When the governor of Texas asks you to do something…

July 17, 2007

It’s a busy news day, but I wanted to take a moment to share something I found amusing.

Dick Cheney offered The Weekly Standard’s Stephen F. Hayes enormous access for his new love letter book, “Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President,” and TNR has been chronicling some entertaining excerpts. In today’s edition, Cheney tells Hayes why he agreed to be Bush’s running mate.

“If the president of the United States asks you to do something, you really have an obligation to try to do it, if you can.”

Hayes apparently didn’t follow up, which is a shame. When Bush asked Cheney to join the ticket, he wasn’t president of the United States.

For that matter, Cheney personally led the search for the slot — and chose himself.

Other than that, however, the anecdote is terrific.

Cheney knew even then the vote was rigged, so in essence when Bush “asked ” him to be Veep, Bush was in fact already President./ snark

  • The next Democratic president should “request” that Cheney remand himself to the Hague in January of 2009. I’m sure Mr Cheney will do his best to cooperate.

  • When you are not part of an executive branch of government, all executives look the same.

  • It has become plainly evident that G.W.Bush may sit in the Oval Office but Dick Cheney is the Oval Office Vizier and DoorKeeper who may be titled with Vice-President but accords himself more as being a WH Regent and his authority and power exercised as that of a WH Regency.

    Clearly Dick Cheney has taken the constitutional position of VP to a level of direct,indirect and inferred power exercise not seen before in WH history.

    Whether this having taken place is seen as good,bad or being of little or no matter it has taken place and moved the VP position into new regions not charted before.

    Five years from now perhaps a more complete,taken apart and put back together montage will have formed about what Dick Cheney is doing and what he did as VP behind G.W.Bush. Ten years out it should be fully known for certain what kind of WH Regent Dick Cheney is,was or sought to be.

    It should be certain even now given the dearth of accurate portraiture that Dick Cheney is a dangerous manifestation of hidden hand agenda set and control and driven,unilateral policy formation and pursuit.

    One can safely conclude that should Iran feel the heavy hand of American ME militarism that Dick Cheney likely set it in place and made it so.

    Should a liberal,ardent socialist,anti-corporatist one day ascend to the VP position and push the tides in WashDC in another direction unlike those Dick Cheney is so fervent over that should prove very interesting.

    The neo-cons,hardliners and authoritarians seem to forget that the precedents and record of being they now condone can also be put into service by political persusions they may abhor or fully detest.

    One can expect a future leftward,socialist,anti-American corporatist/militarist regime to repeatedly invoke for reference and prior precedence the Bush/Cheney WH power grabs and pattern of power exercise.

    The neo-cons,corporatists and militarists will hate that. Lots and lots.

    Having created the monster they will belatedly come to know they have also set in motion precedents that empower that monster to do what they cannot stop,restrain or cause to cease. They will rue that very much.

  • Here’s a bleg: I can’t actually find an authority for the oft-heard claim that Cheney went to Bush & said “actually, the best candidate is me.”

    Anyone got one? I am curious how this meme got started.

  • W: “Unka Dick, if Daddy’s friends make me president, can you tell me what to do?”
    Unka Dick: “Sure, but all my corporate friends get a cut of the action…mister president.”

    It’s as if he knew the election was already stolen.

  • Sorry, I forgot, W did win the 2000 election. It was 5-4, with 100% of the black vote (that was Clarence Thomas) going to the legacy.

    I keep forgetting why these people keep saying that they are against affirmative action. It got the Decider guy into Ivy league schools (kudos to the University of Texas Law School), and a good job with a big white house.

  • Are we sure that Bill Clinton didn’t ask Cheney to join the Bush ticket??? — Grumpy, @9

    Nah…

    I expect the conversation went something like this:
    Deadye: your choice is me, Joe LIE, or Billary.
    Shrub: Save me my Lord, my Prince of Darkness!

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