Sarah Palin

Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, “What does the Vice President do?”

PALIN: That’s something that Piper would ask me! … [T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/21/palin-vp-senate/

So Caribou Barbie continues to misinform her daughter Piper.

Article I Section Three defines that office as follows: "The Vice-President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they are equally divided." As this article deals with the legislative branch, the office clearly has a constrained role in the legislature. But it is in article two and the 12th amendment were the vice presidency is defined, essentially as an appendage to the president that becomes activated when the president can no longer perform.

I admire the governor for her poise, accomplishments, and love for family. However, I think her selection by McCain had more to do with getting elected than with governing. In effect, McCain passed his finger down the list of not dozens of potential vice presidents but tens of thousands of potential vice presidents-- an egregious example of affirmative action run wild. It was his first executive decision made after his nomination, and McCain failed in this test. This is not a question of gender or class but of temperament and judgement, both of McCain and Palin. McCain's choice appears to be impetuous and gut-driven, not reasoned and thoughtful. As conservative columnist Kathleen Parker notes, it may even be gonad-driven, a weak man falling for a comely woman. "Cameras frequently capture McCain beaming like a gold-starred schoolboy while Palin tells crowds that he is "exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief." What Palin thinks she is saying is that McCain is "the kind of man I want as commander in chief." What McCain is hearing, I think, is McCain is "the kind of man I want as commander in chief." And this will be one reason why McCain is losing this election, a 72 year-old with all the sense of a 17 year old trying to impress the homecoming queen.

Palin in her interviews and rallys has demonstrated shallowness, shrillness, and certitude, traits that have no place at a time when we are at war with two nations and entering into a recession. If McCain was a generation younger, perhaps we could forgive Palin's callowness. But the actuarial reality is that Palin might indeed follow McCain into the Oval Office. And it is even more difficult to forgive Palin's dishonesty. For example, responding to the Troopergate report, Palin said she's "pleased to be cleared" of "any kind of unethical activity." No, she wasn't cleared at all. The report said exactly the opposite. She recently said that Obama enjoys "palling with terrorists." These kinds of nonsensical casualness with truth is a habinger for her future. So the thought that this simple frontier earth mother might someday run the machinery of our government and have our nuclear codes scares me witless.

I hope these SAT scores really aren't Sarah's. But they would explain a lot if they were.