The United States has never had, and possibly will never have again, a vice president as powerful as Dick Cheney. Perhaps he will only be remembered by political scientists and White House history buffs, but remembered he will be. Now as Cheney serves his last year in office, it is time to analyze the mark he has left on the White House.

The current Bush administration has redefined the presidency, and the increase in the VP’s power is arguably the most unique and most lasting among the many changes made. The next president may distance himself or herself from many of the changes made during the past eight years, in order to avoid the negative associations of the Bush administration, but a more potent VP may actually be useful. Permanently giving a vice president a more meaningful role in the decision-making process is a valuable modification to the office of the president.

Historically, the vice president has arguably been the most useless constitutionally appointed position in the U.S. government. A useful tool for an election, the VP often loses influence immediately upon winning the White House — the VP’s most influential days might actually be before Election Day. Once in office, the VP tends to only enter the news negatively or comically. Dan Quayle’s famous “potatoe” moment and Al Gore’s rendition of the Macarena will remain in American memory forever. It’s not easy to be number two.

Cheney changed all that, however, when he entered office. From the start, he was a part of Bush’s innermost decision-making circle, and he will likely remain there until the end. Unlike a large number of previous vice presidents, he has never shown an interest in acceding to higher office and seems content with playing his own role.

Of course, there is a limit to the influence a VP should wield. President Bush may have allowed Cheney to cross that boundary too freely, but that does not mean that a new president should relegate the VP to unimportant issues after winning the presidency, as has often been the case throughout American history.

Vice presidents are generally deeply qualified individuals who are good at pushing a certain agenda. Often, however, their issues are relegated to the background by the president and his staff. A stronger VP may bring some important issues — which were elected along with the VP by the American people — to the forefront. Imagine, for example, if Al Gore had been able to bring the national security implications of climate change to the front of the national debate early in the 1990s. Perhaps Republican and Democratic presidential candidates would have prominently debated the issue a decade ago.

During a campaign, a vice presidential nominee is rarely chosen because his views line up directly with that of the presidential nominee. In fact, the opposite is usually true. It is more politically strategic to choose a running mate dissimilar from the presidential nominee in order to capture votes from different segments of the polity. In 2004, John Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, hoped that John Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, would give his campaign a youthful, excited face and help him gain Southern votes. In 1992 Bill Clinton, an Arkansan, chose Gore, a Tennessean, as his running mate to break the Republican stronghold on the South.

George W. Bush, however, did precisely the opposite. Not only did he choose a running mate with whom he had a deep personal connection, but he chose a Washington insider who was closely associated with the Bush family, and in fact had been George H.W. Bush’s secretary of defense. This facilitated Cheney’s ability to play a larger role in the administration.

We cannot predict how the next vice president will react in Cheney’s wake. If the mood in the next President’s White House is virulently anti-Bush and seeks to do away with the entire Bush system, then the VP will be kept on a tight leash. If, however, the next president comes in looking to take advantage of the new VP’s strengths, then this could become a trend. We may actually begin to have use for a public figure that the Founding Fathers called upon us to have.