According to the New York Times, Donald Trump junior offered Governor John Kasich a chance to be the most powerful vice president in history, because Trump wants his VP to be in charge of both foreign and domestic policy. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/magazine/how-donald-trump-picked-his-running-mate.html?_r=2
This is much bigger window into the character and qualifications of Donald Trump than any anecdote from his daughter Tiffany or endorsement from his wife. This one thing should tell every voter everything they need to know to reject Donald Trump.
After bragging for months that he'd be the one to "make American great again" because of his singular experience making deals and building things, never mind the bankruptcies and business failures, he now wants to hand off virtually all the powers vested in the presidency to Mike Pence, an unpopular governor of Indiana whose experience in federal government has gone no higher than the House of Representatives, whose career before entering politics was as a conservative talk show host, and whose most defining characteristic in public life has been his position on the extreme right-wing of his party. He's the opposite of Trump on many issues. If Republican voters had wanted an extreme right-wing Bible-quoting conservative to be president, they could have chosen Ted Cruz. But Cruz lost. Will his mini-me become the de facto President of the United States if Trump wins in November? If so, the voters should know this right now, and be reminded of it over and over.
Every member of the national press should be waiting with questions about this. Let's just start off with the reality that the Constitution gives the Vice President only a single formal power, to preside over the senate and to vote on those occasions where there is a tie. That is it. Informally, vice presidents can be used as advisors, the eyes and ears of the president on trips abroad. They can be asked to participate in cabinet meetings, and to handle a specific portfolio of issues in terms of promoting legislation to Congress. But what the Constitution seems to prohibit, in big, bold letters in Article Two, is a Vice President with power to do anything,
This matters, particularly for the Republican Party, which has, in recent years, taking to styling themselves as the protectors of the Constitution. Ironically, Mike Pence considers himself a "constitutional conservative." When advisors become too powerful in any presidential administration, there is grumbling about the unelected wielding more power than the one singular Chief Executive that all the voters in America (and in the original Constitutional design, the Electoral College acting as the unique voice of the entire Untied States) have chosen. The idea of dumping virtually all the power to shape foreign and domestic policy into the lap of any Vice President runs counter to the Constitution, and speaks volumes about the real intentions of Donald Trump.
Has anyone yet asked if Donald Trump is planning on giving up his business entirely if he should become President? Giving up control of all his business dealings to his children, turning his full and complete attention to the awesome job of being the President of the United States? Giving up the golf courses, the wine, the everything? Do we even know if he's planning on keeping his hand in, and trying to be a sort of President as Spokesman in his spare time, while Mike Pence, who ran in no primaries and won no votes on his own, would become, for all intents and purposes, the real President?
The staggering ignorance of what the presidency means in the Constitutional order of things is just breathtaking. It's as if the Trump family sees the presidency as something they can offer to some enterprising real politician, while Donald jest around the country making speeches at rallies.
There is so much wrong with the Trump campaign, so many questions about his flawed character, so many juicy quotes and tweets that continually vie for our attention, that we may be missing the forest for the trees here. The mere offer of this kind of a vice presidency ought to raise more eyebrows than anything said or done so far in the campaign, as it provides a window into Trump's thinking that does not need to be distorted by any partisan spin to have an impact.
If nothing else, the Clinton campaign should highlight this issue in both the presidential and vice-presidential debates. If Trump is running for Reality Show Star in Chief, planning one handing over the real responsibility of governing to someone who actually might want to do all that hard work, that is stunning. And worth raising up for national discussion and debate, again and again, until the American voters really get it. Trump is not suited by training, temperament, or desire to actually be the President of the most complicated and important government in the world. And we have evidence directly from his son, Donald Junior, in the form of this unprecedented offer to a potential vice president. It's not a sexy story, but it's perhaps the most important one.