That's the part that shocked me. The President never included him in meetings, updates, international meetings with allies etc. He was really in the blind.
This was the rule rather than the exception for most of American history, up until VP George HW Bush was included in the workings of the Reagan administration.
Remember Abe Lincoln's vice president in his first term, Hannibal Hamlin? No? Well, Abe didn't either, giving him no role in the war effort against the Confederacy. He went off to serve in a Maine militia unit, performing duties like guard duty & being a cook (no combat). No one in DC even missed him.
Teddy Roosevelt was unhappy being Willima McKinley's veep, because he had nothing to do. He used as a show piece during the election ("Roughrider Teddy - the War Hero") but had no role in McKinley's administration. He was prepared to resign when, 6 months into his vice presidency, McKinley was assassinated & Teddy became POTUS.
WW1 & WW2 vice presidents - who were they? Who remembers Thomas Marshall, Wilson's VP? Not Wilson. VP Marshall got war news buy reading about it in the newspapers.
For all but the last 3 months of his wartime presidency FDR had Henry Wallace as a veep. Who? He did almost nothing during the war years other than make some good speeches. He's most well remembered as running as a 3rd party candidate in 1948, splitting the Democratic vote & nearly costing Harry Truman the victory he eventually got. Oh yeah, he was a Stalin apologist too.
Eisenhower almost never spoke to his vice president, Richard Nixon, whom he held in low regard as a Joe McCarthy-esque figure. Didn't even help Nixon during his failed presidential campaign in 1960.
Remember when LBJ conferred with JFK over the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bay of Bigs, Berlin Wall Crisis? No? Because he didn't. JFK hated & didn't trust LBJ, but kept him as a VP to help with the South in 1960.
Nixon called his first vice president, Spiro Agnew, "assassination insurance".
Jimmy Carter rarely consulted with Walter Mondale.
But from 1981 on the president-vice president has changed so they are closely aligned & the VP becomes almost a prime minister of sorts (or, in Dick Cheney tenure, as a generalissimo), becoming the presumed nominee-on-deck for the ensuing presidential elections.