The only time I can remember encountering Sean Parnell in his capacity as lieutenant governor was during a press conference with the Mongolians.

I can't remember what then-Governor Sarah Palin was doing that day (when she could’ve been gaining valuable foreign policy experience), but she wasn't there. Which meant Parnell had to stand in. The proceedings were awkward. Few journalists showed and those of us who did were herded into a room away from where the important people were to wait and wait, while whatever was transpiring transpired elsewhere.

Eventually Parnell and several high-ranking Mongolian officials filed stiffly into the room for a series of stiff little speeches. If there was anything of great significance said, it was lost in the translation, either from Mongolian or Bureaucrat-speak. Something about sharing ideas and cooperation. I gathered that everyone agreed that Alaska and Mongolia were both cold, both had natural resources, and—though this was less bluntly stated—both knew that outsiders would be developing those resources in one form or another. One reporter on the conference line from elsewhere in the state had a question. A photographer with the Mongolian delegation snapped lots of photos. I think I'd come for stock photos myself, and out of curiosity for stories I might find. I left empty-handed. On the way out, the Mongolian delegation we'd been so carefully sheltered from shared the elevator down with a few of us journalists. This less-than-glorious scene popped to mind on Tuesday when Jay Ramras announced he would be running for lieutenant governor. Ramras made his way around the state Tuesday telling journalists he wanted to be lieutenant governor in order to be a “rainmaker, ambassador, connector, and facilitator.” In fact, our last lieutenant governor did have this one chance to be something of an ambassador. Mostly though, the job's not nearly as glamorous as it sounds.

In last week's Press, Brendan Kelley, our political reporter, observed, "We’re kind of excited to see a primary race between Ramras and Campbell, whose appointment Ramras supported. But what we’d really like to see, as a legislator recently suggested to us, is a serious debate about the duties for which the lieutenant governor is responsible. We’d appreciate some brawls over how to most appropriately oversee the use of the State of Alaska Seal, the process for commissioning and overseeing Alaska’s notaries public, who can publish and distribute the most elegant copies of the Alaska Constitution, and who can authenticate documents and administer the citizens’ initiative process most efficiently."

That's funny mainly because it's true. And more than that, it almost sums up the entire duties of the lieutenant governor. There's also running the division of elections, the suggestive "authenticating documents" (turns out to be a boring bureaucratic function, like everything else on this list) and Publishing the Alaska Online Public Notice System—which everyone knows really gets handled by the interns in the IT department.

So Ramras either suffers Quixote-like delusions about what this job really entails, or he simply adheres to a belief in loose construction.

Based on one of his comments, to Fairbanks Daily News-Miner columnist Dermot Cole, the latter sounds like a pretty good bet.

“Every job is what you make it,” he told Cole, “and I believe I can make the lieutenant governor's job a position of content and something that helps reset the trajectory of our state by a few degrees.” Actual duties be damned.

Of course, there’s nothing new about candidates for lieutenant governor talking about issues beyond the state seal and notary publics. And we want them too. This is a person who, if they win, could become governor at a moment’s notice—quite literally, as we saw this summer—so we want to know something about their politics now, when we can still vote on them.

But Ramras isn’t so much saying he’ll talk about the issues, as that he’ll revise what the lieutenant governor does. In addition to being an ambassador (heads up to Jay: that might not be as glamorous as it sounds), he singled out “rainmaker” “facilitator” and “connector.” “Facilitator” and “connector” are throwaway words, vague enough to mean whatever’s convenient at the time, but “rainmaker,” like “ambassador,” is an interesting choice. Maybe Ramras chose it because it’s enjoying a current vogue: even as Ramras was announcing, a sub-head on the New York Times home page declared “President Obama traveled to New York as the major rainmaker for Democratic events.”

Most definitions of that word talk about someone with extraordinary talents or the ability to achieve unusually good results—almost a talisman, or good luck charm for the corporate world, embodied in a person.

But I was captured by this twist, in a definition from the Random House Dictionary:

“Slang. an executive or lawyer with exceptional ability to attract clients, use political connections, increase profits, etc.: The president has several rainmakers among his advisers.”

The use of political connections, and the blunt statement of the profit motive, reminded of something, of the way politicians generally operate.

Which is when it struck me: Ramras wants what every lieutenant governor wants—a job where he can be a full time politician. Governors have to spend too much time actually governing to politic full-time, and legislators get just a few months a year (not counting special sessions and legislation-by-press-release). Lieutenant governors have it made: all the opportunity, almost none of the responsibility.

Which is what I think Ramras meant by assigning himself that series of roles. Maybe we should praise him for being so open and transparent about it.

—Krestia DeGeorge