Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author.

If you’re masochistic enough to plow through the next three months of vice presidential speculation, you might want to pause and ask a more fundamental question: Why would anybody want that job under Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump? If either of them becomes president, we will probably see the most marginalized vice president in a generation.

That may seem like an odd notion because under the past three presidents, the once-scorned office has become a significant power center. It used to be almost mandatory to cite, in any article about the vice presidency, the centuries of contempt that vice presidents themselves have heaped on the office—starting with the very first, John Adams, who called it “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived.” (Then there was John Nance Garner: “Not worth a bucket of warm piss.” And Harry Truman: “About a useful as a cow’s fifth teat.”)


By contrast, Bill Clinton gave Al Gore genuine access—including weekly one-on-one lunches—and serious responsibilities in areas from trade to technology. The rap on Dick Cheney was not that he was impotent, but that he had too much power, especially when it came to questions of war and peace. Joe Biden has taken on the role he asked for, to be the president’s most senior adviser. In sum, the past quarter-century has made obsolete the stereotype embodied by Alexander Throttlebottom, the hapless veep in the 1931 musical “Of Thee I Sing,” who had to join a tour group in order to get into the White House.

But what makes the job so unappealing this time around is the unusual—indeed unique—aspects of the two major party contenders for the presidency. Neither Trump nor Clinton is likely to allow his or her vice president anywhere near the center of power.

Imagine yourself as Trump’s vice president. What are your chances of serving as a trusted, respected adviser on politics and policy? Look at the last president who had something like the mixture of massive self-regard and massive insecurity that defines Trump—Lyndon Baines Johnson. Having lived through the hell of being a scorned and shunned vice-president under John Kennedy—“I hated every minute of it,” he later said—he treated his own second, Hubert Humphrey, with equal contempt.

“You are his choice in a political marriage, and he expects your absolute loyalty,” Humphrey later said, but even that was not enough. In 1965, when Humphrey offered Johnson carefully modulated advice about the political costs of escalating the war in Vietnam, he was banished from the inner circle for a full year. And in 1968, Johnson made clear his contempt for his would-be successor (“Hubert squats when he pees,” he said).

Trump’s contempt for rivals, critics and even allies makes LBJ’s bullying look like something out of Mr. Rogers. The video of him curtly ordering endorser Chris Christie to “get on the plane and go home” ought to be fair warning that a vice president under Trump should not expect anything better. Moreover, the idea of loyally supporting a Trump agenda poses a special challenge: That agenda is likely to be amended or abandoned on a moment’s notice. A prospective running mate, asked to declare himself or herself on Trump’s abortion, tax, health care or foreign policy positions, might be tempted to answer: “Which ones?” As for as being “the last voice” offering guidance, Trump has already told us what voice that will be.

“I’m speaking to myself,” he told Mika Brzezinski of “Morning Joe” in March, “because I have a very good brain.” His vice president, Trump suggested last week, would be a messenger boy, serving as his “legislative liaison.”

These factors, added to Trump’s sharp diversions from the conservative canon, may help explain why so many otherwise likely candidates for the second spot have waved away any interest, the latest being Marco Rubio. (Trump’s response, of course, has been more contempt: “It is only the people that were never asked to be VP that tell the press that they will not take the position,” he tweeted.)

The challenge is different for a prospective Clinton running mate—and one that no past veep has ever faced. Yes, past vice presidents have found themselves in a battle for the ear of POTUS with key White House aides and Cabinet members. But they’ve never had the challenge of competing with a presidential spouse who also happens to be a former two-term president. Indeed, in many ways, Bill Clinton would be a near-perfect choice to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate. His political skills are unmatched; he knows the dangers that confront any White House as no one else possibly can; he’s even got a track record of working with an opposition Congress—something that neither of his successors can match.

Yes, there’s a pesky issue of whether the 22nd Amendment bars a two-term president from running for veep, and one of the Clintons would have to move back to Arkansas to avoid risking the loss of New York’s electors (constitutionally, electors can vote for only one of the two national candidates from their own state). But the point is that Bill’s credentials—even as first spouse—make him a formidable power source that would confront any real-life vice president.

Bill Clinton may have lost a step or two, and his track record as a surrogate for Hillary Clinton is decidedly checkered, but if you found yourself as president faced with a daunting policy or political dilemma you’d be foolish not to turn to one of the shrewdest thinkers in modern memory. Clinton herself has acknowledged she lacks the skills of her mate, and however much—or little—she trusts Bill Clinton in some areas of their lives, her trust in his political and policy judgments has to be formidable. In the past, presidential spouses have had significant influence over the chief executive: Eleanor Roosevelt pushed a progressive agenda; Nancy Reagan got top aides fired; and Hillary Clinton drove Bill’s health care effort (albeit pretty much into the ditch). But a “first spouse” with eight years’ experience in the Oval Office? Bill would probably have a hand in everything.

What makes the likelihood of a weak vice president particularly unfortunate is that there are good arguments that a strong veep is exactly what both potential presidents would need. Trump, so unschooled in the ways of Washington, would be in desperate need of a “prime minister” to help him with the business of governing. A President Hillary Clinton would benefit from talking to someone who’s outside her tight ring of insiders (including her husband) and could give her regular reality checks.

None of this means the there’ll be a shortage of veep wannabees. A number of Republicans, especially those without (or soon to be without) an official public role, have already signaled their availability: Rick Perry, Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin. And it’s not hard to imagine that any number of Democrats would readily sign up, however challenging the job might be with Bill Clinton shuttling between East and West Wings.

Why? Because if you have any interest in being your party’s nominee for president, getting the veep nomination is a very good steppingstone. Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Bob Dole, Walter Mondale and Al Gore all followed that path.

There’s also a more compelling—if seldom recognized—reason, one that Lyndon Johnson himself explained to writer Claire Booth Luce on their way to JFK’s inaugural in 1961.

“I looked it up,” he said. “One out of every four presidents has died in office. I’m a gambling man, darling, and this is the only chance I got.”

But apart from that morbid possibility, it will be back to attending foreign funerals for either a Trump or a Clinton No. 2.