By Jonathan Allen, CQ Staff

The vice presidency, it was once said by Vice President John Nance Garner, “isn’t worth a warm bucket of spit.”

Still, almost any lawmaker would drool over the chance to move down Pennsylvania Avenue to the land of massive staffs, extravagant foreign trips, daily chopper rides, state dinners, and cautiously guarded fantasies of presidential incapacity.

Supporters of the rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination like to posit that the job is beneath either frontrunner Barack Obama , the junior senator from Illinois, or New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton . Why would she (or he, when appropriate) settle for No. 2?

Some have gone so far as to suggest that Clinton would be best off going back to the Senate to become majority leader (assuming Harry Reid would step aside and that she could win the job among an electorate of Senate Democrats who have favored Obama in the presidential race by a 14-13 count, with a little less than half undecided).

That camp includes the godfather of modern political reporting, the Washington Post’s David S. Broder, who wrote that the majority leader’s job has ”real power” -- an unconvincing statement given that the most powerful and power-conscious majority leader in the 20th century, Lyndon Johnson, gave it up to run for vice president.

There are many arguments for and against a Democratic “dream” ticket -- most of them specious, presumptuous or both. The truth is, no one will ever know if Obama and Clinton (or Clinton and Obama) are the strongest ticket Democrats can put forth, the weakest or somewhere in between.

But two things are very clear:

• The more Clinton and Obama alienate each other’s constituencies, the harder it will be for the winner to unite the Democratic Party and win not only the presidency but make big congressional gains.

• The easiest way to end a bitter nomination battle in which neither candidate has any real incentive to give up is to broker a deal between the candidates that finds room for both of them on the ticket.

That’s not to say that the second spot on the ticket should, or will, be offered to the second-place finisher. Nor does it mean such an offer should be accepted.

But for all the knocks on the vice presidency, history suggests it is more enticing than remaining in Congress. The list of lawmakers who ran for vice president is long and includes Charles W. Fairbanks, James Sherman, Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis, House Speaker Garner, Harry Truman, Senate Minority Leader Alben Barkley, Senate Majority Leader Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Senate Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle and Al Gore -- and that’s just from the tickets that won in the 20th century.

Some of them hated it, but for others it turned out to be a good deal. The job helped prepare Truman, Johnson and Nixon for the presidency, not to mention Gerald R. Ford, who didn’t run for vice president but succeeded Spiro Agnew in the job and ascended to the presidency when Nixon resigned.

Indeed, one heartbeat -- or scandal -- from the presidency seems like a much better position than a seat far from the gavel at a subcommittee hearing on occupational safety. And the downside of running for vice president and losing -- a return trip to the Senate -- is the same as the downside of not joining the ticket at all.