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that has produced more tedious, predictable and repetitive musings over the years than the institution of the vice presidency has. But offhand we canÛªt think of it. The only good thing to be said about this periodic outburst of interest that invariably manifests itself in disinterment of the same quotations from John Nance Garner and aphorisms and perplexities is that it only happens every four years. But it is our sad duty to inform you that it is that time again. Your four years are up.</br></br>So letÛªs get started. What is different about the job that Ronald Reagan offered George Bush last night? What, if anything, has been added to the sum total of human knowledge about the vice presidency in the past four years? In Detroit, much of the external aspect of the thing was unchanged. There were the same craven, sickly, sycophantic bows and smiles on the.part of certain of the aspirants for the job whenever the name of the Great Man, the Incomparable One reposing up there in the heavily guarded top floor suite was mentioned. There was the same continuous shifting of certainty from one hot prospect to another with the same collection of after-the-fact justifications of why the momentÛªs favorite would be the candidateÛªs choice.</br></br>But some of the most durable pieties of the classic conversation on this subject have been affected by the Carter-Mondale years. Like Cabinet-government, which this administration also gave at least a modified try, and which turned out to be a truly terrible idea, so too the livingÛÓas distinct from deadÛÓvice presidency has been experimented with by the Carter government. By living vice presidency, we mean merely the innovation of actually letting the vice president out of his institutional cage, of trying to substitute useful political and governmental work for the more traditional and much-mocked idleness associated with the office.</br></br>All candidates for president, of course, have pledged to try this out, but only Jimmy Carter has given it a real test. It has sort of, more or less, vaguely worked: Mr. Mondale is incomparably more active.</br></br>more heavily engaged in the staff and policy business of his administration than any vice president we can remember. And he has been spared the familiar vice presidential function (not mentioned explicitly in the Constitution, but derived from things that august document does and doesnÛªt say about the job) of being systematically and unendurably and endlessly tortured by the president and the presidential staff.