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 goal of vice presidential candidate selection is to help and not hurt the party's chances of getting elected; nonetheless, several vice presidential selections have been controversial. In 1984, Democratic nominee Walter Mondale's groundbreaking choice of Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate (the first woman in U.S. history nominated for Vice President by a major political party), became a drag on the ticket due to repeated questions about her husband's finances. A selection whose positive traits make the presidential candidate look less favorable in comparison or which can cause the presidential candidate's judgment to be questioned often backfire, such as in