Audiences for Veep, the TV series broadcast on Sky, have shot up since Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate for the White House.
Like Selina Meyer, the fictional vice president in the show, she is closer than ever to becoming the first woman president.
The prospect is tantalising for Harris but the omens are not all good. It is true that of the 46 presidents in US history so far, 15 served before as a vice president. But nine of them got there because they were only “a heartbeat away” from top office.
The 25th Amendment of the US Constitution mandates that the VP takes over automatically as “the leader of the free world” if POTUS dies, is incapacitated, or resigns, as Nixon did.
Nine of the last vice presidents from either party who have sought the nomination have secured it. The exception was George H W Bush’s VP, Dan “Potatoe” Quayle.
The chances of going on to be elected president are very uncertain when, like Harris now, vice presidents run to succeed their boss while still serving under him.
In 1988, George Bush Sr was the first incumbent VP to win an election since Martin van Buren in 1836. Harry S Truman’s vice president Alban Barclay lost his bid, so did Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and Clinton’s VP Al Gore – in the disputed “hanging chads” election of 2000.
Joe Biden and Richard Nixon had better luck when they ran some years after their terms as VP.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the most celebrated presidents of the 20th century, was defeated as a vice presidential candidate in 1920, but went on to be elected president four times in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. He died in 1945. His last VP, Truman, took over.
John “Cactus Jack” Nance Garner, FDR’s VP for his first two terms, was considered too old to carry on aged 71 and ran instead, unsuccessfully, against Roosevelt. He is remembered for dismissing the vice presidency as “a bucket of warm spit” (or other bodily fluid).
A century earlier, Daniel Webster had turned down the invitation to serve, explaining: “I do not propose to be dead until I am buried.”
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A two-term limit on the presidency was introduced after FDR. This made the understudy role more attractive but the vice president’s job remains one of prestige without real power.
It is hard to emerge convincingly as a national leader after being overshadowed by the actual president for four or eight years.
A vice president who runs for president becomes the embodiment of the last administration, seemingly holding out little prospect of “change”.
Yet many have not had a close relationship with or much influence over “their” president. George W Bush’s powerful VP Dick Cheney is the exception here.
Fortunately for Harris, these precedents do not fit her – and not because she is the first woman and first person of colour to be VP.
She has taken over in unique circumstances. Biden stood down because of age and incapacity, yet he will remain president until the end of his term in January 2025.
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Harris has the advantage that he has given her his wholehearted support and will campaign hard for her. His legacy as president depends on her winning. Otherwise he will be remembered as a stubborn old man who should have stood aside much earlier.
With only 100 days to go until the election, Harris has been endorsed by all leading Democrats including the Clintons and the Bidens.
She is heading into the Democratic Party convention next month in Chicago with millions of dollars of campaign donations flowing again and having already secured enough delegates to guarantee nomination.
Unlike other VPs, Harris is now “the change candidate” in this election – often an attractive prospect for voters. Donald Trump is a known quantity. The US has already had him as president for four years.
Aged 78 and with Biden gone, Trump claims the unwelcome record as the oldest nominee from the main parties in presidential history. Republicans have quickly dropped their demands for tests of the nominees’ mental capacities.
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Harris ‘will not be silent’ on Gaza
Harris has room to manoeuvre on key issues such as abortion and Gaza on which Biden’s longstanding views were well known.
In the next few days she will pick her vice presidential running mate. She is expected to make a conventional selection of an experienced white male politician, most likely from a swing state. Some voters may find this reassuring. More importantly this should broaden the appeal of the Democratic ticket.
In the weeks after Biden’s disastrous TV debate performance, Trump looked as if he was cruising to victory.
He allowed himself the luxury of choosing a hardline running mate who played to his core supporters. JD Vance is beginning to look like a bad pick following Biden’s withdrawal. He lacks Trump’s twisted humorousness and he is a more vicious culture warrior.
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Comments have emerged from his 2021 senate race, in which he name-checked Harris, and complained that America was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too”.
Viral online outrage is flaring, further inflamed by Vance’s opposition to fertility treatment and abortion.
Although Biden has warned that the Democrats are still the underdogs, Harris’s arrival has dispelled fears that they face electoral wipe-out in November.
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She is riding high even though there is little evidence that she would have been chosen as the Democratic candidate if Biden had pulled out earlier or not stood for a second term.
Harris dropped her bid for the 2020 nomination before the primary season began due to lack of funds.
She has faced persistent criticism as vice president, perhaps because of her sex, perhaps because of the “curse of the vice presidency” perhaps because Biden threw her the hospital pass of dealing with the border and immigration. She has been blamed for a rapid turnover of staff and for some brittle media interviews.
That all seems in the past as she hits the campaign trail with vigour and confidence.
Biden says he must “pass the torch to save democracy”. “There is a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices,” he conceded last week. “That time and place is now.”
Harris has the experience for the job as a lawyer, a US senator and vice president. She is “only” 60 this year.
As her striking image vies with the photograph of Donald Trump with blood across his face, this Veep is not a TV comedy act. Hers is a vice presidential bid for the White House like no other.
