Senator Biden chided Governor Palin for suggesting that as VP she would seek to play a greater role as President of the Senate. Biden is clearly the more qualified candidate, Palen is out of her league, etc. But on this point, I think it’s wrong to attack Palin.
The fear people have is that Palin would seek to increase the power of the “imperial vice presidency” we’ve seen in this administration. But Vice President Cheney’s power is pretty much solely ad hoc, based on the force of his personality relative to the force of the President’s personality. I can’t imagine that in a McCain administration, Palin would conceivably wield that kind of power.
On the other hand, the only constitutional power of the Vice President is to be “President of the Senate.” (Article I, Section 3). (I leave aside the Twenty-fifth Amendment, which applies in case th ePresident dies, resigns, is removed from office, or becomes unable to act–of course, this is the really scary part of a Palin vice presidency).
I don’t think we need to worry that a VP who took a more active role presiding in the Senate would be problematic. The greatest potential for mischief that I see is the power of the presiding officer to rule on questions of order. This became an issue a while back in the debate about judicial confirmations, where there was some thought of using the “nuclear option” (that’s NU-clear, Governor Palin) to rule a filibuster out of order. But the presiding officer’s decisions are subject to an appeal to the Senate.
Palin gave us ample fodder for attacking her and her running mate last night, but not on this point, I think.
TedF
is Cheney’s bizarre claim that the vice presidency is a unique executive-legislative hybrid that, as a result of its magical constitutional stature, can both invoke executive privilege and also decline to comply with court orders that apply to the executive branch (among other wondrous powers). This is a truly crazy position that even Michael Mukasey has rejected, and Biden was absolutely correct to rake Palin over the coals for not rejecting it out of hand.
You’re right that Cheney’s claim on this point is ridiculous. I recall hearing John Stewart’s take on this– something like: “he is neither fish nor fowl, he is the Highlander.” Well, it was funny when John Stewart said it.
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p>But I didn’t hear Palin make this claim. Maybe I need to look back at the transcript.
because I’m not sure she really understood the question. But the context of what Ifill was talking about was pretty clear to me, and Palin did nothing to disavow Cheney’s aggrandizement of the supposed constitutional “flexibility” of the VP’s office.