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tangent4ronpaul
08-29-2008, 01:20 PM
The Vice President of the United States is designated by the Constitution as the President of the Senate. The Vice President holds a tie breaking vote in the Senate and does not usually preside over the Senate. (but can!)

As President of the Senate (Article I, Section 3), the vice president oversees procedural matters and may cast a tie-breaking vote. There is a strong convention within the U.S. Senate that the vice president not use his position as President of the Senate to influence the passage of legislation or act in a partisan manner, except in the case of breaking tie votes.

John Adams ... frequently lectured the Senate on procedural and policy matters. Adams' political views and his active role in the Senate made him a natural target for critics of the Washington administration. Toward the end of his first term, as a result of a threatened resolution that would have silenced him except for procedural and policy matters, he began to exercise more restraint in the hope of realizing the goal shared by many of his successors: election in his own right as president of the United States of America.

In recent years, the vice presidency has frequently been used to launch bids for the presidency. Of the 13 presidential elections from 1956 to 2004, nine featured the incumbent president; the other four (1960, 1968, 1988, 2000) all featured the incumbent vice president. Former vice presidents also ran, in 1984 (Walter Mondale), and in 1968 (Richard Nixon, against the incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey).

the need to keep vice presidents informed on national security issues became clear, and Congress made the vice president one of four statutory members of the National Security Council in 1949.

In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt raised the stature of the office by renewing the practice of inviting the vice president to cabinet meetings, which has been maintained by every president since

Richard Nixon reinvented the office of vice president. He had the attention of the media and the Republican party, when Eisenhower ordered him to preside at Cabinet meetings in his absence. Nixon was also the first vice president to temporarily assume control of the executive branch; he did so after Eisenhower suffered a heart attack on September 24, 1955; ileitis in June 1956; and a stroke in November 1957. President Jimmy Carter was the first president to formally give his vice president, Walter Mondale, an office in the West Wing of the White House.

Chesney is Bush's closest and most trusted advisor.

Some VP's draft policy...

freelance
08-29-2008, 01:28 PM
They don't teach civics in school anymore, do they?

tangent4ronpaul
08-29-2008, 01:33 PM
source is wikipedia and it's well referenced

lasenorita
08-29-2008, 03:33 PM
But what is it exactly that the VP does every day? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pak-rH0dCeA)

LibertyEagle
08-29-2008, 04:00 PM
Uh, our government doesn't follow the Constitution anymore.

malibuu
08-30-2008, 10:13 AM
Second-in-command and the tie-breaking Senate vote (maybe crucial with Lieberman switching parties ?)

McCain's choice is a sabotage of the "experience card" the GOP ad campaign wanted to play.

"So you've picked a running mate who a year and a half ago
was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 8,500 people."

Source: http://www.newsweek.com/id/156258

constitutional
08-30-2008, 10:23 AM
But what is it exactly that the VP does every day? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pak-rH0dCeA)

You can see the host laughing at the end "This is a pretty cool job" *snickers*...