VP's role a matter of some debate
Even candidates seem unsure
WASHINGTON - Shortly before John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, she dismissed speculation that she was under consideration by asking, "What is it exactly that the VP does every day? I'm used to being very productive."
But this week, she said one of the vice president's roles is to be "in charge of the United States Senate," which she said would enable her to "really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy change."
The response set off a new round of criticism of the Alaska governor for expanding the description of the job she is seeking. While a vice president can preside over the US Senate, that role is a formality and usually is taken by a senator. The greatest power is to cast tie-breaking votes, something that happens rarely.
Douglas Kriner, an associate professor of political science at Boston University who has studied the vice presidency, said Palin "probably misspoke" when she made her comment. Kriner said it would be a violation of separation of powers if the vice president was in charge of the Senate.
A Palin spokesman, Ben Porritt, explained Palin's choice of words by noting that she was describing the job to a TV interviewer in Denver passing on a child's question. "Governor Palin was responding to a third grader's inquiry and explaining in terms a third grader could understand, that the vice president is also president of the US Senate," Porritt said yesterday.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden has also misstated the vice president's role in the Senate. During his Oct. 2 debate with Palin, he said that part of the vice president's job is "to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit."
In fact, the Constitution does not limit a vice president to presiding over the Senate only in the event of a tie vote.
The comments by the candidates have come as the current occupant of the office, Dick Cheney, has overseen a historic expansion of efforts to increase the power of the executive branch. At the same time, Cheney argued last year that the vice president is not an "entity within the executive branch" by virtue of the role of being president of the Senate.
Palin led some observers to believe she was embracing the Cheney model of the position when she said during the vice presidential debate that the position had open-ended possibilities of power. "Our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president," she said.
The Constitution says little about the job other than specifying the tie-breaking role in the Senate and saying that a vice president must be ready to assume presidency. The vice president can, in effect, do as little or as much is desired by the president.
In the span of a few generations, the occupant of the vice president's office has gone from being out of the loop, such as when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn't tell Vice President Harry Truman about the development of the atomic bomb, to sometimes being a near equal of the president in terms of influence on national policy.
Cheney has been widely described as playing a leading role in the Bush administration. While Cheney has said the executive branch needs increased power because of the war on terrorism, critics have said Cheney overstepped his office.
Biden has sought to make Cheney's expansion of power an issue in the campaign, saying during his debate with Palin that Cheney was "the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history."
McCain said in an interview published in the Washington Times yesterday that the Bush-Cheney administration had abused executive powers, and that he disagreed with Cheney's view that "he's part of both the legislative and executive branch."
Joel K. Goldstein, author of "The Modern American Vice Presidency: The Transformation of a Political Institution," said that Palin is correct to say that there is flexibility in the role. But he said that in the case of Cheney, many people believe the vice president went too far.
Cheney used his knowledge of government to stretch the power of the office to "new dimensions," said Goldstein, a professor at Saint Louis University's School of Law. "I'd be shocked if that ever happens again, because I can't imagine a president delegating that much power to a vice president."
Michael Kranish can be reached at kranish@globe.com 