Of the democracy project at the bipartisan policy center. This is a second thing of our day on the release of a report selecting a Vice President come advice for president ial candidates. A report of the bbcs working group. I have announced the members of the working group in the beginning and introduces them. We had some on the first panel. We have more here today with maria cino and Manny Rouvelas and Benjamin Ginsberg but we are joined by one of the countrys leading expert on the vice presidency. Professor of law at st. Louis university and the author of several books and many articles but also the author of the book that is just come out come the most recent off the press, the white house life presidency, the path to significance, mondale to biden. I recommend this book. It is worse or outside. The are many, many virtue purchf this book about the vice presidency itself, a history of the Selection Process. It might be the only book about the vice presidency that does not mention john garners famous characterization of the vice presidency, but, which i will not repeat here, but i guess you could say the book is a bucket full of warm thoughts about the vice presidency. [laughter] deep and warm thoughts. What id like to do is to talk more about the recommendations but also by the vice presidency and deeper history. Made i can begin with a jolt. We have two big questions. Joel. The role of the Vice President has changed significantly over time. Your book is a modern most important time for the vice presidency beginning with Walter Mondale. Can you give us a quick overview of how the role of the vice presidency has changed within an administration . Sure. Painting with a real broadbrush, for most of our history the vice presidency was really of legislative officer. That was only true up into the vice presidency of Alben Barkley by and large president trumans Vice President. Beginning with the nixon and Vice President in 1953, the vice presidency move into the executive branch. The vice presidency spent more time in executive branch doing political things for the president than he did presiding over the senate. And i think that was really, but the focus of the office really during that period was on president ial succession. It was having somebody who was possibly prepared to be a president ial successor and generally Vice President s were doing thing in executive branch but they were pretty peripheral to the center of the executive branch which really was the cartermondale administration that the vice presidency move into the white house physically but also becomes part of the center of the presidency. I think for the last 40 years the Six Administration since then, the Vice President in each case has been a senior president ial adviser and troubleshooter who has taken on different roles and different administrations but has taken in significant roles in each of the Six Administrations. I will come back to you about the history of the Selection Process. I want to jump into some of our working group. Maria come to floppy springs with conventions like you ran the Republican Convention in 2008. I would talk in the report about recommendation about the role out of the vp but the conventions have all sorts, they are working in the background. They are ultimately about it is going to approve the choice presumably to make the choice of the Vice President. Joel can talk about the history, how that was much more the case in the long ago history but talk to about the consideration of the convention when nominees are picking on her Vice President ial choices. Are they thinking about the convention . I know have an unusual year but in a usual year whats the role of the convention in the vp Selection Process . Its a very interesting question. The conventions play significant role although im not sure anyone realizes the significance. Weve had a little bit of experience at once the Convention NominatesVice President and president probably the most important thing we do is that thursday night sometimes thursday morning the nominee who has just been nominated assist on all the paperwork to get on every ballot. People dont know what goes into the making of a president but that is no significant i think ben and i have a little sweat from her brow figured out how were going to get someone from new york to l. A. And make sure, or sacramento and finding the correct paperwork. Theres a lot of technical stuff. I think the unique thing with regards to the Vice President ial nominee is where we are today on the republican side. I know you want to talk in general, not right now we have moved the Convention Six to seven weeks up. So it has moved a. In addition to the fact on the republican side at least as likely we may not have an actual nominee. The traditional, traditionally what happens is after the primaries, sometimes before all the primaries are over, you have a presumptive nominee. That person plays a significant role, or have staff that will play a significant role with everything from, for example, the layout, the design of the convention they want their stamp on the. They have a say in speakers, the program, the order of the convention. What the actual stages going to look like because thats the part of their persona. Whats interesting at least on the republican side is there may not be a person from a president ial campaign that will actually have a stamp. There may be two or three potential nominees. But even things as simple as hotels, hotel space. Theres a lot of stuff that goes into putting the whole thing together. This will be extremely interesting as time goes on especially for the Convention Manager which im happy to say is not me. [laughter] give the audience a sense of when is the timeframe for the typical speech after having been nominated or confirmed by the convention come and what my went to think about if we dont have the typical convention . Probably as their fighting potential nominees are fighting for everything from space in the Convention Halls to hotels and transportation, the interesting thing for the republican side, and on the democratic side also is traditionally the Vice President is nominated on wednesday night, and the president is nominated on thursday. So it will be extremely interesting if we dont have a candidate by wednesday, how the process will change. At least as long as i can remember, and bens memory may be better but at least as long as i can remember thats the order that weve always used. So this could change the whole outcome. Ben, you have had experience with this. Reflections generally and then maybe this year that might be a little different. Our recommendations will be stress tested in the way we couldve never envisioned by potentially this year. The convention is obviously something we want a great feeling of unification and camaraderie to emerge. Part of the way come at the Television Ratings i might add. And part of the way the conventions have dealt with the Television Ratings part is the recognition that roll calls are an audience killer. So a couple things. First of all the president ial roll call has become a rolling roll call since 2000 we do about a third of the states on monday, a third on tuesday, a third on wednesday, joyous celebration with a candidate goes over the top on wednesday. Roll right into the Vice President ial pick at that point. Theres been able since 88 or 92 this is theres only one candidate put in nomination. The convention can pass them by proclamation. There is a contest for the Vice President to provide you with another roll call on wednesday night that throws off the timing that maria talk about. The whole process is selecting the candidate is usually done and known, so theres not a surprise factor in the naming of the Vice President ial candidate. Should it turn out to be a contested convention and youre a campaign can do want to name your Vice President ial candidate well an event to be able to coalesce your support or infect you want to save that naming of the person for the convention to be able to amass a coalition under stress conditions . So the convention can put a real role this time. Let me turn to manny. One of the things you stress in our celebrations was about ways of thinking about picking a vp as the private sector might, or as people who are thinking about filling important jobs in other realms would be. Do you want to Say Something about the role some of that could plan for candidates, or what kind of criteria we might consider in thinking out the vb . Thanks very much, john. Let me start off by saying i really appreciate the opportunity to be a part of us. To me it was totally novel. Ive had the opportunity to watch rob bauers career from a distance and the arc of his Public Service and legal career. So to be come have a chance to be part of this was really special. I really appreciate the Bipartisan Policy Institute doing this because i think you really truly is an extraordinary Public Service. I have never, i was probably the only person on the panel who has never been part on the inside of Vice President ial Selection Process. As john has mentioned, outside on corporate boards or uncharitable boards i have been part of the process of executive recruitment and development. And i think the first thing that really struck me about this from listening to the wonderful stories by the way, im just sorry we are barred from repeating any of them, was how complex this really was, how tough initially was calm the political elements to the social media elements, defending elements, the confidentiality element. All of these things brought a level of complexity to this that far exceeds i think almost any other Selection Process that im aware of. I guess the analogy for me was a summary says a jet engine is something that is 10,000 moving piece intended one of them have to work every time. This is i think a process that is 10,000 moving pieces and if something goes wrong it can have an awful lot of very unfortunate impacts. In that regard i guess two things have struck me. First of all i think that there may be a role for some input from people who do have experience in the executive recruitment process, et cetera, in other things, particularly when things are in a hurry as they are right now youre because they do have experience in framing things come in asking questions. Even personally charged i know people are likely to fit together and work with others. So i think all of those things are useful. They have checklists and what people are in a hurry whether its an operating room or in a cockpit, i think having a checklist is occasionally useful. So one of the things that i would think about on it is either within the team having somebody with that experience as youre going through it, or assigning somebody on your internal team to go talk with executive recruiters, the headhunters. You are going to have to put up with their view that they could probably take a better president than the electorate does and thats the first thing you will hear from them. But beyond that they may have some useful input, particularly look at this timeline. I am reminded and i think at least a central lesson for me out of this exercise is i was with my granddaughter on wednesday, and i tried to explain to her what we were going to be doing today. She said i did it come we learned in school, she says, failure to plan is planning to fail last night and i said, you know, i think i kind of hits what it is. Whatever tools you can get in the planning i think is a useful thing. Let me turn back to trying one to let me ask you to know sketch out more of a longer arc of history of the Vice President ial Selection Process. We talked about the Convention Just now and the convention has always played a part, not always about to the 1830s or so, but it hasnt been democratic always, there have been primaries and weve moved into a new era where the candidate is the primary person. Can you sketch out force how is the Vice President been picked over the years and how is the change related to the change in the boards in the role of the Vice President in office . For most of our history the Convention Really played a major role in selecting a Vice President ial candidate. It was really the Party Leaders who would oftentimes get together and they would try and placate the faction of the party. They would try and engage in geographical balancing, ideological balancing or whatever. Oftentimes you would end up with tickets for the president and Vice President ial candidates really didnt agree on major issues. They did know each other. The Vice President ial candidate wasnt beholden to the president ial candidate because he wasnt the person who selected him. That started to change in 1940 when fdr basically ran for the third term and said, they did a condition of running for a third term that the delegates would accept henry wallace. There was tremendous opposition to wallace. Eleanor roosevelt went to the convention to try and put him over. Ultimately, the delegates agreed to wallace at the price of getting fdr, but wallace wasnt able to speak to the convention because there was so much animosity towards him. From 1940 really on through 1972, the process was pretty much that at the convention once the president ial nomination was resolved, people would celebrate. They would be tired, they would be hung over, and somebody would say we better pick a Vice President dick we have to announce this tomorrow morning, or this morning, and thats when they would get together. In 1976 it really changed, in part driven by the mcgovernfraser roles in the Democratic Party but also just the fact that president ial nominees were now being chosen by primaries and caucuses, which tended to accelerate the resolution of the decision for president ial nominations. Sulleys on the democratic side that you jimmy carter clinched the nomination five weeks in advance and he had this time to engage in this sort of deliberate process that is sketched out in his report to president fords nomination went tto the convention but he had also started in 76 doing a bad thing while he combat it with governor reagan. Doing vetting. Doing this vetting that took place once the nomination was secured. I think the other significant change really took place on the democratic side in 1984. Republican side in 1986. And that was announcing the Vice President ial selection before the convention. It really wasnt changed where the convention stopped being the place where you would wonder who is going to be the Vice President ial nominee and they would be focus and contests about who that might be until the decision was announced. Instead, the choice was announced before the convention. The rollout took place in the convention and then became a celebration really of the ticket principally, the leader of the ticket at the chance to attack the other side. Let me focus in on all sorts of great things in this book. I recommend it to you. We are recommending a process that takes significant amount of time. Focus on jimmy carter. Jimmy carter did something very different. It was a more extensive process and may be so extensive, that is in having this big public announcements of interviews and press conferences with the potential people afterwards. You want to Say Something more about that . When governor carter, a number of people on the first been made the point about this being the first president ial decision that virtually, really everybody in this period other than gerald ford, it was their first president ial decision. He was cognizant of that and so he invited three other candidates down two planes in georgia. He would meet with hi in private and then to have a press conference. The other 40 met with at the Democratic Convention but again they would have a press conference and he was all very transparent. This is in the immediate postwatergate period until is part of what was driving it. In 1984 Vice President mondale really tried to imitate the carter process, and it really got negative reviews here that was a feeling it was embarrassing for people who were not selected. And so since then its all been done much more privately and much more quietly. Sometimes list of people are being considered are typically become known for at least many of the people who are being considered become known so theres some discussion in the media and some sort of public a public media vetting and so forth. But the tendency or the practice has been away from this sort of public aspect of the cartermondale process. Lets turn a little bit to the vetting and turn to ben ginsberg. We have recommendation that even the core vetting process for a shortlist of people re