Answering to No One

washingtonpost.com: By Walter Mondale

The Founders created the vice presidency as a constitutional afterthought, solely to provide a president-in-reserve should the need arise. The only duty they specified was that the vice president should preside over the Senate. The office languished in obscurity and irrelevance for more than 150 years...

But it wasn't until Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency that the vice presidency took on a substantive role. Carter saw the office as an underused asset and set out to make the most of it. He gave me an office in the West Wing, unimpeded access to him and to the flow of information, and specific assignments at home and abroad. He asked me, as the only other nationally elected official, to be his adviser and partner on a range of issues.

Our relationship depended on trust, mutual respect and an acknowledgement that there was only one agenda to be served -- the president's. ...

This all changed in 2001, and especially after Sept. 11, when Cheney set out to create a largely independent power center in the office of the vice president. His was an unprecedented attempt not only to shape administration policy but, alarmingly, to limit the policy options sent to the president. It is essential that a president know all the relevant facts and viable options before making decisions, yet Cheney has discarded the "honest broker" role he played as President Gerald Ford's chief of staff.

Through his vast government experience, through the friends he had been able to place in key positions and through his considerable political skills, he has been increasingly able to determine the answers to questions put to the president -- because he has been able to determine the questions. ...

Rather than subject his views to an established (and rational) vetting process, his practice has been to trust only his immediate staff before taking ideas directly to the president. Many of the ideas that Bush has subsequently bought into have proved offensive to the values of the Constitution and have been embarrassingly overturned by the courts.

The corollary to Cheney's zealous embrace of secrecy is his near total aversion to the notion of accountability. ... His insistence on invoking executive privilege to block virtually every congressional request for information has been stupefying -- it's almost as if he denies the legitimacy of an equal branch of government. Nor does he exhibit much respect for public opinion, which amounts to indifference toward being held accountable by the people who elected him.

Whatever authority a vice president has is derived from the president under whom he serves. There are no powers inherent in the office; they must be delegated by the president. Somehow, not only has Cheney been given vast authority by President Bush -- including, apparently, the entire intelligence portfolio -- but he also pursues his own agenda. The real question is why the president allows this to happen. ...

One question to be addressed is why it is worse for an elected Vice-President to control access to Presidential decisionmaking (if it is that) than for an appointed official. To be sure, a Vice President can't simply be fired (although he/she can be assigned to permanent funeral duty...). In what ways do the problems presented by Cheney extend beyond substance and style (which covers quite a broad swath) to institutional role?

There was some debate, I think in the 1976 Republican primaries, about running Reagan for King (er, President) and then-sitting President Gerald Ford for Prime Minister (formally, Vice President). The elites thought it was a terrible idea, although economists might have gone with comparative advantage theory. Bush-Cheney feels rather like that in practice, without the formal announcement (which is classified and kept in Cheney's office safe). Maybe that's what they meant about a "Fourth Branch" of Government.

New Heart Monitor Battery for Cheney

New York Times: By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney was in the hospital Saturday for minor surgery to replace the battery that powers a device monitoring his heart rhythms."

Power devolved on George W. Bush during the procedure.

Details of Cheney's informed consent form reveal that he declined the offer to implant some heart during the procedure. Physicians remain mystified at precisely what the heart monitor is monitoring.

Bush Reclaims Power After Colonoscopy

New York Times

The Misunderestimated Mr. Cheney

FindLaw's Writ : By John Dean

Washington insiders have long understood that Cheney's power stems from his knowledge of the way the White House and the Office of the President operate. This is knowledge he acquired as President Ford's Chief of Staff. With Bush's consent, much of the paper flow of the White House which heads up the chain of command toward the President goes through Cheney's office. In addition, Cheney's staff reaches down into the executive bureaucracy to shape the debate before it reaches the White House.

Those with whom I have spoken have serious doubt that Bush and the White House staff really knows what Cheney is doing, why he is doing it, or how he is doing it. From the outset of this administration, Cheney has been instrumental in placing people loyal to him throughout the Executive Branch. This is not to say that Bush is not 'the decider,' for he is, but by shaping the debate and controlling the paper flow, Cheney decides what the decider will decide.

It has long been apparent that Cheney's genius is that he lets George W. Bush get out of bed every morning actually believing he is the President. In fact, his presidency is run by the President of the Senate, for Cheney is its true center of gravity. That fact has become more apparent with every passing year of this presidency, and anyone who thinks otherwise has truly "misunderestimated" our nominal president and his vice president.

Can't quite remember if I posted from this previously--Just referred to it again, via links associated with Cong. Kucinich's impeachment web page.

Best thought of the day

On January 20, 2009, as the first act of the next President:
Declare W and The Dick to be enemy combatants, and ship them to Gitmo.
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Gonzales optional.
(from a caller to today's Ed Schultz Show)

Dick Cheney v. Aaron Burr: Who is the most dangerous vice president ever?

TNR Online: by Eric Rauchway

If Americans want a break from the fruitless argument over Worst President Ever, we might consider whether Cheney is giving Burr a run for his money as Most Dangerous Vice President.

A tasty historical tidbit, and amusing diversion (except, perhaps, for Gore Vidal, who takes quite a different view of Aaron Burr).

Cheney’s Long-Lost Twin

New York Times: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Could Dick Cheney and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be twins separated at birth?

The U.S. vice president and Iranian president, each the No. 2 in his country, certainly seem to be working together to create conflict between the two nations. Theirs may be the oddest and perhaps most dangerous partnership in the world today.

Both men are hawks who defy the international community, scorn the U.N. and are unpopular at home because of incompetence and recklessness — and each finds justification in the extremism of the other.

“Iranians refer to their new political radicals as ‘neoconservatives,’ with multiple layers of deliberate irony,” notes Gary Sick, an Iran specialist at Columbia University, adding: “The hotheads around President Ahmadinejad’s office and the U.S. foreign policy radicals who cluster around Vice President Cheney’s office, listen to each other, cite each others’ statements and goad each other to new excesses on either side.”...

These are real arguments, but a strike is no solution. For starters, it would delay the Iranian nuclear program by only about three years — and when it came back, the regime might be more likely than ever to use the weapons. And for Mr. Bush to launch a third war against a Muslim country would undermine Islamic moderates and strengthen radicals around the world.

Iran is also more complex and sophisticated than it pretends to be — and the fact is that standard deterrence has constrained it. ...

The ayatollahs’ only hope is that we will rescue them with a military strike, which would cement them in place for many years to come. But look out, because that’s what may happen if bilateral relations are driven by those jingoistic twins, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Impeach the Bastards

So, yes, the President has an undoubted Constitutional power to grant pardons and commutations of sentence.

But suppose, just hypothetically, a pardon or commutation is offered as part of a conspiracy to secrete information relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation, or an investigation into actions that may provide the basis for impeachment of one or more high public officials (say, again hypothetically, a Vice President).

To get (very slightly) less hypothetical, suppose Mr. Libby's conviction rests on perjury and obstruction of justice aimed to cover up potentially impeachable actions of The Dick and/or his nominal boss, he of the initial "W". Suppose further that Mr. Libby's commitment to remaining silent was thought to be tested by his (rapidly) impending change of address. (Perhaps his wavering commitment was even communicated to persons allegedly serving in the "Executive Branch".) Finally, suppose that the commutation of Mr. Libby's "excessively severe" 30-month prison term (reduced to a somewhat less severe zero, perhaps with additional understanding that a full pardon would follow after the 2008 elections) would be understood to enhance the likelihood that Mr. Libby would not be inclined to discuss these matters further.

My understanding, as a non-specialist, is that the undoubted Constitutional authority of legislators to cast votes on matters before Congress does not in and of itself (pesky matters of the "speech or debate clause" aside, to avoid complicating matters in the purely legislative--and, of course, Vice-Presidential-- contexts) immunize such persons from investigation and conviction of bribery charges.

There remain, of course, some matters of evidence to be pursued. But isn't that what the House Judiciary Committee's investigative authority (pursuant to an impeachment inquiry) are for?

Or did I miss something in Civics class?

House panel will hold hearing into Cheney's role in Oregon salmon die-off

Seattle Times : By Matthew Daly (AP)

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee said today his panel will hold a hearing into the role Vice President Dick Cheney may have played in the 2002 die-off of about 70,000 salmon near the California-Oregon border.

He shot them ALL in the face?

McDermott to Cheney: ‘Resign or face impeachment’

TheHill.com: By Chris Good

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) told Vice President Dick Cheney to “resign or face impeachment” Thursday night as three more House Democrats lent their support to a plan to impeach the vice president.

“The vice president holds himself above the law, and it is time for the Congress to enforce the law,” McDermott said in a floor speech. “For the good of the nation, the vice president could leave office immediately.” ...

“When a sitting vice president claims that he is not part of the executive branch of government to which he was elected, it is time to remove him from office,” McDermott said. ...

“The intent of this administration, and this vice president, has been to silence all dissent,” McDermott said. “Fear is what kept this administration in office in 2004, and fear is the only public discourse this administration understands — and practices.”

The articles of impeachment, introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) in April, have garnered support from 10 House cosponsors.

Conservative Heretic: Impeach Vice President Cheney

Slate Magazine: By Bruce Fein

Under Dick Cheney, the office of the vice president has been transformed from a tiny acorn into an unprecedented giant oak. In grasping and exercising presidential powers, Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III. The most recent invention we know of is the vice president's insistence that an executive order governing the handling of classified information in the executive branch does not reach his office because he also serves as president of the Senate. In other words, the vice president is a unique legislative-executive creature standing above and beyond the Constitution. The House judiciary committee should commence an impeachment inquiry. As Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime against the nation. Cheney's multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify....

In the end, President Bush regularly is unable to explain or defend the policies of his own administration, and that is because the heavy intellectual labor has been performed in the office of the vice president. Cheney is impeachable for his overweening power and his sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law.

Bruce Fein is an awfully conservative fellow, to the extent that I become suspicious when I find myself agreeing with him. But this story seems straight--that internal ellipsis conceals a considerable, and highly persuasive, bill of particulars. My own view of the impeachment clause, and its applicability to Cheney's behavior, is in accord with Fein's.

That does not necessarily entail the conclusion that pursuing impeachment is necessarily a good idea.

From a purely partisan Democratic perspective, a successful impeachment effort (successful here might entail a resignation for "medical reasons") would mean what, exactly? You won't have Dick to kick around any more? At this point in the Administration, the Dems likely prefer to keep making political points by kicking Dick (and Alberto) as much, and as publicly, as possible.
What is the down side? The country's interest in being free of these twin (fraternal, not identical--Cheney, whatever else, is not an incompetent empty suit) evil spirits? When has that recently influenced political behavior on the national scene?

Further, Cheney's resignation or removal would enable Bush to nominate someone new (Condi? Fred Thompson?)) who might use the new office as a springboard to the Republican Presidential nomination. While it doesn't look now like W's coattails will be that helpful in 2008, things might change.

(I should note that I, almost uniquely among my compadres, thought Bill Clinton should resign over his abuse of the public trust and misuse of his governmental subordinates during Monicagate, allowing Al Gore to become President in his stead. Would we be bemoaning this week's Supreme Court decisions had that occurred, and history unrolled differently in 2000??)

Still, dumping Cheney would, I think, be constitutionally justified and, at least in principle if not political fact, in the interest of the country and its future.

The imperial vice presidency

Salon.com: By Sidney Blumenthal

Having served as President Ford's chief of staff, [Cheney] understood intimately how control of the paper flow meant control of the decision making. In 1999, the Post reported, Cheney explained to a conference of presidential historians: 'The process of moving paper in and out of the Oval Office, who gets involved in the meetings, who does the president listen to, who gets a chance to talk to him before he makes a decision, is absolutely critical.'

Cheney has crushed the normal interagency process that permitted communication, cross-fertilization and cooperation at the sub-Cabinet level through all previous modern administrations. At the same time, he has isolated Cabinet secretaries, causing them to be fired when they contradicted him, as he did with Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill.

Cheney thrives in darkness, operating by stealth within the government, and makes a cult of secrecy. None of these insights are new, except for additional telling details...

The line between Blumenthalian polemic and simple reportage appears to have narrowed. Maybe we've reached the point that you just can't make this stuff up.

The tigress strikes

New York Times: (You know who!)

A group of high school Presidential Scholars visiting the White House on Monday surprised President Bush by slipping him a handwritten letter pleading with him to not let America become known for torture and urging him to stick to the Geneva Conventions with terror detainees.

The president reassured the teenagers that the United States does not torture. Then the vice president unleashed a pack of large dogs on the kids, running them off the White House lawn, before he shut down the Presidential Scholars program and abolished high schools. ...

The White House got another unpleasant surprise Monday when the ordinarily compliant Dick Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee who has gone along with the Bush administration on every Iraq vote, came to the Senate floor to upbraid the president on his Iraq policy in a 50-minute speech.

“Those who offer constructive criticism of the surge strategy are not defeatists, any more than those who warn against a precipitous withdrawal are militarists,” the 75-year-old senator told the deserted chamber.

Dick Cheney, the president of the Senate, immediately expelled Mr. Lugar and appointed himself the new senator from Indiana. It was a busy day of Constitutional shape-shifting for the vice president, who had earlier nominated and confirmed himself to the Supreme Court, so that he could roll back judicial decisions tempering his desire for torture galore, and then morphed back into his executive branch role to bar the door to the Oval Office sandbox and prevent Condi and Bob Gates from giving W. the plan he wanted to close down Gitmo....

A Cheney-Thompson swap?

War Room: Salon:

From the 'When Pigs Fly' Department, Sally Quinn suggests in the Washington Post today that a group of Republican 'party elders -- led by, say, John Warner -- could prevail on George W. Bush to dump Dick Cheney in favor of Fred Thompson.

Quinn's theory on Cheney: He's 'toxic' on Iraq and 'dangerous' on Iran, and surgery scheduled for this summer -- doctors will replace the batteries in Cheney's pacemaker -- provides a perfect excuse to say that it's time for the vice president to go.

Quinn's theory on Thompson: He could bring on Bush's 'better nature' while setting the Republicans up for victory in 2008. Besides, Quinn says, 'Everybody loves Fred.'

Not quite everybody. Although I thought the idea was to trade out Bush, not Cheney, and probably for Condee.

Ten Things about Dick

War Room: Salon Here's a bullet point summary from the WaPo's first installments on the VP

Angler: Better (VERY) Late Than Never?

What did the Washington Post know, and when did it know it?

Angler: 'A Different Understanding With the President'

Cheney | washingtonpost.com

"What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, incensed, sent an aide to find out. Even witnesses to the Oval Office signing said they did not know the vice president had played any part.

The episode was a defining moment in Cheney's tenure as the 46th vice president of the United States, a post the Constitution left all but devoid of formal authority. "Angler," as the Secret Service code-named him, has approached the levers of power obliquely, skirting orderly lines of debate he once enforced as chief of staff to President Gerald R. Ford. He has battled a bureaucracy he saw as hostile, using intimate knowledge of its terrain. He has empowered aides to fight above their rank, taking on roles reserved in other times for a White House counsel or national security adviser. And he has found a ready patron in George W. Bush for edge-of-the-envelope views on executive supremacy that previous presidents did not assert.

Selected highlights from Angler: Caressing The Dick

From Angler in washingtonpost.com:

"His controlled demeanor, ranging mainly from a tight-lipped gaze to the trademark half-smile, conceals what associates call an impish sense of humor and unusual kindness to subordinates."

Let it not be said that I fail to recognize the good in every (allegedly?) human soul.

A Vice President Without Borders, Bordering on Lunacy

New York Times: By Maureen Dowd (of course)

"I guess a man who can wait 14 hours before he lets it dribble out that he shot his friend in the face has no limit on what he thinks he can keep secret. Still, it’s quite a leap to go from hiding in a secure, undisclosed location in the capital to hiding in a secure, undisclosed location in the Constitution."

Vice President Exempts His Office from the Requirements for Protecting Classified Information

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform :: United States House of Representatives:

The Oversight Committee has learned that over the objections of the National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice President asserts that his office is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

As described in a letter from Chairman Waxman to the Vice President, the National Archives protested the Vice President's position in letters written in June 2006 and August 2006. When these letters were ignored, the National Archives wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in January 2007 to seek a resolution of the impasse. The Vice President's staff responded by seeking to abolish the agency within the Archives that is responsible for implementing the President's executive order.

In his letter to the Vice President, Chairman Waxman writes: 'I question both the legality and wisdom of your actions. ... [I]t would appear particularly irresponsible to give an office with your history of security breaches an exemption from the safeguards that apply to all other executive branch officials.'

A fact sheet prepared by Chairman Waxman describes other instances in which the Vice President's office has sought to avoid oversight and accountability.