02:42 pm
Changing the Culture II: Role of the VP
Steve Benen over at The Washington Monthly has a brief piece on another effort to rein in the Bush Administration’s trampling of the separation of powers. For the past eight years, Dick Cheney met regularly with the Senate Republican caucus, which reversed decades of Senate policy. Yesterday, however, the Senate Democratic Caucus decided to exclude incoming Vice President Joe Biden from their weekly meetings. As Benen notes,
Were it not for the last eight years, this wouldn’t be newsworthy at all. Indeed, it’d be entirely normal. For generations, administrations have tried to exert influence over the Senate by inserting the Vice President into his caucus’ affairs, ostensibly as a de facto member of the chamber. And for generations, senators have pushed back, citing the separation of powers and the need for checks and balances.
Over the last eight years, the model has been turned on its head. Whereas every V.P. has tried to exert undue influence over the Senate, the Republicans of the Bush era are the first to actually accede to an administration’s demands. Cheney attended the weekly Senate Republican strategy luncheons, and effectively issued marching orders to members. Lacking institutional independence, a sense of pride, and respect for our constitutional traditions, the GOP caucus, with no obvious debate, effectively let Cheney become part of the Senate Republican leadership. . . .
It’s unlikely to happen again.
I disagree with Benen’s last point. Given the the possibility that the next Republican President could want his/her VP to return to the Cheney precedent, we can’t assume that we’ll never see a similar situation in the future.
That gets me back to an argument I made yesterday about the al Marri case: we can’t assume that merely reversing policy will prevent future abuses of executive power.
So what does that mean in terms of the role of the Vice President? I doubt that legislation clarifying the VP’s role in the Senate would hold up to a Constitutional review. What we need is a national dialogue, led by Biden but including both Senate Democrats and Republicans. It would be useful were the Vice President to be more than just a hood ornament, but it also may be useful to define a stronger role than merely waiting for the President to kick the bucket.
That may mean, as some have suggested, abolishing the vice presidency. It could mean eliminating it and creating a full-time President of the Senate, second in line to the Presidency, whose role would be analogous to the Speaker of the House (the current President pro-tem is a figurehead, usually given to an elder in the party in power). It could mean giving the VP a COO role, different from but similar to the current chief of staff job.
While they’re at it, they might want to rethink the current line of Presidential succession, which puts people like Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd in line to become President before people half their age and twice their fitness for the job.