Publish several books in a densely populated field like the American presidency and you still may end up way down the list of go-to scholars for quote-seeking national political reporters.

Publish one book about the vice presidency, and your phone is almost guaranteed to ring off the hook at least four times every fourth year.

I know because for the last 20 years I’ve been there, done that. In 1987 the Century Foundation (then called the Twentieth Century Fund) asked me to write a short book in conjunction with a task force it had formed to make recommendations about the vice presidency. The task force had been created at the initiative of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who was promoting the idea of abolishing the office and saw the task force as a way of gaining some luster for his proposal.

Unhappily for Schlesinger, my book, A Heartbeat Away, ended up arguing that the vice presidency had become a useful institution in need of virtually no reform. Although Schlesinger disagreed — forcefully but also amiably and respectfully — the task force came down on my side. When my book and the task force’s report were released at a (free) lunchtime event at the National Press Club, a handful of “expert on the vice presidency”-seeking reporters apparently added my number to their Rolodoxes.

I said earlier that my phone rings off the hook four times every presidential election year. This year one of those occasions has already passed: the springtime lull in the campaign, after both parties’ presidential nominations were settled, when reporters with news holes to fill remembered that John McCain and Barack Obama would be choosing running mates. Indeed, this year’s first round of calls — from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Philadelphia Inquirer, Dallas Morning News, and others — outnumbered any previous election’s, mostly I think because the ever-gracious Schlesinger gave me a couple nice mentions in his journal for 1988, which was published last fall by Penguin (Journals, 1952-1968).

When else do I expect the phone to ring? Soon. Occasions Nos. 2 and 3 will come when McCain and Obama, respectively, choose their running mates. Then there’ll be a lull until late September, the week before the October 2 vice presidential debate: Occasion 4.

I won’t be the only one to get calls, of course. In fact, if I were a reporter, I’d be the third person I would phone for expert commentary. One reason is that Joel Goldstein of St. Louis University and Paul Light of New York University both have written longer, more thorough-going books than I have about the vice presidency. Goldstein’s book, The Modern American Vice Presidency was published by Princeton and Light’s, Vice-Presidential Power, by Johns Hopkins.

The other is that, 20 years out from writing A Heartbeat Away, I seldom think about the office enough to have anything interesting to say. This summer, for example, I’ve been doing research for a book about the 1968 election and writing an article about Frank Sinatra, soon to appear in the Chronicle Review. Admittedly, Spiro Agnew figures in both projects, but reporters aren’t as interested in Agnew as I am at the moment.

One thing about blogging, I’m discovering: It cranks up your interest in whatever you blog about. More on the vice presidency in a couple days.