Acting Vice President of the United States is an unofficial (and incorrect) designation that has occasionally been used when the office of Vice President was vacant.
The president pro tempore of the United States Senate assumes the role of presiding officer over the Senate in the event that the vice presidency is rendered vacant either by death, resignation, removal from office or succession to the presidency. Under the 1792 Act of Succession, in the absence of a Vice President, the President pro tempore was next in line for the powers of the presidency.
Historically, some have referred to the President pro tempore under these circumstances as "Acting Vice President." However, no such office exists in law or tradition. No person who could ever have been regarded as "Acting Vice President" has ever succeeded to the powers and duties of the Presidency, even in an acting capacity. Lafayette Foster and Benjamin Wade would have been the closest to become President. Following the adoption of the 1886 Act of Succession, the President pro tempore of the Senate was no longer next in line for the presidency after the Vice-President.
Nonetheless, James Eastland, Senator from Mississippi, was referred to as "Acting Vice President" twice while he was President pro tempore in the 1970s, during periods of a vacancy in the vice presidency. The first occurred following the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew, prior to the appointment of Gerald Ford to replace him, and the second occurred when Ford became president, vacating the vice presidency, before Nelson Rockefeller was confirmed as his replacement. During both these periods, however, Speaker of the House Carl Albert was first in the line of succession to the presidency under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, ahead of Eastland.
In 1964, presidential advisor Richard Neustadt, proposed the creation of a statutory office of Acting Vice President in hearings before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The proposal was never adopted.
Famous quotes containing the words united states, acting, vice, president, united and/or states:
“Places where he might live and die and never hear of the United States, which make such a noise in the world,—never hear of America, so called from the name of a European gentleman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If you are willing to inconvenience yourself in the name of discipline, the battle is half over. Leave Grandma’s early if the children are acting impossible. Depart the ballpark in the sixth inning if you’ve warned the kids and their behavior is still poor. If we do something like this once, our kids will remember it for a long time.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“And they lie like wedges,
Thick end to thin end and thin end to thick end,
And are a figure of the way the strong
Of mind and strong of arm should fit together,
One thick where one is thin and vice versa.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“It’s given new meaning to me of the scientific term black hole.”
—Don Logan, U.S. businessman, president and chief executive of Time Inc. His response when asked how much his company had spent in the last year to develop Pathfinder, Time Inc.’S site on the World Wide Web. Quoted in New York Times, p. D7 (November 13, 1995)
“When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States
His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees,
And of Priapus in the shrubbery
Gaping at the lady in the swing.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“We cannot feel strongly toward the totally unlike because it is unimaginable, unrealizable; nor yet toward the wholly like because it is stale—identity must always be dull company. The power of other natures over us lies in a stimulating difference which causes excitement and opens communication, in ideas similar to our own but not identical, in states of mind attainable but not actual.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)