4th Installment of the WaPo series on Cheney: “Leaving No Tracks.”
(He must’ve left some or how did they get the story?)
Oh, he left tracks, he just didn’t worry about them, since the Republicans were certain to dominate American politics for the forseeable future.
Yes, it is worse. Nixon, for all his faults, actually had some redeeming qualities and at least had some admirable goals. And Tricky Dick didn’t abuse the office of the vice president when he was Ike’s vP. Bush/Cheney’s approach has been “screw everyone else, we’re going to take care of our supporters”. Turn a surplus into a massive deficit- who cares, the rich got a massive tax cut. Gut environmental regulations- so what, our friends have bigger profits.
Putting this all in perspective:
When Cheney denied he was in the executive branch, that was for purposes of failure to comply with a presidential directive, applying to all executive offices, on record-keeping and securing classified information and oversight by the National Archives. A directive W now says he never mean to apply to Cheney’s office or his own.
Well, it’s a presidential directive, not a piece of Congressional legislation. Who else but the president should get to interpret it?
Which does not mean Congress cannot enact some legislation that would put the president’s and VP’s offices under the same degree of record-keeping oversight.
Hint, hint.
(According to the U.S. Code, the Archivist has the same authority over vice-presidential records as presidential records.
Which does not necessarily determine the matter WRT interpretation of a non-legislative presidential directive.)
I agree. However now that the path has been illuminated it won’t be all that difficult for those with vast sums of money to duplicate the pattern.
It doesn’t need to be a simpleton president and unscupulous vice president. A con man president would be just as bad.
There’s something about being president that has been known to turn even the most balanced heads. FDR got pissed because the Supreme Court kept ruling against his New Deal measures. So he tried to increase the Supreme Court to 12 justices so he could appoint three who would be more favorable to him.
Take that propensity and a lack of scruples …+
Yes, congress could do that. It would be vetoed and there aren’t the votes to override the veto.
I think it’s necessary to remember that the Democrats don’t really control the Senate. Fifty to forty nine and many of the Democrats elected in 2006 are from Republican districts and are either conservative themselves or have to act like it to keep their seats.
According to DailKos, the reason Cheney wants to avoid scrutiny may be that his office has been (with W’s authorization) raiding the budgets of other executive offices, including the president’s, the Council on Environmental Quality, the “faith-based initiatives,” etc. – up to 10% of their accounts.
What would the VP’s Office do with that much money?!
I agree, it fact, it is the point I asked about earlier. As much as this stinks of disingenuousness and disrespect for law, it is small potatoes compared to Cheney’s track record of secrecy and manipulation (well documented in that Washington Post series, BTW–thanks for the links!). Legally, I can’t see why the issue came up at all, since Executive Orders are the prerogative of the president anyway.
From the Rude Pundit:
Follow the link to the rest of the list.
I, for one, welcome our new Slime Beast Overlords …
Ok, sorry.
Clinton got a lot of heat for his semantics mongering. What is Cheney going to get? My guess is some vague grumbling, but nothing will actually be done by the Congress, which even under the Democrats is redefining the word spineless: I’ve seen more political courage from planaria.
In the long run, the irony is that I suspect Cheney & Co. are doing severe harm to the power of the executive branch. Cheney is so gung-ho on executive authority in time of war, blah, blah, but the backlash against the executive branch is coming, and it is going to be severe.
Agnew was involved to the extent that he was Nixon’s attack dog - drumming up support for the “Silent Majority.”
Of course, I don’t think Cheney has come up with anything quite as mellifluous as “nattering nabobs of negativity.”
Good ol’ Spiro! Somewhere, I have a vinyl record of his wit and wisdom, picked up on impulse at a used record store in Ybor City, Tampa, that no longer exists. He was probably the last American politician to refer to “the Establishment” as something he was supporting rather than opposing (and close to the last to use the term at all).
Neither did Agnew. Bill Safire did, back when he was getting paid to write Republican campaign speeches by the Republicans themselves.
Heh-heh-heh . . . A Senate panel is cutting off funding for the Vice-President’s Office until Cheney complies with the executive order on record-keeping. 
Congress and the Senate were complicit in the Bush debacle. They had the votes and passed everything Cheney and Bush asked for.
May not be effective, given the rumor is that the VP’s office is raiding the budgets of other offices.
For myself - I think it is clear that when the Vice-President acts as an agent for presidential authority or in a capacity as advisor to the President then the VP is a member of the Executive branch. I also think thae argument that the Vice President is “sometimes” a member of the legislative branch runs into a couple of serious issues fairly quickly.
[ol][li]The President also exercises legislative power (signing, allowing to pass, or vetoing a bill are all legislative functions) but nobody would buy the argument that the President is not a member of the Executive branch.[/li][li]It’s been a long time since my high school civics class, but I seem to recall that the US Constitution specifcally prohibits a member of the Legislative branch from serving in the Executive branch, and that should a Speaker-of-the-House ever succeed to the office of President he would be required to resign his legislative office first.[/ol][/li]
Really, though, does anybody really believe that the Constitutional nuances are hwat is driving this question? The OVP wishes to exercise Executive authority without submitting to oversight. They will be successful in doing so to exactly the extent that the other branches of government choose to allow.
I did have one interesting question about this, though. Does anybody know under what authority the OVP would be applying classification to document if it is not acting as a part of the Executive branch? Do members of the legislative branch have the authority to classify documents without Congressional review?
It now appears Ashcroft granted Cheney’s office an open line to the DoJ WRT to all its ongoing investigations. Presumably that still remains in place.