A question from one of you concerning part of last night's debate:
QUESTION: Do you know which part of the Constitution Governor Palin is referring to [in the portion of the debate excerpted below]?
IFILL: Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?
PALIN: 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.
ANSWER: I think I will take a pass on trying to decipher precisely what Governor Palin meant in her answer. But the controversy that the question and answer alludes to is this: Vice President Cheney has argued, in turns, that the Office of the Vice President is part of both the executive and the legislative branches. He argued in the case of his 2001 Energy Task Force that the deliberations of that group were within the executive branch, and thus entitled to executive privilege. He prevailed on this claim in a case that was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. See Cheney v. United States District Court, 542 U.S. 367 (2004). More recently, when presented with the order to preserve his official records and letters, pursuant to a statute passed by Congress concerning the preservation of executive branch deliberations (for the national archives), Cheney argued that because the Vice President is the President of the Senate, see Art. I, sec. 3, clause 4, which permits him to break ties in Senate votes, he is also a member of the legislative branch, and thus exempt from the record-keeping requirements. Two weeks ago, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against Cheney on this issue, which you can read about here.