Does the Vice President really have any true authority?

The odd thing with respect to questions posed to VP Harris about what the Biden Administration did or didn’t do is that there is an underlying presumption that as Vice President, Harris could have legally disregarded the President’s policies and set up some sort of counter Administration. This may come as a shock to characters like Hannity and various Fox talking heads, but the VP has NO authority to do anything beyond breaking tie votes in the Senate. That’s it. That’s all. The job is largely ceremonial. Vice Presidents are sent to funerals and celebrations and to meetings that the President cannot or doesn’t feel like attending.

Despite Republicans calling Harris the “Border Czar” (a title MAGA fanatics cooked up), her only remit from Biden was to negotiate with the Central and South American countries from whence most of the refugees were fleeing, to try and work with those governments to stem the flow of immigrants to the US. She accomplished that task and reduced the number of refugees requesting asylum by about 50%.

What is really important though is this…are we to assume, should trump be elected again to the Presidency, that at any point if JD Vance disagrees with a trump policy, he ought to feel free to essentially create his own opposing Administration and begin countermanding trump’s Executive Orders and issuing contradictory orders of his own?

Did Republicans miss that chapter in Civics and Social Studies where the President and the President alone is the Chief Executive? The Vice President is rather like the understudy in a play, she or he only gets to go on stage and deliver lines if the principal actor is unable to perform.

Under the Constitution, the VP can only assume the powers of the Chief Executive under the authority of the Presidential Succession Act as clarified by the 25th Amendment. That amendment also provides for the VP to assume authority as Acting President in an instance where the actual President is unable to perform their duties.

During the Biden Administration, the 25th Amendment was never invoked. So why does the right-wing pretend that Kamala Harris ever had the power to set Administration policy? In our republic, every department secretary in a President’s Cabinet has more delegated authority to act with a degree of independence than the Vice President. The VP is only allowed to do what the President tells them to do. That’s it. Period. John Nance Garner was FDR’s VP during Roosevelt’s first two terms as President. He famously described the job of Vice President as “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” (In deference to less vulgar times, the quote was altered to substitute “spit” for “piss.”)

And asking Harris now what she intends to do differently from Joe Biden is asking her to break her obligation to support the elected President. Is this REALLY that complicated a concept to grasp?