President of the Senate

Mike Tomasky flags some Palin gibberish from last night's debate.

Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.

Steve Teles responds with some interesting speculation.

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.

Could be. If nothing else, today's Republicans are perfectly happy to overturn generations worth of common practice for the sake of short-term political gain, so it wouldn't surprise me. But if Democrats win as many seats in the Senate as they're expected to, the real-world impact of a meddling Sarah Palin presiding over the Senate would, I think, be pretty minimal.