NO. 1 AUTHORITY.(The Talk of the Town)(Professor Paul Light is the top expert on the American Vice-Presidency)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 26-JUL-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

In the early nineteen-eighties, Paul Light, who was then an assistant professor of political science at the University of Virginia, was advised by his faculty mentor to examine the changing nature of the American Vice-Presidency. "You know, it was kind of an interesting period," Light recalled the other day. "Mondale had just left office, and there was an obvious and significant change in the way the office was operating--it seemed to be some kind of turning point."

Light followed through on the recommendation, and in 1984 he published the book "Vice Presidential Power: Advice and Influence in the White House." The title was more or less a joke, a play on Richard Neustadt's famous "Presidential Power." Throughout most of American history, after all, from John Adams's declaring the Vice-Presidency...

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