The White House has had almost a week to come up with some semblance of a rationale for Dick Cheney arguing that he’s not part of the executive branch. There are some clever spin doctors in the vaunted White House communications office and some creative lawyers in the WH counsel’s office; surely someone will come up with something vaguely coherent, right? Wrong.
The explanatory task fell to White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, whose skin reddened around her neck and collar as she pleaded ignorance during the daily briefing: “I’m not a legal scholar. . . . I’m not opining on his argument that his office is making. . . . I don’t know why he made the arguments that he did.”
“It’s a little surreal,” remarked Keith Koffler of Congress Daily. “You’re telling me,” Perino agreed.
“You can’t give an opinion about whether the vice president is part of the executive branch or not?” Koffler pressed. “It’s a little bit like somebody saying, ‘I don’t know if this is my wife or not.’ “
I’ve either read the transcript or listened to the audio of every White House press briefing since 2003 and I’ve never heard anything quite like yesterday’s circus. I might have felt sorry for Dana Perino — her employers gave her an impossible task — were it not for breathtaking obstinacy.
ABC’s Martha Raddatz led off. “Does the president believe [Cheney] is part of the executive branch?” Perino refused to answer. Asked again, Perino said she’s not “opining” on the subject. CBS News’s Jim Axelrod suggested Perino was denying “sky-is-blue stuff” and pointed out that the matter revises “more than 200 years of constitutional scholarship.” Perino had nothing.
At my favorite point, Perino said, “I think that everyone is making this a little bit more complicated than it needs to be.” Moments later, when a reporter asked why she “can’t give an opinion about whether the Vice President is part of the executive branch or not,” Perino responded, “I think it’s a little bit more complicated than that.” In other words, as far as Perino was concerned reporters were making this controversy more complicated and less complicated simultaneously.
A reporter eventually said, “[Cheney] can argue he’s part of both, but he can’t possibly argue that he’s part of neither. And it seems like he’s saying he’s part of neither.” To which Perino responded, “Okay, you have me thoroughly confused.”
It was the only thing she got right the whole day.
There’s a moment in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when an obnoxious Frenchman is taunting Arthur and Galahad. After a series of abusive comments, Galahad eventually asks, “Is there someone else up there we could talk to?”
I thought about that yesterday. At one point, Perino said, in response to one of many Cheney-related questions, “I don’t know that to be true, so I’m not commenting on it.” Helen Thomas responded, “Can you send someone out here who can?”
As for Congress, Dems are dead-serious about challenging funding for the Office of the Vice President. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) said his measure will go to the floor this week (Wednesday or Thursday). “He can live off the Senate presidency budget that funds him up here,” Emanuel said. “And that’s fine.”
Senate Dems are on the case as well.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) yesterday warned Dick Cheney that his office would risk losing its budget unless the vice president agrees to follow a presidential directive ordering the protection of classified information.
Durbin chairs the Appropriations subcommittee on financial services and general government, which writes the executive-branch spending bill that funds the vice president’s budget.
Durbin’s warning came as Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), No. 3 in Democratic leadership, said that he would “seriously consider” joining House counterparts in seeking to yank funding for Cheney’s office after the vice president contended that his office is a hybrid entity that is neither legislative nor executive.
Stay tuned.