Being the Vice-President can be lonely, and the payoff almost never arrives.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, is, by most accounts, the president’s point person on mass deportation and immigration enforcement. Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, leads the effort to terrorize federal employees, bring the federal bureaucracy to heel and seize the power of the purse from Congress. The Department of Government Efficiency, formerly run by Elon Musk, is busy dismantling the nation’s research capacity and working to centralize government data on Americans.

Vance might have been on the ballot in November, but you’d be hard-pressed to find him anywhere in this triumvirate. He holds no particular portfolio of issues or items to pursue, and he appears to have no special relationship with the president. On occasion, you’ll see Vance engaged in the sorts of civic activities that vice presidents are often made to perform — those events where it is important that someone from the high end of the administration makes an appearance but not so important that you would send the president or the secretary of state. Even then, however, Vance seems to do less of this than past vice presidents. This is perhaps because, unlike his predecessors, President Trump is less interested in governing than he is in playing the role of head of state."

From Jamelle Bouie’s recent op-ed in the NY Times, which is partly right and partly flawed still echoes the spirit of John N. Garner’s quip that the Vice-Presidency is no worth a warm bucket of piss. We will recall, of course, that Joe Biden was the first VP since George H.W. Bush to be elected President (and before that it was Nixon who, like Biden, had a break in service before winning).