At yesterday’s press briefing the press corps and White House spokesperson Dana Perino were collectively speculating about Cheney’s position in the executive and/or legislative branch.
MS. PERINO: The executive functions are given to him by the President. For example, the Vice President’s paycheck comes from the Senate. So these are — that’s an interesting constitutional question.
Ms. Perino, dear press corps, please let me help with some scientific background:
A fundamental postulate of Cheneyism, which manifests itself in the Federalist Society Uncertainty Principle, is that no vice presidential phenomenon can be (to arbitrary accuracy) described as a "classic executive position" or as a legislative position but rather the micro-political situation is best described in terms of executive-legislative duality.
MS. PERINO: I think it’s a little bit more complicated than that.
Yes, sure Ms. Perino – let’s dig a bit deeper:
The Federalist society uncertainty principle is a consequence of this picture. The amplitude of the executive position associated with a legislative position corresponds to its position, and the process length (more precisely, its Fourier transform) is inversely proportional to momentum. In order to localize the executive position so as to have a sharp peak (i.e., a small position uncertainty), it is necessary to incorporate executive positions with very short process lengths, corresponding to high momenta in all directions, and therefore a large momentum uncertainty. Indeed, the Federalist Society Uncertainty Principle is equivalent to a theorem in functional analysis that the standard deviation of the squared absolute value of a function, times the standard deviation of the squared absolute value of its Fourier transform, is at least 1/(16π2) (Folland and Sitaram, Theorem 1.1).
MS. PERINO: Maybe it’s me, but I think that everyone is making this a little bit more complicated than it needs to be.
That is indeed a possiblity – see your previous quote. But here is an example you probably can relate to:
A helpful analogy can be drawn between the executive position associated with a quantum-political legislative position and a more familiar executive position, the time-varying spokesperson position associated with, say, a sound bite. It is meaningless to ask about its releventness at a single moment in time, because the measure of releventness is the measure of a repetition recurring over a period of time. Indeed, in order for a spokesperson position to have a relatively well-defined relevantness, it must persist for a long period of time, and conversely, a spokesperson position that occurs at a relatively well-defined moment in time (i.e., of short duration) will necessary encompass a broad (ir)relevantness band. This is, indeed, a close mathematical analogue of the Federalist society uncertainty principle.
MS. PERINO: Okay, you have me thoroughly confused, as well.
Oh, sorry. But that’s the point of the uncertainty principle. Isn’t it?