The Cheney Branch of government

June 22, 2007

The fact that Dick Cheney considers his office exempt from executive-branch rules seems to have captured the political world’s attention over the last 24 hours, thanks to a report issued by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman. Rahm Emanuel is hammering the VP over the argument, and the media has picked up on Cheney’s bizarre claim. Consider the lede from today’s LA Times:

For the last four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has made the controversial claim that his office is not fully part of the Bush administration in order to exempt it from a presidential order regulating federal agencies’ handling of classified national security information, officials said Thursday.

Cheney has held that his office is not fully part of the executive branch of government despite the continued objections of the National Archives, which says his office’s failure to demonstrate that it has proper security safeguards in place could jeopardize the government’s top secrets.

What strikes me as interesting about all of this is that it’s actually old news. Cheney started holding himself out as some kind of independent, unaccountable, pseudo-fourth branch of government way back in February. The blogs noticed, and explained how spectacularly crazy the argument is, but the media yawned. No one pushed the White House to explain, Congress barely lifted an eyebrow, and everyone just moved on, satisfied that Dick Cheney had established his own superbranch.

Indeed, yesterday’s report from Waxman wasn’t actually about Cheney’s bizarre claim on power; it was actually about Cheney’s efforts to abolish the federal agency that was trying to oversee his activities.

It’s interesting — and if anyone can explain the reasoning, I’m all ears — but the same important story that was ignored in February is suddenly fascinating in June. The same questions that bloggers asked then are unexpectedly interesting to everyone else now.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m delighted to see everyone asking, “Does Cheney really think this”? But I am curious: what took the rest of the political world so long?

I hope Digby won’t mind, but her post from February raises questions that still deserve attention.

This makes Dick Nixon’s theories of presidential power look like childs’ play. When I asked if Cheney had “found” a fourth branch of government in position that until a decade or so ago was considered a seat warmer for a presidential run and the designated state funeral stand-in for the president, I didn’t realize they were actually setting this forth as a legal argument. Dear God.

This means that he considers himself even more “unitary” than he considers the president, beyond all reach of either branch, answerable to no one.

Cheney is refusing to comply with a presidential executive order. What do you suppose the Empty Codpiece feels about this? Does he know that his Vice president believes he has an independent office that doesn’t answer to him or anyone else?

As for the OVP’s argument that it is not bound by rules governing the executive branch, the Justice Department told the NYT that the matter is “currently under review in the department.”

Honestly, it shouldn’t take a long time to resolve.

It’s true! Cheney isn’t part of the Executive Branch. He’s a member of the Senate!

  • He’s not part of the government, he’s part of the Axis of Evil. Can’t the Army blockade him or something?

  • This certainly highlights the media’s failure to even understand the crucial questions involving constitutional issues and the mismanagement of government, including top secret information.

    The MSM ought to be ashamed for even failing to ask basic questions. It’s a question of accountability.

    If taken at full face value, that Dick’s not part of the executive branch, then executive privilege doesn’t apply to him. ‘Fess up, Dick, on all those meetings you’ve had that you’ve had teh Secret Service shred the visitor logs for. I’m sure there are a lot of things that we would like to ask him about as well.

    The question is, if Dick’s not part of the executive branch, then who is he accountable to? Don’t give me the “American people” BS because (a) that isn’t provided for in the Constitution, a document that many wingnuts fail to read; and (b) accountability as in checks and balances are replete throughout the government and a fourth branch that is neither/or isn’t part of it.

    And if he isn’t part of the exec branch, neither is he part of the legislative branch or much less the judicial branch, then there is no need to fund his office, salary, or activities. He can move from the Naval Observatory and pay for his own salary with Halliburton money as well as that of David S. Addington.

    Arguing with a straight face that Dick is part of the legislative branch because he breaks ties as the President of the Senate is about the same as arguing as GWB is part of the legislative branch since he implements vetoes.

    Someone should have the balls to ask George if he thinks that Dick is not part of the executive branch. That ought to be during one of those public speeches with a question and answer period so his answer can be on the record.

  • N.Wells wrote: “Can’t the Army blockade him or something?”

    They could try, but I suspect that Cheney, in true Gozilla-like fashion, would just toss around the ships and tanks like they’re toys – and then would go on a rampage through downtown Tokyo, just for kicks.

  • It’s really what Gore said: The MSM is so misdirected thinking the world wants to hear more stories about Paris, or Anna Nicole or Tuberculosis Man, or stories about weather, and more weather related tragedies (I guess Katrina was good for ratings), and the newest drug discovery (I know the pharmaceutical industry is very good to evening news), that the politics and power abuses are overlooked to the point of negligence in reporting. An obvious answer to Steve’s question, but I think Steve’s question was almost a rhetorical one. On NBC last night, not one word about the Senate issueing subpoenaes to the White House.

  • Walt wrote: “It’s really what Gore said: The MSM is so misdirected thinking the world wants to hear more stories about Paris, or Anna Nicole or Tuberculosis Man…”

    I personally think that historians will look back years from now and say that a bellwether moment for the media was the point that Fox’s John Gibson mocked Anderson Cooper for the nonstop war coverage, saying, “Oh, ‘There’s a war on! There’s a war on!’ Maybe, just maybe, people are a little weary, Mr. Cooper, of your war coverage, and they’d like a little something else.”

  • If he’s not part of the executive branch then he can’t claim “executive privilege”.

  • Like many of the avant-garde legal interpretations from Cheney’s lawyers, this theory is not actually intended to make sense, but just to appear to make enough sense to confuse things. Disputing it will take time, and possibly end up in court for years until he’s out of office, and in the meantime he does what he wants while pretending to be defending some important principle.

    It is the most corrosive approach to the rule of law possible, mocking the whole idea of law.

  • I read on another web site that Cheney went all the way to the Supreme Court to fight to keep secret his meetings with oil executives.

    Wouldn’t that case be premised on the fact that Cheney was part of the executive branch and subject to executive privilege?

    If so, then Cheney’s argument holds no water. But I don’t have the case itself so I don’t know what was said in it.

  • I swear, Cheney could give Palpatine lessons in how to manipulate the machinery of government. This man doesn’t have a redeeming molecule in his body. I have looked in the face of evil, and it is Dick.

    BTW, what is it about guys with the name Dick and their propensity to abuse the constitution?

  • 1. Independence, along with a sense of duty to the public, in the MSM is a long forgotten thing of the past. The major broadcast news outlets are owned or controlled by very big conservative money interests
    ~ an unintended consequence of Watergate.

    2. There are 435 Congressmen and 100 Senators who’s job it is to rein this shit in and to force accountability but they won’t. The GOP is a subsidiary of the folks who own the MSM, and the Dems, apparently, are anybody’s whores.

    There’s a reason why GWB’s approval ratings are eleven points higher than Congresses’.

    Hell, I like GWB better than I like Congress.

  • The Vice-President is not part of legislative branch he serves ex officio as the President of the Senate. Ex officio means “by right of office.” By right of office of the Vice-President of the United States, Dick Cheney is the President of the Senate.

  • What I would like to ask Cheney is, “Would your view of the role of the vice-president as being essentially exempt from any oversight, and your view of the president as the unitary executive change in any way if there were a Democratic administration in power?”

    I don’t think he can answer this truthfully – if he says yes, it would be different, then he his hypocrisy and partisanship are showing. If he says no, he’s just given tacit permission to future administrations, regardless of party.

    Aside from the implications of allowing this to stand while Bush and Cheney are in office, the bigger problem is the precedent it sets for future administrations. I would not be any more comfortable with such unbridled power in the hands of Democrats than I am with it in the hands of the current Republican occupants.

  • Cheney’s impact on the media and apparently on Bush is remarkable. I’ve even read bloggers using some of his irritating language such as Cheney’s use of the phrase, “If you will,” as in, “The insurgency, if you will, is in its last throes.” It’s garbage English. What is, “If you will,” supposed to mean? If you will what? Follow and accept the premise of my bullshit argument? The lie I am about to tell? Another one of his habits is to insert the term, “In fact” into his sentences as in, “We know Saddam, in fact, posseses WMDs.” This is one of those Orwellian terms Repubs are fond of using. “In fact” is usually a lie masquerading as self-evident truth. Maybe it’s another manifestation of “truthiness” when, in Cheney’s case it really means “lie-iness.” Or should I say, it means, in fact, “lie-iness.” I hope that when this dark, evil presence leaves the stage nobody in public life will use these pretentiously useless phrases again.

  • …Rahm Emanuel is hammering the VP over the argument…

    “Today, we discovered that everything we learned in U.S. government class was wrong. Evidently, the Vice President does not consider himself a part of the executive branch, and therefore believes he can obstruct meaningful oversight and avoid being held accountable. If the Vice President truly believes he is not a part of the executive branch, he should return the salary the American taxpayers have been paying him since January 2001, and move out of the home for which they are footing the bill.”

    To use a term that Alberto “I Think That I Recall” Gonzales used to characterize the Geneva Conventions: That’s quaint. And I’d never characterize a hammer as “quaint,” CB.

    Rahm is all talk and no action, until he uses the phrase “Support House Resolution 333.”

  • If Cheney’s theory of the vice presidency was correct, then the VP candidate shouldn’t be on the same ticket as the presidential candidate. The American public should elect the VP separately. Because they are on the same ticket, they’re elected as a team. The Executive team.

  • I am curious: what took the rest of the political world so long?

    The short answer would involve explaining the base motivations of the various powerful entities that didn’t bark. The media I can understand, it’s owned by people who profit greatly from the current paradigm, their financial stakes in the Republican party are obvious. But the Democratic “representatives” are more puzzling. Do they not see how Cheney’s power grab undercuts their own power? Are they THAT stupid?

    It looks like they really are.

  • It should be easy to provide in the appropriations bill for the White House that no funds may be expended for the Office of the Vice President unless he acknowledges he is within the Executive Branch and subject to Executive Orders.

  • Apparently most of us didn’t realize the Office of the Vice President had been subcontracted out to Halliburton.

  • Stop looking at it from Cheney’s side. The Legislative branch funds his office. If he will not cooperate with the ligislative branch or come under their jurisdiction then stop funding his office. If he thinks he is a fourth branch of government then he should get the fifth branch of government to fund him. If you say there is no fifth branch, yeah well, there is no fourth branch either.
    Stop funding his office. He has no powers but for the ones the other branches allow him.
    Hell, every republican would like to keep everything they do secret. The party of hypocrisy.
    Impeach the fourth branch leader.

  • Now this I thought was a tasty little twist in the ribs:

    “If the OVP is not considered an entity within the executive branch, I am concerned that this could impede access to classified information by OVP staff, in that such access would be considered a disclosure outside the executive branch.” — Director of the Information Security Oversight Office, J. William Leonard.

    So, the Vice Snake’s neck is neatly pinioned by a cleft stick.

  • Context is everything.

    It’s interesting — and if anyone can explain the reasoning, I’m all ears — but the same important story that was ignored in February is suddenly fascinating in June. The same questions that bloggers asked then are unexpectedly interesting to everyone else now. — CB.

    I’m all ears, and I’m all thumbs.
    The jelly needs to set before the cream & cherry topping makes sense.

  • Oh, it was mentioned all right. Dan Froomkin put it in the online Washington Post blog–on Saturday. Great way to say, “we did cover the story, we didn’t suppress it” while assigning coverage only to the online blog appearing on a dead-news day.

    And Froomkin’s coverage is hardly more than, Wow, look at what the Vice President’s doing–why, there he goes again! He’s doing it again! Could this possibly, just maybe, be, like, you know, wrong?

    He even slips him a backwards compliment: describing the Veep as having “audacity.”

  • “It’s interesting — and if anyone can explain the reasoning, I’m all ears”

    As I answered in a post at Liberal Values today:

    Actually the reasoning, while not satisfactory, is fairly clear. The media, unlike the blogosphere, doesn’t care about abstract stories about Constitutional issues. That’s why we see so little about problems such as the break down of the checks and balances of government, the abuses of the K Street Project, and the violations of separation of Church and State. However, once Cheney’s view became significant in the coverage of a political battle between Cheney and Congress it suddenly became news. The news media which has little interest in ideas does always love a good fight.

  • This sort of action by the OVP should come as no surprise given the fact that the office won’t even allow its personnel to be included in a standard White House directory. To call the OVP secretive is a gross understatement.

    In a “free and open” society such as ours, such behavior should sound the alarms far and wide.

    “Danger, Will Robinson!”, indeed.

  • Sixty years ago the National Security Act was signed and our country was bifurcated into above ground transparency and below ground “shadow government.” Enter the “baby Boom”like Nemo entering the Matrix of the Military Industrial complex-Nat. Security state but raised with the illusion of a transparent Democracy and you have a schism , oscillating for the entirety of the “cold war” while the subterranean influences metasticised into a malignancy of subterfuge and lies…Cheney is the latest dupe of this “other” government of secrets, ironically he’s speaking the truth, he serves another master, and it’s not the Democracy our fore fathers intended, by and for the people.

    • Comments are closed.