I admit it; I used to think Dick Cheney had a clue.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never liked Cheney, his conservative ideology, or his hyper-partisanship, but when Bush was inaugurated, I took some comfort in believing that Cheney was at least an experienced government official, which is far more than we can say about his boss.
Josh Marshall, of Talking Points Memo fame, helped dispel the myth of Cheney’s competence earlier this year in a must-read article from the Washington Monthly.
In fact, Marshall’s thesis — that Cheney has quietly orchestrated almost every White House screw up since Bush took office — is very persuasive. Marshall recounts, step-by-step, just how ineffectual Cheney has been.
Let’s see, it was Cheney who tapped the tormented Paul O’Neill to be Secretary of the Treasury, Cheney who denounced U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, Cheney who created the fiasco surrounding the White House energy task force, Cheney who decided to forgo the recommendations of the Hart-Rudman anti-terrorism commission before 9/11, Cheney who fought against tough corporate-accountability measures at the height of the corporate scandals in the summer of 2002, and Cheney at the heart of the Halliburton headache that continues to plague the administration.
Since then, Cheney has been the most consistently dishonest White House official in defending Bush’s invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.
All of this led Mary Lynn F. Jones and Thomas Schaller to write an interesting op-ed in today’s LA Times asking if Cheney has actually become a “liability” to Bush.
Jones-Schaller point out that Cheney, putting aside his foreign policy failures, hasn’t even had any success in getting Bush’s domestic agenda passed in Congress, despite GOP majorities in the House and Senate.
“Cheney is the administration’s chief legislative officer, responsible for shepherding its priorities through Congress,” Jones and Schaller wrote. “He’s a regular presence at the weekly Senate Republican policy lunches. He also is the first vice president to maintain offices in both chambers. As a former House minority whip, Cheney is surpassed by few in knowing what makes the institution run.”
Yet, as Jones and Schaller noted, Cheney’s Capitol Hill efforts have been largely unsuccessful.
“Congress has publicly rebuffed the administration on a series of legislative matters,” Jones and Schaller explained. “Barring late reversals, the White House defeats will include changes in overtime regulations, the FCC’s ruling on media consolidation and the end of the travel ban to Cuba, despite veto threats from the president. Other bills, such as Washington, D.C., school vouchers and Head Start funding, have passed the House by a single vote. Several judicial nominees, such as Charles Pickering, have yet to win Senate confirmation.”
Jones and Schaller believe that Cheney was supposed to be the guy who could help the administration run. They actually go so far as to suggest replacing him on the ticket next year.
“The vice president’s experience in Washington was supposed to balance Bush’s lack of expertise in that area,” Jones and Schaller concluded. “If Cheney, who was elected six times to Congress, can’t hold together a GOP Congress for a Republican president, perhaps Bush needs to tap someone else for the job.”
Of course, this is not going to happen. If Bush replaced Cheney on the ticket, it would be admitting a mistake, which as we all know, just does not happen.
Besides, I’m not sure if I want to see this happen anyway. If Bush got rid of Cheney, he might tap a popular figure from a state with a lot of electoral votes for next year. I’d rather see him stick with Cheney (Wyoming — 3 electoral votes) and give the Dems a big target for campaign criticism next year.