By Stephen Macaulay
What did Mike Pence do while serving as vice president? There was the important act of obeying the law on January 6, 2021. But other than that?
[PLEASE SCROLL DOWN this column for reader comments on the interview --Ed.]
What did Joe Biden do except make a remark that resulted in President Obama having to come out an announce his support of same-sex marriage?
Arguably Dick Cheney did more while in office than even he would probably admit to.
Al Gore, of course, invented the Internet, but that was before he moved into Number One Observatory Circle.
And Dan Quayle’s contribution to the polity was making it clear that there needs to be greater support for elementary education, particularly when it comes to spelling skills.
The point is, vice presidents don’t do a whole lot outside of ceremonial activities. Yes, the Constitution has it that the vice president is the president of the Senate, “but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.” A tie-breaker. Swell.
Then there is the 25th Amendment. Section 1 puts it tersely: “In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.”
Section 4 is a bit more robust as it says, in part, “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
While we’ve seen Section 1 in action since 1963, with Johnson succeeding Kennedy after the assassination, and in 1974, when Nixon resigned and Ford assumed the office, Section 4 hasn’t happened. Which is probably a good thing.
Which brings me to the Kamala Harris CNN interview. The observation about the vice presidency and warm spit comes to mind.
There are those who tie Biden’s policy to her, as though she had something to do with them.
In the early 1920s, when Warren Harding was president, there was a bit of a change for the vice president. As the White House Historical Association puts it: “As vice president to President Warren G. Harding, Coolidge had little to do aside from presiding over the Senate, although the gracious Harding invited him to regularly attend cabinet meetings.”
Presumably the vice president’s role in the cabinet is not unlike that of a tourist.
There are those who seem to think that Harris should break with Biden in a big way. But realize that she has to work with the man until noon on January 20, 2025 no matter who wins the 2024 election, so it is probably better to be civil.
Did she do well during the interview with Dana Bash. Yes.
But what is probably more to the point is to make a comparison between that press conference and, say, Donald Trump’s at Mar-a-Lago on August 12.
He opened, “Hello, everybody. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate your being here. Just a statement before I talk about debates.”
Then rolled into things including, “I think that our country is right now in the most dangerous position it’s ever been in from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint. Both gangs on the street and frankly gangs outside of our country in the form of other countries that are frankly very powerful. They’re very powerful countries and we don’t know what we’re doing.”
Gangs that are very powerful countries?
And: “We have a very, very sick country right now. You saw the other day with the stock market crash. That was just the beginning. That was just the beginning. It’s going to get worse. It’s going to get a lot worse in my opinion. . . .”
On the day of that press conference the Dow closed at 41,086.81. On the day of Harris’ press conference it closed at 41,577.97.
While past performance is not indicative of future results, a Dow that’s been over 40,000 since mid-May doesn’t seem sick.
He went on and on until he got to the debates.
“With all of that being said, I think it’s very important to have debates and we’ve agreed with Fox on a date of September 4th. We’ve agreed with NBC, fairly full agreement subject to them on September 10th, and we’ve agreed with ABC on September 25th.”
Turns out that the September 4 Fox debate was, for example, something that the “we” he used was inclusive of him and only him.
The point it, Trump gives a press conference and pretty much makes a whole lot of stuff up and the general response is a shrug and a “that’s just Trump.”
If we think press conferences from presidential candidates are important, shouldn’t we hold them to some standards?
Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.
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On the Harris/Walz CNN Interview
In a country like ours, it is difficult to believe that the best and brightest that Democrats have to offer in 2024 is Kamala Harris. What happened to the party who produced presidents like Kennedy, Clinton, Obama and frankly even Joe Biden? A couple of them never missed a chance to talk to the press or explain their political positions and policies. As a Reagan conservative, I disagreed politically with the last three, but I never doubted their ability to serve as POTUS. Donald Trump and JD Vance face the media every day and are clear about their positions and policies. Like them or not, Americans know where they stand, and voters can at least be confident that Donald Trump knows how to serve as president at home and abroad.
After watching Kamala Harris uncomfortably struggle her way through “The First Interview” with Tim Walz filling in the gaps, there is little reason to be confident that she has a “clear” plan or positions that Americans can confidently believe. Just because Harris tells us that “she’s been very clear” … she has clearly flip-flopped on several positions. I’m left thinking it was just another word salad and filled with way too much chit-chat that covered little substance of importance to Americans.
--Rich Corbett