Vice President of the United States the Twenty-fifth Amendment established a procedure for filling such a vacancy: This procedure has been implemented twice since the amendment came into force. The first instance occurred in 1973 following the October 10 resignation of Spiro Agnew, when Gerald Ford was nominated by President Richard Nixon and confirmed by Congress. The second occurred 10 months later following Ford's August 9, 1974 accession to the presidency upon Nixon's resignation, when Nelson Rockefeller was nominated by President Ford and confirmed by Congress. Had it not been for this new constitutional mechanism, the vice presidency would have remained vacant after Agnew's resignation and
Vice President of the United States in the office of the vice president. Vice President Cheney held a tremendous amount of power and frequently made policy decisions on his own, without the knowledge of the President. During the 2008 presidential campaign, both vice presidential candidates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, stated the office had expanded too much under Cheney's tenure and both claimed they would reduce the role to simply being an adviser to the president. This rapid growth has led to calls for abolition of the vice presidency from various constitutional scholars and political commentators such as: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Matthew Yglesias, and Bruce