and foreign policy responsibilities.
• 2020s: In 2020 Kamala Harris became the first woman to assume the vice presidency.

While senators are elected by voters in their state, both the president and vice president are technically elected via the Electoral College. Since the passage of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, the president and vice president have run together on a single ticket for each presidential election. It has become traditional for one vice presidential debate to occur every four years so that voters can evaluate the nominees vying to be one step away from the presidency.

Nine vice presidents took over as president when the incumbent president died or left office. An additional six won their own terms as president after a prior administration had fully concluded.

1. 1. John Adams: America's first vice president won the 1796 presidential election after incumbent George Washington opted not to run for a third term.
2. 2. Thomas Jefferson: Jefferson was elected vice president in 1796 as runner-up to Adams. In 1800, he challenged Adams for the presidency and won.
3. 3. Martin van Buren: Van Buren served as Andrew Jackson's vice president and won the presidency in 1836 after Jackson chose to forego a third term.
4. 4. John Tyler: John Tyler was elected as William Henry Harrison's running mate, but he served almost the entire term as president after Harrison died in 1841 within a month of his inauguration.
5. 5. Millard Fillmore: Fillmore became president when Zachary Taylor died in office in 1850.
6. 6. Andrew Johnson: Andrew Johnson took over the federal government after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
7. 7. Chester A. Arthur: Chester Arthur became president after James Garfield was assassinated in 1881.
8. 8. Theodore Roosevelt: Teddy Roosevelt assumed the presidency following the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.
9. 9. Calvin Coolidge: Coolidge became president after Warren G. Harding died in office in 1923.
10. 10. Harry S. Truman: Truman was Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president. He became president shortly after the fourth FDR term began in 1945, when Roosevelt succumbed to complications from polio.
11. 11. Richard Nixon: Nixon was vice president to Dwight Eisenhower. After losing to John F. Kennedy in 1960, Nixon ran again in 1968 and won his own term as president.
12. 12. Lyndon Johnson: After a long career in the Senate, Lyndon B. Johnson served as John F. Kennedy's vice president and took over following Kennedy's assassination in 1963.
13. 13. Gerald Ford: Gerald Ford was not on the presidential ticket with Richard Nixon, but he became his vice president following the resignation of Spiro Agnew in 1973. When Nixon himself resigned, Ford became president.
14. 14. George H.W. Bush: Bush served as vice president to Ronald Reagan and then won his own term immediately after Reagan in 1988.
15. 15. Joe Biden: Biden spent eight years as vice president to Barack Obama, and then won his own presidential election in 2020.

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