The role of vice president of the United States is filled with interesting tales. Witness the following, per Governing magazine.

On Dec. 19, 1793, Vice President John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, “my Country has in its Wisdom contrived for me, the most insignificant Office that ever the Invention of Man contrived or his Imagination conceived.”

Most vice presidents in American history have agreed with Adams’ assessment of the No. 2 office in the country. Despite being a heartbeat away from the presidency, the office of the vice president has often been relegated to obsolescence.

The original Constitution mentioned the vice president three times. Article II, Section 1 specifies that the vice president shall hold a term of four years and the top two candidates will be elected president and vice president. The end of Section 1 states that the vice president takes over the responsibilities of the president should the president be removed from office by death or resignation. Finally, Article II, Section 4 states that the vice president can be removed from office by impeachment.

In 1789, the first federal Congress certified the votes of the first presidential election. George Washington received 69 votes, a unanimous vote from all electors. John Adams was the clear second choice with 34 votes. John Jay came in third with nine votes. But the Constitution was silent about the relationship between the president and the vice president.

President Washington initially solicited Adams’ advice, especially as Washington established a social calendar and customs. But Adams and Washington never had a particularly warm relationship and the president didn’t invite the vice president to join a single Cabinet meeting, establishing a precedent that held for almost two centuries.

The relationship between the president and vice president didn’t improve during the second administration. In 1796, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson competed in the presidential election. Adams won with 71 electoral votes to Jefferson’s 68 electoral votes. Under the terms of Article II, Jefferson’s second-place finish bagged him the vice presidency. As political rivals and opponents, Adams naturally didn’t include Jefferson in his Cabinet meetings either.

Despite later revisions contained in the 12th Amendment, there was still a pretty sizable hole in the vice presidential selection process. When Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, there was no established process to select Johnson’s replacement, so the vice presidency was left vacant — for three years and 323 days. A new vice president didn’t fill the office until after the election of 1868. 

The position was so inconsequential that Johnson was not the last president to serve without a vice president, nor was the vacancy the longest! On April 4, 1841, John Tyler took over the presidency when William Henry Harrison died unexpectedly in office. The vice president remained open for three years and 334 days, until the election of 1844.

President John F. Kennedy’s death and Lyndon B. Johnson’s assumption of the presidency again emphasized the need for a clear process to select a new vice president, as LBJ didn’t have a vice president for one year and 59 days.

The 25th Amendment, passed by Congress in July 1965 and ratified in February 1967, finally addressed this situation by declaring that “Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.”

Even after the vice president received more constitutional definition, most presidents have kept their vice presidents at arm’s length. President Franklin D. Roosevelt shared so little information and responsibility with Harry S. Truman that Truman didn’t learn of the existence of the atomic bomb until after Roosevelt died in 1945. In 1960, when reporters asked President Dwight D. Eisenhower to list Vice President Richard Nixon’s major contributions, Eisenhower replied, “Well, if you give me a week I might think of one.”

Tom Schuman is the senior vice president of communications & operations for the Indiana Chamber. He is also the editor of the Chamber’s award-winning BizVoice magazine and has been with the organization for 21 years.