October 2, 2008 5:55PM # Cult of the Vice Presidency By [Gene Healy](https://www.cato.org/people/gene-healy) --- SHARE If you read the papers, [“all of them,” ](http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/10/post-4.html)like Sarah Palin, you may have seen this, but [today’s New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/opinion/02veepdebatefortheweb.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all) features questions for the aspiring veeps. My contribution: > The claim by Dick Cheney that he was exempt from certain disclosure requirements because the vice president was a “legislative officer” has been greeted with outrage. But the main power the Constitution grants the vice president is a legislative one — breaking a tie vote in the Senate. > > > So, Governor Palin, Senator Biden, doesn’t Mr. Cheney have a point? > > > But, then, if the vice president is a legislative officer, how can he wield the vast executive powers that Mr. Cheney has exercised, including orchestrating and supervising a warrantless wiretapping program? > > > Can the vice president shift between branches at his convenience? If not, what, in your view, is the constitutional status of the vice presidency? > > > — GENE HEALY, the author of “[The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1933995157/genehealycom-20/ref=nosim/)” Giving credit where it’s due, I should mention this smart, short law review article by Glenn Reynolds, [“Is Dick Cheney Unconstitutional?”](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1029363) Friend and former Cato colleague [Radley Balko ](https://www.cato.org/people/radley-balko)has a good one for Joe Biden: > Senator Biden, you’ve been one of the Senate’s most ardent drug warriors. You helped create the office of “drug czar”; backed our failed eradication efforts in South America; encouraged the government to seize the assets of people merely suspected of drug crimes; pushed for the expanded use of racketeering and conspiracy laws against drug offenders; advocated the use of the military to fight the drug war; and sponsored a bill that holds venue owners and promoters criminally liable for drug use by people attending concerts and events. > > > Today, illicit drugs are as cheap and abundant as they were decades ago. Would you agree that the anti-drug policies you’ve championed have failed? If not, how have they succeeded? > > > — RADLEY BALKO, a senior editor at Reason magazine ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).