Like many of our readers, I was somewhat…perplexed would probably be the word, by Palin’s comments last night about an expanded role for the Vice-President in the Senate. There are two ways of explaining this. The first would be that this was just pure confusion, further evidence of Palin’s vacuity. But that has to be eliminated on the grounds of not being very interesting, so let’s drift into somewhat more speculative territory.
My guess is that some of McCain people are, in fact, talking about trying to see how much they can squeeze out of the VP’s role as President of the Senate. They know that Congress will be badly against them, and so most of a McCain presidency will be devoted to stopping things from happening–either Congress passing its own agenda, or Congress restraining the president in his use of the executive branch. So, there’s discussion around the table about whether it’s possible to use the VP’s presiding officer role to give the president marginally more influence in the Senate, in which he is otherwise considerably disadvantaged. My guess is that some of this was just talk around the table, free-form Addingtonism. Palin picked up on it and this sort of spilled out, somewhat subconsciously, when she was asked this question.
Journalists with contacts might want to follow up on whether my hunch is right, in which case there really is more of a story here.