NYT:

JOEL K. GOLDSTEIN, a law professor at St. Louis University, is a leading authority on the United States vice presidency. People seem to respect him anyway. …

Another inclination I had when I heard about Mr. Goldstein (and I’m not proud of this) was to be a wiseguy.

“So, what does a vice-presidential scholar do all day?” I asked when I reached him at his office, no doubt cluttered with the letters of Garret Augustus Hobart. “Do you wait around in case something happens to a presidential scholar?

“Do you consider yourself a heartbeat away from presidential scholarship?

“Do presidential scholars send you to the funerals of foreign presidential scholars?”