I don’t mean to be poli sci geek every day, but I have to admit being fascinated by Dick Cheney’s views on the power of the presidency. It says a great deal about this White House, but it also hints at a problem that Cheney seems unaware of.
Bob Woodward apparently got Cheney to talk a bit about how the VP views the historic struggle between co-equal branches of government for power.
Vice President Cheney said in an interview that the proper power of the presidency has finally been restored after being diminished in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate, and that President Bush contributed to the process by not allowing his narrow victory in the 2000 election to inhibit him during his first term.
“Even after we went through all of that, he never wanted to allow, correctly, the closeness of our election to in any way diminish the power of the presidency, lead him to make a decision that he needed to somehow trim his sails, and be less than a fully authorized, if you will, commander in chief, leader of our government, president of the United States,” Cheney said in an interview last month that will be broadcast tomorrow night on “Inside the Presidency,” a documentary on the History Channel.
What an odd justification for obstinacy. Bush came into office in 2000 despite losing but governed as if he’d won a 50-state landslide. Compromise and negotiating in good faith were not only foreign to the Bush gang, they were irrelevant. But to hear Cheney tell it, this wasn’t because a rigid ideologue had taken power; it’s because Bush and Cheney wanted to “restore” power to the presidency. How generous of them.
Indeed, there’s a remarkable coincidence between the Bush gang’s ideology/political agenda and concerns over the power of the executive branch of government. One seems to offer a compelling excuse for the other.
The White House, for example, initially refused a request by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks to allow national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify, on the grounds that it would erode the separation of powers between the executive branch. Eventually the White House relented, and she testified.
Cheney himself has been in the middle of a controversy over shielding the internal workings of the 2001 energy task force he headed. Public interest groups sued to be allowed to examine the task force’s records, but the case has been tied up in the courts.
It gets really scary when you consider Cheney’s views on a crisis like Reagan’s Iran-Contra affair.
Cheney said that the “low point” of presidential power occurred at the beginning of Gerald R. Ford’s presidency and that “over time” it has been restored, despite such challenges as the Iran-contra investigation under President Ronald Reagan, which Cheney characterized as an attempt to “criminalize a policy difference” between the president and Congress.
Stunning. Congress told Reagan not to give money to the Contras, so Reagan illegally sold arms to a sworn enemy and funneled money to the Contras anyway. This, as far as Cheney was a “policy difference” that Congress tried to “criminalize”? This clearly suggests that Cheney believes the crime was not only justified, but that any president should have the authority to take similar steps as he or she sees fit.
It’s the kind of view that empowers a White House to see a political landscape in which there are literally no limits. Torture, outing undercover CIA agents, waging war under false pretenses, lying to Congress about the cost and scope of legislation, abusing non-partisan government offices for partisan gain, ignoring federal laws and treaties when they become burdensome — they’re all perfectly acceptable because, as Cheney sees it, the power of the president demands it. It’s Schlesinger’s imperial presidency run amok.
Cheney appears to view checks and balances as an inconvenient obstacle to circumvent and a system of co-equal branches as, to borrow a phrase, “quaint and obsolete.” To that extent, the Bush gang has been successful in creating a power structure that throws accountability out the window. But there was a point that Cheney and Woodward missed: Bush has consolidated power in the White House to a historic degree, but only because Congress let him.
Historically, Congress has enjoyed the most power of the three branches and has always fought tooth-and-nail to maintain control over the government’s political agenda. Under Bush, Republican majorities in both chambers have decided to abdicate responsibility voluntarily. As Robert Kaiser wrote a year ago:
[T]he fact that the House (and, not quite as starkly this winter, the Senate) can sit passively by in the midst of war, the prospect of record-setting budget and trade deficits and countless other national dilemmas is a symptom of a momentous change in the status of the legislative branch, whose powers were considered so important that the writers of the Constitution enumerated them in Article I, leaving the presidency and judiciary for Articles II and III.
In fundamental ways that have gone largely unrecognized, Congress has become less vigilant, less proud and protective of its own prerogatives, and less important to the conduct of American government than at any time in decades. “Congress has abdicated much of its responsibility,” Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel said in a recent conversation. “It could become an adjunct to the executive branch.”
Indeed, Bush is more of a prime minister than president while Congress has decided that its historic responsibilities should be replaced by conditions whereby they simply accept marching orders from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Ask yourself: when was the last time a policy initiative started in Congress?
The Bush White House shows disdain for Congress, and lawmakers respond, “Thank you sir; may I have another?” The executive and the legislative branches were designed to be competing bodies, as part of a dynamic that ensures checks and balances. Instead we have one party leader, who’s supposed to be executing the laws, directing his governing party, which is supposed to be writing the laws.
As Congress’ role diminishes, the structural changes have an impact on the political process overall. Congress works less, in a more divisive fashion, in an environment where principal takes a back seat to victory. All the while, the president believes he only has one “accountability moment,” which passes and leads to a government of anything goes.