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:
“What chiefly distinguishes the daily press of the United States from the press of all other countries is not its lack of truthfulness or even its lack of dignity and honor, for these deficiencies are common to the newspapers everywhere, but its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion. It is, in the true sense, never well-informed.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)
“There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A great world leader is gone. Liberty loving people around the globe are sad tonight. We are strengthened in the thought of President Roosevelt’s work for little people everywhere.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you’re looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“The one who first states a case seems right, until the other comes and cross-examines.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 18:17.