Impartial Vice Presidents

A recurring theme in vice-presidential inaugural addresses was "impartiality" in handling Senate business. One compared his role to a Supreme Court Justice, in holding that both should be free from partisanship. Another said that the Vice President was a symbol, almost like King Charles III, who stands above politics.

So obviously this is not how vice presidents are seen now. In part, this is because vice presidents exercise influence in the Executive Branch in a way that was not true for much of our history. (George Washington, for example, rarely consulted his vice president, John Adams.) Vice Presidents also spent more time presiding over the Senate in the past and thus did function more like the modern Senate parliamentarian.

Does this mean that all vice-presidential inaugurals were boring? Not the ones by Charles Dawes and Andrew Johnson. More later.