Why is 2024 Presidential Vices’ Race Critical?

Not much has been heard about the candidates contesting for America’s second highest office.

While the final stretch of U.S. presidential elections campaign treads closer, and in fact, with less than a fortnight to go, there was no such abundance of allusion in the media to the choice of the 60th vice president as for the 47th president.

Vice president is America’s second most important office, and the vice president is the constitutional party running mate of the president; together they both constitute the political parties’ presidential teams.

The two major national political parties have already chosen their respective teams: the ruling Democratic Party picked up Tim Walz, by the party’s presidential nominee and current Vice President Kamala Harris. The opposition, Republican Party presidential candidate, former President Donald J. Trump, selected J. D. Vance. A ninety-minute debate between the two vice-presidential candidates took place on October 1; not much has been heard about the candidates contesting for America’s second highest office.

The sixty-year-old Tim Walz, a six-term U.S. Congressman, current Democratic governor of Minnesota state, army veteran, former schoolteacher, football coach, national guardsman is Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential running mate.

Donald Trump has named the forty-year-old Republican Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, a Yale University law graduate, as his vice-presidential nominee.

Meanwhile, it is frequently asked: Why is the vice-president post crucial in the U.S.A., the world’s most stable, the biggest and the wealthiest democracy?

Though normally there’s a vied impression that vice presidents matters little in the overall policy making spectrum and the ruling government’s performance, but of late, especially since the  2020 presidential elections (when Trump insisted he won betraying the electoral vote count) the performance of the then vice president, Mike Pence, did make a very big difference as Mike Pence stuck to the results showing Trump’s defeat.

Be that as it may, according to the constitution, the vice president is also the ‘president of the United States Senate; in addition, to serving as presiding officer, the vice president has the sole power to a tie-vote break in the Senate, and formally presides over the receiving and counting of the electoral ballots cast in the presidential elections.  Besides, the vice presidents serve as principal advisers to the president. Over the years, the vice president’s influence has evolved tremendously. Moreover, the president often has so many obligations and state responsibilities that he can’t fulfill. “The modern vice president leads efforts on particular topics the president wants to touch on, makes foreign trips as a high-level emissary and offers advice to the president’’, according to a newspaper, USA Today. However, the fact is and the past experience in this regard generally has been that the vice presidents get less attention from local leaders and even voters than a president.

Meanwhile, since the poll campaigns have intensely warmed up after the vice-presidential debate, both the party nominees, J. D. Vance and Tim Walz, have demonstrated their political heft, party ecosystems and gerrymandering abilities basic to making a leadership mark. Vance and Walz are 20 years apart in age, as are Trump and Harris; but in electoral campaigning what matters more is public image, public service and public love.

Assessing on these measures, Welz is certainly ways ahead than his counterpart, Vance. However, Senator Vance, JD, as he’s addressed, is a best-selling author; ‘with a rebellious streak, brings a distinct style to his debates.’  He has many clear advantages over Tim Walz, a mild-mannered man, simple teacher, folksy looking person, did not use any ill-sitting or stinging word in the debate. And after his once-a-while gritty, gutty remarks during his debate with Vance, Walz was seen better than Vance who derided ‘childless cat ladies.’ Vance has not been excused for his less refined words against women. And it’s widely believed that his further intimate ties with Donald Trump may dump his in the former president’s deep sea of general abuse, loose language and thoughtless ugly behaviour. Besides breaking the vote-tie in the Senate, and if the president is deft politician, he can employ, benefit, wield and unveil limitless goodwill and popular public love for himself personally, for his party and his country.

And, incidentally, on the hindsight if we think of the Indian landscape, if we can identify one such vice-president, it could undoubtedly be the late Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the first vice-president of India during 1952 to 1962.