For most of the time, they are both considered a political joke whose daily attempt to restore some credibility ends in inevitable futility. When it is convenient to the boss, they perform their dutiful role as the leader's human shield. They are also expected to be the one who greets the Presidents of Botswana and Fiji when they come to visit.
Nick Clegg, as leader of the Liberal Democrat party and DPM, will always be, at best, the head of the third force of British politics. Given his catastrophic leadership since the 2010 election, he actually risks making his party less popular than the minor one issue party for UK Independence.
Clegg's speech this week to the party's annual yawnathon/conference was a pitiful display of a politician trying to carve out his relevance to the voting public. He continually shouted "be in no doubt!" referring to several dubious assertions on education and the environment where his party have been utterly dominated by their Tory overlords. He tried to portray himself as the linch-pin of the Coalition Government when his party just make up the numbers in Parliament, constantly voting against their longstanding Liberal principles and simultaneously embracing electoral oblivion.
The Liberal Democrats' unholy political pact with Cameron's Conservatives hardly helped him on the day and in two and a half years, has decimated his standing in the country. He has to simultaneously appear independent from and supportive of an administration which has made deeply painful cuts for the poorest while dropping tax for the top earners by 5p in the pound.
The policy decision he made which has damaged him most severely was to make a swift 180 on hiking tuition fees for students immediately after getting three quarters of them to vote for him on that singular promise. Clegg's acute and apparently growing political naivety was exposed cruelly when he decided to make a Youtube apology which was immediately lampooned in song.
It is a very long time since I heard such 'brass neck' statements in a speech - it was simply the most sensational nonsense. Apparently, only his party, "could be trusted on the economy and to deliver a fairer society." On the economy, UK is in its third quarter of a double-dip recession and the last two years have seem the most regressive policies on the poor since 1920s. To gauge how hard-hearted the Government is, it was only last week they showed their soft side by not removing benefits for those under going radio and chemotherapy for cancer.
Clegg's crowd were thoroughly polite in the face of this relentless barage of empty rhetoric, even making laughing sounds at Clegg's dismal attempts at humour. Clegg knows, we all know, that his party faces political wipeout at the 2015 election. His own leadership is utterly doomed - the speech sounded like he was reading his own obituary. Even one of his colleagues, Lord Smith, described Clegg as, "a cork bobbing in the waves."
Overall it must be better to be Veep than DPM. At least Joe Biden will get to keep his moniker of 'Mr Vice President' to allow him the semblance of respect after his days in office. Clegg will be no more than a footnote in one chapter of political handbook of how the desire for power destroys the weak.
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