12 days to go and Palin still not sure what a VP does
The Vice President is expected to be ready to serve in the event that the President cannot. It is unclear if she is qualified for her main role should she become VP. They also break tie votes in the Senate and occasionally lobby senators to pass legislation. They are not involved in legislation in the way Palin suggests. -Darryl
From Wikipedia:
The Vice President of the United States is the first person in the presidential line of succession, becoming the new President of the United States upon the death, resignation, or removal of the president, should he or she accept the position. Every presidential term ends on January 20 of the year immediately after a presidential election. As designated by the Constitution of the United States, the vice president also serves as the President of the Senate, and may break tie votes in that chamber. He or she may be assigned additional duties by the president but, as the Constitution assigns no executive powers to the vice president, in performing such duties he or she acts only as an agent of the president.
President of the Senate
President of the SenateAs 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 or her 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. As President of the Senate, John Adams cast twenty-nine tie-breaking votes—a record that no successor except for John C. Calhoun ever threatened. His votes protected the president's sole authority over the removal of appointees, influenced the location of the national capital, and prevented war with Great Britain. On at least one occasion he persuaded senators to vote against legislation that he opposed, and he 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 modern times, the vice president rarely presides over day-to-day matters in the Senate; in his place, the Senate chooses a President pro tempore (or "president for a time") to preside in the Vice President's absence, and the Senate maintains a Duty Roster for the post, normally selecting the longest serving senator in the majority party.
When the President is impeached, the Chief Justice of the United States of America presides over the Senate during the impeachment trial. Otherwise, the Vice President, in his capacity as President of the Senate, or the President pro tempore of the Senate presides. This may include the impeachment of the Vice President, although legal theories suggest that allowing a person to be the judge in the case where he or she was the defendant wouldn't be permitted. If the Vice President did not preside over an impeachment, the duties would fall to the President Pro Tempore.
One duty required of President of the Senate is presiding over the counting and presentation of the votes of the U.S. Electoral College. This process occurs in the presence of both houses of Congress, on January 6 of the year following a U.S. presidential election. In this capacity, only four Vice Presidents have been able to announce their own election to the presidency: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, and George H. W. Bush. At the beginning of 1961, it fell to Richard Nixon to preside over this process, which officially announced the election of his 1960 opponent, John F. Kennedy. In 1969, Vice President Hubert Humphrey announced he had lost to Nixon. Later, in 2001, Al Gore announced the election of his opponent, George W. Bush.
Vice President John C. Calhoun became the first vice president to resign the office. He believed he would have more power as a senator. He had been dropped from the ticket by President Andrew Jackson in favor of Martin Van Buren. Already a lame-duck vice president, he was elected to the Senate by the South Carolina state legislature and resigned the vice presidency early to begin his Senate term.
Palin's response to what a VP does a few days ago:
Previous interview where Palin "does not know what a VP does"
