Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said Friday that he's looking forward to being on the podium when Hillary Clinton is sworn in next January, but as a senator, not as her vice president.
"I have a great feeling that I'm going to be on that podium with Hillary Clinton when she's taking the oath of office, but I'm going to be sitting with the other senators. She's going to be a great Senate to work with. I'm not looking for another post," the Virginia Democrat told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, rejecting stories placing him near the top of the former secretary of state's short list of potential running mates.
Kaine who is on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, told the show that he is "going to be sworn in again in the Senate in January," and invited show host Joe Scarborough and others on the program to come join him there, after Scarborough asked if they'd be invited to attend his vice presidential reception.
Also on the program, Kaine talked about his call for a congressional vote for a war authorization against ISIS, saying it's not happening because Congress would rather say President Barack Obama does not have a strategy.
"I have not been able to convince my colleagues this is a war that tactically we're doing what we need to do, but Congress hasn't authorized the war," said Kaine. "In Syria we have international questions, I think, about the legality of the war."
Meanwhile, the war authorization is important, said Kaine.
"The president comes and has to make the case, and usually proposes an authorization, and Congress doesn't accept what the president proposes," he said. Congress put the State Department and military witnesses in the dock, asks them tough questions, takes the president's originally proposed authorization and changes it."
After the 9/11 attacks, said Kaine, President George W. Bush presented a war authorization, but Congress did not pass it.
"They ended up changing it," he said. "That's how you work on a strategy, and you do it with the American public watching, so that eventually, when Congress votes, the American public has been brought into what's at stake."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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