Things are what they are. villa drew from Shodan’s remark regarding Obama’s being in charge of the executive branch of government that he was saying the same thing as Obama’s being in charge of the country, and he used the presidents of three other countries as examples of how Shodan was wrong.
Is this forum not dedicated to debate, and is debate not predicated on points actually made and not points intended? If villa’s intent was to show that Shodan was wrong with regard to the role of the president in the Senate, he should not have used Shodan’s perfectly accurate statement that the president is in charge of the executive branch of government in order to do so.
Re: debating points actually made. Versus making points that are completely irrelevant.
The Constitution describes the rather extensive powers and duties of the POTUS in regard to the Executive Branch. If the point to be made was “Is the POTUS in charge of the Executive Branch?” the answer would indeed be YES, s/he is in fact the chief officer of that branch. And **Shodan **could have a cookie.
However, the same document also clearly describes the almost entirely ceremonial powers and duties of the Vice-POTUS in regard to the Senate, which is a part of the Legislative Branch. Palin the ditz and all of her apologists (including **Shodan **and now you SA) all seem incapable of recognizing the difference. Whenever this is pointed out, their shovels and cranes attack the goal posts.
This thread was about Palin. So “leaving aside completely the role of the vice-president in the Senate…” would hardly be the point, now would it?
I suppose arguably the President is indeed in “charge” of the country in the sense that he’s has been charged with its protection and maintenance, in the manner of a corporate CEO whose job is to enact the policies decided by the Board of Directors (i.e. Congress) while keeping the company active and solvent.
But anyway, the Veep has so little power over the day-to-day operations of the Senate that they created a title just for the guy who sits in and keeps the Veep’s chair warm. When the Veep has to worry about what the President Pro Tem might do in the Veep’s absence, then presiding over the Senate become a significant task. Since much of the the time the Veep doesn’t seem to care, I don’t see why the American people should, either.
The far more important duty of the Veep, of course, is as a safety net just in case. Thus, it behooves every Veep (since Truman, at least) to be fully informed and up-to-date on administration policies to allow as smooth a transition as possible. Did Palin have the wherewithal for this? I’m inclined to doubt it.
It would most certainly be the point in challenging villa’s statement that to say the president is in charge of the executive branch of government is analogous to saying the president of Ireland is in charge of Ireland, etc.
And now me? How on earth does what I’ve said about the president’s being in charge of the executive branch of government suddenly make me a Palin apologist?
When you bring up (or defend and repeat statements of those who bring up) the POTUS’ relationship to the Executive Branch simply as a diversion from reflecting on Palin’s lack of understanding of the quite different relationship between the Vice-POTUS and one house of the Legislative Branch.
As I noted before, with reference to goal posts. Clear enough for you now?
Palin’s communication style is woefully underdeveloped and not ready for national primetime. The McCain campaign staff either didn’t realize this, didn’t vet it properly, or didn’t do enough to prepare her for the media onslaught. Probably all of the above.
Compared against Obama’s communication style, and even Biden’s ‘mature statesmanship’, she looked pretty raw on TV.
But come on…a nutjob? Are you serious? Maybe that’s exactly why Pubbies are talking about her. Because they know they will fire up the support base and bait your sort of response from the left.
I’ll tell you who’s a nutjob. Somebody who rams through an $800 billion stimulus bill a few days into office and says the answer to irresponsible government spending is to run up trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. And that a massive, government-run healthcare system is the key to solving the economic crisis. And that it doesn’t matter if you get less revenue by raising taxes on the rich - it’s the attempt at fairness that’s important. Now THAT’s a nutjob. But I digress.
Do you remember the few days after the Republican convention? There was a massive, 20+ point poll swing practically overnight amongst undecideds and middle-class women. Pollsters said that had never seen anything like it. And for about a week, Obama was clearly rattled. Then the Couric interview came, McCain went off the rails on the financial crisis, and it was all but over.
Maybe you don’t like her religious beliefs or some such thing. But she’s hardly a nutjob. As Shodan and others have pointed out she has an enviable record of governorship. If the left insists on smirking, tut-tutting and pointing out how silly and stupid she is, in the caricature of urbane limousine liberalism, it might play naturally into the hands of the Pubbies.
A. That didn’t happen. Women and independents were at first interested by Palin, then repulsed.
B. To the extent that there was a swing, it was the product of the convention, because all conventions increase their party’s polling numbers somewhat. That bounce never really matters, because both parties get it, and they usually cancel out.
Hahaha. This was a popular talking point during the campaign. How’d that work out for you? Oh yeah, that’s right… Limousine Liberalism played right into the White House … not into Pubbie’s hands. Let me guess, they’ve got us ‘right where they want us’ for 2012? You think they’ll win then by appealing to the conservative base?
As long as you are putting the word “control” in quotes as if it came from me, perhaps you could cite where I or Palin used it? Thanks in advance.
Please keep in mind that we are not discussing Israel or Ireland - Palin was running for the Vice-presidency of the US, and it is the US Constitution that she (quite accurately) described.
Not that you clearly indicated which came first, but I think it’s important to note that the Couric interview came AFTER the economic crisis and McCain’s horribly botched “suspend the campaign” bit.
While the Couric interview may have put a lot of dirt atop the coffin, polling data very, very clearly indicates that it was during the economic blowup that McCain clearly fell below Obama in the polls, and they were more or less in the same position from that point on, right to election day.
I might smirk and tut-tut at her nutjobbery because I pretty much am an urbane limousine liberal. But as we all know, plenty of “real Americans” from states without coastlines were equally horrified by Palin and voted accordingly. Palin managed to bait a far wider swathe of people aside from martini-sipping bubbleheads like yours truly.
And brie. Don’t forget brie. I happen to love a good martini and brie, myself.
Look, I’m not a big fan of Palin. And I certainly don’t think Obama is a nutjob. As I’ve said before on this Board, I think he’s a decent, well-educated man who has absolutely no idea what he’s doing, mostly because he has some wrong-headed opinions about how jobs are created and living standards improve in a free society.
But my jab above was intended to highlight the reaction that (I knew) I would get from this Board. Which is the meta-point of the Palin argument.
It was the same with Dan Quayle - there are those on the left who still swear they ‘remember’ Dan Quayle saying he would have a tough time visiting Latin America because he didn’t speak Latin…although he never said that. It was a late-night TV joke repeated endlessly by the media. I was listening to a local radio talk-show the other day when the host chuckled at Palin’s “I can see Roosia from my house!” comment, even down to his lame attempt at her accent.
Wait. Did she actually say that? She must have, right? It was on the radio after all.
Caricaturing your opponent as silly and stupid, when they clearly aren’t, in an effort to breeze through any serious discussion of their candidacy has a way of backfiring by creating a false sense of confidence in a self-selected echo-chamber.
To quote the late Pauline Kael after Nixon’s 49-2 shellacking…‘How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him.’
I watched Tina Fey say this on SNL. It never occured to me that Palin herself actually originated the phrase, though the rather dubious concept that the governor of Alaska had some foreign-policy credibility because of the proximity of Russa was advanced by Palin early on. She’d’ve been better off talking about trade relations with Canada, I figure, and the economic power thereof.
My bad - I should have used “in charge of.” My apologies. I don’t think it changes the thrust of my argument, but it was inaccurate. The President of Israel is not “in charge of Israel.”
It doesn’t matter if we are discussing Israel or Ireland or Madagascar. You advanced the argument that the VP was “in charge of” the Senate because he presides over it. It was a purely linguistic argument to which I was responding. I pointed out that President does not imply “in charge of” automatically. And it doesn’t. It may well be that the VP is “in charge of” the Senate. That’s not an argument into which I have entered. But it isn’t the case that presiding over means, per se, “in charge of.”