Washington — Years ago, Lamar Alexander, the senator from Tennessee, told me of a lesson he had learned as a young man on the White House staff: It is always useful for the president to have at least one aide who has had a successful career already, who does not need the job, and therefore can offer candid advice. When he was governor of Tennessee, Alexander made sure he had such a man on his staff.
Later, when presidential candidate George Bush chose Dick Cheney as his vice presidential running mate, I applauded the choice, thinking that Cheney would fill the role Alexander had outlined. Boy, was I wrong.
The role model for Alexander was Bryce Harlow, the diminutive, modest and universally trusted White House player in the Eisenhower and Nixon years. Cheney, as described in a breathtakingly detailed series in The Washington Post this week by reporters Bart Gellman and Jo Becker, is something else.
What they discovered, in a year of work that reveals more about the inner workings of this White House than any previous reporting, is a vice president who used the broad authority given him by a complaisant chief executive to bend the decision-making process to his own ends and purposes, often overriding Cabinet officers and other executive branch officials along the way.
Cheney used his years of experience, as a former White House chief of staff, as the secretary of defense and as the House Republican whip - and all the savvy that moved him into those positions - to amass power and use it in the Bush White House. He was more than a match for the newcomers to the White House and he outfoxed even the veterans of past administrations when it came to the bureaucratic wars.
He was not the ultimate decision-maker. Bush retained that authority and he used it to decide on war in Iraq, the final numbers in the budget and who got to sit on the Supreme Court. But Cheney shaped all of those decisions with his recommendations to the president - and often in ways that were unknown to the other players and unseen by Congress and the public.
Secrecy was one of his tools and weapons, and his lawyers - Scooter Libby first and now David Addington - frustrated other policymakers by their willingness to shape or reshape the law to suit Cheney's arguments.
It is easy to see why former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was recommended for the job by Cheney, complained afterward that "there is no policy process," because the decision-making was often short-circuited by the vice president's private access to the Oval Office.
O'Neill was not alone in feeling that way. The secretary of state, the national security adviser and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board also discovered to their surprise that Cheney had gone behind their backs to get his way with the president.
What Gellman and Becker have described is a decision-making process in which Bush has allowed Cheney to play a bureaucratic role inside the White House that Cheney never permitted anyone else to employ when he was guarding the door as Gerald Ford's chief of staff.
He could exercise the power only with the compliance of the president and only because he could often bypass the procedures he had put in place in the previous administration in which he had served in order to protect the president's interests. He used his intelligence and his grasp on the levers of power - and most of all he used secrecy - to outflank and outwit others and thereby shape the agenda of the administration.
It was not illegal and it was not unconstitutional, but it could not have happened unless the president, George Bush, permitted it and enabled it. And ultimately, he is responsible for what has become, in very large respects, the resulting wreckage of foreign policy, national security policy, budget policy, energy policy and environmental policy under Cheney's direction and on Cheney's watch.
Where I thought, mistakenly, that it would be a great advantage to Bush to have a White House partner without political succession in mind, it has turned out to be altogether too liberating an environment for a political entrepreneur of surpassing skill operating under an exceptional cloak of secrecy.
Thanks to Gellman and Becker, some of that secrecy has been removed.
Comments
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freeordie (anonymous) says…
Let's get rid of this dangerous official. He bastardizes our political system.
snap_pop_no_crackle (anonymous) says…
Some people are going to be so disappointed when Bush & Cheney leave the White House in a perfectly normal fashion after the next election/inauguration.
dorothyhr (Dorothy Hoyt-Reed) says…
572 days left. It can't get over too soon. I won't be disappointed at all. It will be a wonderful day, but who's counting.
crazyks (anonymous) says…
If they actually leave...what happens if they refuse to?
Oracle_of_Rhode (anonymous) says…
Save Face. Impeach Cheney Now.
dorothyhr (Dorothy Hoyt-Reed) says…
If Bush/Cheney refuse to go when the time comes, this pacifist will take to the streets to take back the country. And I won't be alone, and it won't only be liberals out there. It will be anyone who loves our country.
RalphReed (Ralph Reed) says…
Here's a little something to help you all pass the time.
http://www.backwardsbush.com/
RalphReed (Ralph Reed) says…
Windlass
Is this what you were looking for?
http://www.futurecasts.com/Monk,%20Th...
Kontum1972 (anonymous) says…
americans should really be afraid of what these guys have done..the world should be afraid .......just look at cheney's eyes in his pics...there is nothing but evil in there....we have seen the enemy...and the enemy is dick cheney..!
the guy gives me the creeps...he is satan..!
snap_pop_no_crackle (anonymous) says…
scene has a slight attribution deficiency issue. He wears his fingers down to little nubs by doing "copy/paste" all day long.
dorothyhr (Dorothy Hoyt-Reed) says…
Where are all the conservatives? Why aren't the defending their lord and master?
RalphReed (Ralph Reed) says…
Don't be catty DHR
Windlass, here's another link
http://www.constitutioncenter.org/con...
cowboy (anonymous) says…
listening to anyone defend the republican machine , Bush and Cheney proves the fact that you can fool some of the people all of the time. These enemies of America should be publicly impeached. Tar and feathers should also be reinstated as legitimate penalties for these two.
snap_pop_no_crackle (anonymous) says…
scene's got his cranky-pants on today.
dorothyhr (Dorothy Hoyt-Reed) says…
Cheney - executive branch - He isn't a moron, he's trying to live above the law. Try defending Cheney without bringing up anything about Clinton. You can't do it. Focus on Cheney. Focus on the here and now. Then tell me how he can get away with claiming he's not in the executive branch? He disregards our constitution. I wish the courts would laugh him right out of Washington.
dorothyhr (Dorothy Hoyt-Reed) says…
If Cheney considers himself a part of the legislative branch, he should immediately lose his Secret Service body guards, cut his staff down to that of any Senator, and move his office into the Senators area. He also should not be allowed to sit in on any executive department meetings. Also I guess he gets to give up executive privilege, so Congress can now call him to testify under oath. You can't have it both ways.
kchuskerfan (anonymous) says…
Hmmm. Refusing to turn over records and tapes to a congressional committee.. I'll confess to being a moderately conservative republican. Most know that already. However, I am not comfortable with Cheney's assertions and would agree that he's overstepped his powers. It is ironic and I keep looking for Woodward & Bernstein to keep digging. As with Nixon, the decision to dig in as opposed to opening up, admitting what was done, could result in damage to the country and the party. What's REALLY scary to me is the thought of both being impeached and putting "Damascus Nancy" in the chair. Could be a Carter-esque economic and international disaster if that happened, in my opinion. Sigh... At least the conversation will at least restore the original context around what "deep throat" was versus Willy-Jeff's "application" with the intern.
ndmoderate (anonymous) says…
(In my best whiny R_T voice) Ohh, you called us idiots. I'm hurt. I need to go lay down and think about my bruised psyche.
ndmoderate (anonymous) says…
I'm so thankful that R_T and Ferd can see so clearly into the future! So tell me (since you are both psychic)...how will the Iraqi occupation pan out? Will we "win?" Or will we "stand down when they stand up?" Or something else?
dorothyhr (Dorothy Hoyt-Reed) says…
This article is about Cheney. Anyone want to defend his stance without talking about the past? I was referencing this article. Note that this is a presidential order, not congress.
"Democratic senators on Sunday chided Vice President Dick Cheney for declaring his office exempt from sections of a presidential order involving matters of national security. Republicans, more cautiously, said the matter deserves review."
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2007/jun...
Now do you think you can defend this stance by staying on subject, and not deflecting the issue to the Clintons? The Vice President is a member of the executive branch. He chairs the Senate and can use his influence to push legislation (as can the president and really anyone else in the country), and can be the deciding vote in a tie. But his legislative powers stop there. Vice president in our constitution is a member of the executive branch.
markoo (anonymous) says…
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. I leave you for a coupla years and I come back to see you're still pointing all fingers at Clinton. Well at least I'll always know you'll be forever consistent!
So how's the LJ forums here holding up?
markoo (anonymous) says…
And Kevin, when did you come up with the name "ferdinandlanghoff"? What happened to Arminius?
temperance (anonymous) says…
Actually, Ferdinand, you'll want to talk with Cheney to get you're story straight because he's backed away from his "I'm in both branches and therefore in neither" lunacy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/was...
As in duck hunting, you have to follow the moving target . . .
deec (anonymous) says…
I tried this with one other liberal here and he made a fool of himself. I'll try it with you. Let's say you were president on August 6, 2001 and read that PDB. What action(s) would you have taken to prevent 9/11?
I did answer this with some specific suggestions, at which point, as I recall, you stopped posting on that thread.
I am not a "him". I am a daughter, mother, aunt, grandmother, ex-wife.
common_cents (anonymous) says…
b3 sez:
"How many terrorist attacks on the US have there been since? Whats that? Zero! You dont say!"
Are you f****** high? What would you call all those people who keep blowing up our troops in Iraq? Are those not attacks on the US, or are they not terrorists?
Now wait a second.... I was under the impression that all these attacks were NOT by terrorists, but were instead by Iraqi's wanting the U.S. out of their country. There are no terrorists, only innocent bystanders of an America gone crazy!
Which is it?
deec (anonymous) says…
On a completely unrelated note,
Court to rehear detainee cases
In a startling turn of events in the legal combat over the war on terrorism, the Supreme Court on Friday agreed to reconsider the appeals of the Guantanamo Bay detainee cases. It vacated its April 2 order denying review of the two packets of cases. The Court then granted review, consolidated the cases, and said they would be heard in a one-hour argument in the new Term starting Oct. 1.
The order also said that new briefs will be sought, after the D.C. Circuit rules in pending cases on how judicial review is to work for detainees under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.
http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/
erod0723 (anonymous) says…
I'm sure somebody has already touched on this, but I have been away for a bit and felt compelled to address this idiocy.
Anonymous user
b3 (Anonymous) says:
Cheney and Bush have done an outstanding job in bringing this country out of the darkages that were the clinton years.
Umm... Yeah... you are truly an idiot... Under Clinton, we had a budget surplus, the economy was doign well, we had good relations with the rest of the world, we weren't involved in an idiotic war in Iraq. Other than that, I suppose you are completely correct. Go pray to your idol of Catherin Coulter you extremist.
camper (anonymous) says…
I think Dick Cheney knew his buddy made a good shot, probably knew his vicinity, but became excited when some additional birds flew up. If they were fishing, the worst thing that could have happened would be snagging his mate with his lure.