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The vice presidency--the job that Franklin Roosevelt's first vice president, John Nance Garner, deemed "not worth a bucket of warm piss"--has never been more in the news, or more controversial, or potentially more important to an incoming administration.

The choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee has raised anew the issue of the suitable qualifications to be one heartbeat away from the most powerful post in the world. Dick Cheney's unprecedented responsibilities and influence as the No. 2 in the Bush administration have sparked concerns about vice presidential overreaching. And the lengthy list of major challenges facing the incoming president--the economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, health care, climate change, China, Russia--suggests that the next vice president may need to take over substantive domestic and international portfolios so that either John McCain or Barack Obama can focus his attention on a more manageable presidential agenda.

"In one sense," said Roger Porter, a professor of government at Harvard University who served in the Ford, Reagan, and Bush 41 White Houses, "the vice presidency is a bigger job than it has ever been, and the next president will need all the help he can get. At the same time, you can't have two people at the top."

Delineating the proper role for the next vice president--striking the right balance between the person's responsibilities and his or her necessary deference to the chain of command--will be one of the first and most consequential personnel decisions the president-elect will make. The next vice president's duties will ultimately depend on his or her personal chemistry with the president, the vice president's own strengths and experience, and the president's vision for his administration.

The vice president's only constitutionally designated job is to preside over the Senate and to cast tiebreaking votes in that body on the rare occasion when such action is necessary. It is a post where worn-out politicians have been put out to pasture and ambitious ones have chafed.

The vice presidency changed with Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter's No. 2. Coming into office in 1977, Mondale had the national stature accorded a rising politician who was widely perceived as a potential future president. He had political capital based on personal relationships and broad Washington experience built up over 12 years in the Senate. Carter enhanced Mondale's status by according him weekly one-on-one lunches in the Oval Office and by granting him access to key White House meetings. For the first time, the vice president was given his own office and staff close to the center of power in the White House West Wing. Moreover, Carter gave Mondale free rein to become involved with a range of issues across the administration.

"Mondale's service provided his successors a more robust institution with new resources, enhanced expectations, and a successful model for vice presidential service," said Joel Goldstein, a professor at the St. Louis University School of Law and one of the country's foremost vice presidential scholars. Goldstein attributes Mondale's success to his decision to limit himself to being an across-the-board presidential adviser and troubleshooter, who never fell into the trap of being responsible for specific policies and programs.

Mondale's successors shared many of his vice presidential ambitions and power, but not his aversion to line responsibilities.

Al Gore, Bill Clinton's vice president, headed the administration's reinventing-government program and chaired high-level commissions involving senior foreign leaders that managed U.S. relations with Russia, Egypt, and South Africa.

Presidential backing was key to Gore's success. "Clinton stood behind Gore's reinventing-government effort," Porter said. "If it had been in someone else's hands, it probably would not have worked as well."

Gore skillfully managed the Russia relationship while avoiding debilitating turf wars with the Pentagon and the State Department. "There was less than zero tension," remembered Strobe Talbott, who heads the Brookings Institution and was Clinton's deputy secretary of State and the department's point person on Russia policy. "The problem was, Gore was so productive that every other nation wanted a commission, too."

Observers attribute much of Gore's success to intangibles: His background and personality traits happened to complement Clinton's. Gore brought Senate expertise on the environment and defense science to the table. He was detail-oriented, while Clinton was conceptual. He doggedly pursued issues, while Clinton's interest could be episodic.

If Gore's vice presidency is testimony to the job's potential, Cheney's tenure is widely seen by scholars as taking it to the pinnacle, and maybe falling off it. Cheney moved into the Naval Observatory house with high-level government experience--as a member of Congress, White House chief of staff, and Defense secretary--that rivaled or exceeded the credentials of any of his predecessors. And, as someone who would be 67 years old at the end of the Bush administration, with a history of heart problems, he avowed no interest in moving up to the top job.

Experienced and presumably selfless, Cheney was accorded unprecedented power. He chaired the vice presidential search committee that ended up selecting him. Then he ran the administration's 2000 transition effort. Cheney used his large, shadow national security staff to work on issues that were central, not peripheral, to the Bush agenda. Cheney also headed a powerful administration budget review committee that heard Cabinet appeals of decisions by the Office of Management and Budget. He was involved in fashioning Bush's tax policy. And he led the infamous Bush energy-policy task force.

"Cheney was not a prime minister," said a former Bush administration official who asked not to be named, "but he was a shadow prime minister," effectively exercising decision-making power rather than playing a more traditional consultative role.

"With Cheney," Goldstein said, "for the first time, people asked the question, has it gone too far?"

"Even if Cheney had been on the side of the angels," said Ernest May, a history professor at Harvard University and a consultant to several administrations, "the Cheney model is absolutely the wrong one for the vice president. You don't want the vice president to be an articulator of policy or have a large staff that creates a government in exile."

The Gore-Cheney contrast highlights the tensions inherent in carving out a proper role for Sarah Palin or Joe Biden. Friction is inherent in any job that is so ill-defined.

Some scholars argue for a limited role. "Elevating the role of the vice president is a mistake," May warned. "The chief duty of the vice president is to be there in case the president dies. The vice president has to be a healing presence in times of national trauma. And that won't happen if the vice president is identified as a partisan in internal policy debates and the death of the president is regarded as a victory for one side in those debates."

Because the president can't fire the vice president, it is also important that the two be in sync on policy issues or, at least, that people think they are in agreement. "You can't have a vice president like Spiro Agnew," Porter said, "because no one believed he was on the same page as Nixon."

So the president must invest the vice president with authority, if not responsibility. "Inside administrations," Porter said, "people look for cues all the time, and people who work in and around the president are very sensitive to whom the president seems to listen to, gives assignments to, and pays attention to."

But giving the vice president line responsibility carries risks. The Cheney experience has demonstrated that the Office of the Vice President lacks much of the transparency and accountability that over time has come to be expected of the Office of the President. Such concerns animate the press and the public when the vice president becomes a policy maker. Gore avoided many such problems by focusing on issues of secondary importance. If Biden or Palin is to take on greater responsibilities, many scholars warn that the activities of the vice president will have to be open to greater scrutiny.

Delegation of key policy responsibility to the vice president "sounds like it would save the president time, but it is tricky to pull off," Porter said. "One problem with the Clinton health care initiative was that it was done outside the normal policy process [by the first lady]. You have to be very careful." To some extent, all administration policy initiatives are part of a single tapestry. Using the vice president to bypass or override the bureaucracy is like pulling on an individual thread that could unravel the delicate weave.

The best model for a vice presidency may have been the Eisenhower-Nixon relationship, May contends. Eisenhower, who suffered a heart attack and a minor stroke while he was in office, kept Nixon in the background while he slowly seasoned the relatively inexperienced vice president. Recognizing Nixon's talent for reading people and detecting their weaknesses, Eisenhower sent him to meet foreign leaders, such as Charles de Gaulle once the Frenchman returned to power in 1958. Nixon was able to give Eisenhower fresh insights into a personality that Ike had clashed with during World War II.

Finding the right role model for the next vice president is particularly important now, Goldstein noted, because "there is so much to be done both internationally and domestically."

Brookings's Talbott suggests that the next vice president be the climate-change czar, able to speak with the authority of the White House on this crucial issue both on Capitol Hill and abroad. Dealing with climate change, which both presidential candidates promise to do, will involve painful economic trade-offs, impinge on trade relations, demand high-level diplomacy, and require skillful shepherding of legislation through Congress. It may prove too time-consuming for daily attention from the president.

Similarly, Asian governments, especially Beijing, have felt largely ignored by the Bush administration. The immediate demands of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the ongoing threat of terrorism are likely to similarly distract the next administration. Palin or Biden might take on the Asian portfolio. Including the vice president in the current Cabinet-level biannual meetings with the Chinese, for example, would immediately elevate the stature of those gatherings and possibly better focus their deliberations.

The ultimate role the next vice president will play depends on the leadership style of the incoming president, how he structures his administration, how much he is willing to delegate responsibilities, plus his personal relationship with the new vice president.

The Cheney experience is likely to make those around the next president wary of ceding too much power to the vice president and his staff. But, at the very least, Goldstein argues, Biden or Palin should have Mondale's resources: a West Wing office, his or her own staff, regular sit-downs with the president, access to every important meeting, and inclusion in the all-important administration paper flow.

Obviously, the experience and skills that Biden or Palin brings to the job will shape his or her role.

Palin would be the first vice president since Agnew and only the second since World War II to have no Washington experience before becoming vice president. Her outsider status has populist appeal on the campaign trail. But it could prove an impediment to her playing an effective role once she is in office. The Alaska Legislature has a mere 60 egos to be massaged, a far cry from the number of personal relationships Palin will have to build on Capitol Hill if she is to have Washington influence. And, of course, she has no international experience.

"If McCain is elected," said May, "he ought to make sure Palin gets acquainted with people in Washington she has not met before. Her calibration and judgment of people she will have to rely on will be a critical factor if she suddenly becomes president."

"He also ought to make sure he broadens Palin's understanding of the world," May said. "She ought to sit in on National Security Council meetings. He ought to use her like Eisenhower used Nixon: send her to talk to people in other parts of the world."

Biden, on the other hand, after 35 years in the U.S. Senate, knows Washington. "He could take on one or two important areas," May suggested. But May is still wary of Biden's becoming a policy maker. "Make him a kind of reporter, so he doesn't get under the feet of the ambassador or of the bureaucracy. Don't give him a role in policy."

Whatever the vice president's function--as president-in-waiting or designated hitter on key issues--a premium should be put on getting him or her up to speed as quickly as possible. "It makes sense if only as a national life insurance policy," Goldstein said.

The next president will inherit domestic and international challenges more profound than any faced by his predecessors at least since Franklin Roosevelt came to Washington. Moreover, McCain, the survivor of several bouts with skin cancer, would be the oldest president ever beginning his first term. Obama would be one of the youngest chief executives ever. So each may need to lean on his vice president. Despite a long history of veeps being consigned to the shadows and the more recent controversy surrounding Dick Cheney's expansive powers, the next vice president--be it Sarah Palin or Joe Biden--is almost certain to be a major player in Washington policy debates. Post-Cheney, the vice presidency may never be the same again.