Left Flank

Blogging is about timeliness, and I should lay down my opinion on Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin. I don't claim to be a Palin-ologist, but David Noon at bhTV offers his appraisal of Alaska's latest non-fungible export. Noon contributes two bits of information, along with a wealth of backgrounder tidbits about Alaska itself, I found relevant. Firstly, he claims Palin's previous debate performances when running for state offices were lackluster, but that her opponents were even more forgettable. And, since her selection for the VP slot, McCain staff have overtaken her gubernatorial operation in Alaska. If one likes a VP whose subordinate, I guess this is not too distressing.

But, the institution of the vice-presidency is even less important than the lowliest bodily function, so an unremarkable VP makes for even more of a pathetic body marking time. The four seasons of Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing alerted me to this heresy. But then, Bruce Ackerman's The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy not only punctuated the argument in a much more rigorous historical and legal manner, it also forced me the reevaluate my reverence for John Marshall, who, along with Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, headed my list for most relevant 18th-Century dead white guys. Ackerman has offered a political coda of sorts to that historical examination of the 1800 presidential election and the subsequent Jefferson-Marshall rivalry conducted in SCOTUS with an editorial calling for abolishing the vice-presidency. «Sarah Palin is the product of a design flaw - the unintended consequence of the founders' decision to create the vice presidency.»

My libertarianism and my social liberalism meet where I could responsibly accept reducing the Federal government's imprint without abdicating its role as protector of last resort and the nation's public forum. I'm not being snarky about this, either. Successive chief executives have labored in vain to create a role for an office whose purpose was, in Ackerman's argument, purely political, and never constitutional. That political purpose has not survived the 12th Amendment. It nearly cost the US a government in 1800, and it's not contributed anything relevant since then.

As Americans consider Palin and Senator Joe Biden tonight and yawn, in light of the financial sector reforms the next administration and Congress will need to enact next year, I would hope they would follow their inclinations and just scream for an end to the fruitless task of giving the office of the VP a purpose.

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