Posted on 12/14/2008 6:26:58 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
Joe Biden is laying plans to significantly shrink the role of the vice presidency in Barack Obama’s White House, according to an official familiar with his thinking.
It’s not just that Biden won’t sit in on Senate Democrats’ weekly caucus meetings – a privilege Republicans afforded outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney. He won’t have an office outside the House floor, as House Speaker Dennis Hastert gave Cheney early on.
Biden will not begin every day with his own intelligence briefing before sitting in on the president’s. He will not always be the last person Obama speaks to before making a decision.
He also will not, as a transition official calls it, operate a “shadow government” within an Obama administration.
One of the few ways he will resemble Cheney is in making clear his future ambitions, or lack thereof: Biden doesn’t expect to run for president after leaving the vice presidency, according to a transition source who was not authorized to speak on the record.
“What he has said previously is that Vice President Cheney had an overly expansive view of the vice president, almost created like a shadow government inside the White House," said the transition official familiar with Biden's role. "Vice President-elect Biden has a very strong view that the vice president’s role is to be an adviser to the president and to be a member of the president’s team, and that’s how he’s going to be in the job.”
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
It all makes sense.
Now dovetail this story (if true), with Biden’s earlier comment that someone or something will try to challenge Obama straight off the bat.
Resizing the job to fit the man.
Just by being the Vp this dummy has diminished the position.
I suspect the incoming V.P. will shrink the job down to that which he can handle and that which “the one” and his high powered cabinet feel that Joey-Boy can handle. In other words, his role will be less than the White House greeter.
Kind of The Peter Principle in reverse.
More like a greeter in a whorehouse....
Joe's got nowhere else to go except funerals.
Don’t sell the Veep short.
He will also attend funerals.
Joe Biden shrunk the role of V.P by 50%
He is only half the man Dick Cheney is.
Hmmmmmmm.
And getting paid for it too!
0 considers himself imortal and he doesn’t need a standby.
Sounds like maybe Biden has decided to be an “arm’s length” VP.
Considering that nObama’s rule will be one gaff/corruption after another, perhaps Biden is wise.
Go be Pres of the Senate, take an occasional fund raising trip for a fellow RAT and generally stay out of the way and keep your mouth shut. Sounds like a plan.
I wonder what he really thinks about sitting in the Big Chair should something happen to nObama. I suspect he does not relish the idea.
I guess he’ll be asking folks .... “Would you like fries with that”?
In other words, he’ll be a nobody to be sent around the world to attend funerals.
Reminds me of Tom Lehrer’s “Whatever happened to Hubert”:
“I wonder how many people here tonight remember Hubert Humphrey. He used to be a senator. From time to time you read something about him pinning a medal on somebody or making a speech, or every now and then you read something in one of those Where Are They Now? columns. Whatever became of Deanna Durbin and Hubert Humphrey and so on. This became quite an issue last winter at the time of Winston Churchill’s funeral when President Johnson was too ill to go and somebody suggested that he send Hubert and he said “Hubert who?” And all America was singing...
Whatever became of Hubert?
Has anyone heard a thing?
Once he shone on his own,
Now he sits home alone,
And waits for the phone to ring.
Once a fiery liberal spirit,
Ah, but now when he speaks he must clear it.
Second fiddle’s a hard part, I know,
When they don’t even give you a bow.
“We must protest his treatment,” Hubert,
Says each newspaper reader.
As someone remarked to Schubert,
“Take us to your Lieder.”
(Sorry about that)
Whatever became of you, Hubert?
We miss you, so tell us please.
Are you sad? Are you cross? Are you gathering moss
While you wait for the boss to sneeze?
Does Lyndon, recalling when he was VP,
Say, “I’ll do unto you like they did unto me?”
Do you dream about staging a coup?
Hubert, what happened to you? “”
In the spirit of the season, Biden will be an elf.
Hellary will be around to help out.
Someone will have to turn him over regularly to prevent bedsores.
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