Years ago Lamar Alexander, the senator from Tennessee, told me of a lesson he had learned as a young man on the White House staff: It is always useful for the president to have at least one aide who has had a successful career already, who does not need the job, and who therefore can offer candid advice. When he was governor of Tennessee, Alexander made sure he had such a person on his staff.
Later, when presidential candidate George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney as his running mate, I applauded the choice, thinking that Cheney would fill the role Alexander had outlined. Boy, was I wrong.
It gives me a headache just to think about all the wrong bundled up in just those introductory paragraphs. Not to beat on poor Lamar Alexander, who is about as odorless as one can hope for from the Republicans these days, but this piece of wisdom is awful thin at face value, especially if you don't consider the nature of the "successful career" the "candid advisor" had. I mean, I get the point of the anecdote, but for Christ's sake, how does it apply to a no-bid contract grifter like Dick Cheney?
Second, the idea that Bush chose Cheney is hilarious. Cheney looked through the list of prospects and chose himself. We should all be so lucky in our job interviews.
But hey, it's just super that it took six years of blind arrogance, secrecy, and utter incompetence to get the scales to fall from our trenchant observer's eyes. Next up: Broder's picks for Super Bowl XXXV. I don't know about you, but I can hardly wait. I hear Baltimore has a good shot at it.
What Gellman and Becker have described is a decision-making process in which Bush has allowed Cheney to play a bureaucratic role inside the White House that Cheney never permitted anyone to employ when he was guarding the door as Gerald Ford's chief of staff.
He could exercise this power only with the compliance of the president and only because he often could bypass the procedures he had put in place in the Ford administration, procedures meant to protect the president's interests. He used his intelligence and his grasp on the levers of power -- and most of all he used secrecy -- to outflank and outwit others and thereby shape the Bush administration's agenda.
It was not illegal, and it was not unconstitutional, but it could not have happened unless the president permitted it and enabled it. And ultimately the president is responsible for what has become, in very large respect, the resulting wreckage of foreign policy, national security policy, budget policy, energy policy and environmental policy under Cheney's direction and on Cheney's watch.
Where I thought, mistakenly, that it would be a great advantage to Bush to have a White House partner without political succession in mind, it has turned out to be altogether too liberating an environment for a political entrepreneur of surpassing skill operating under an exceptional cloak of secrecy.
Gee whiz, ya really think so, Dave? That maybe it's not such a hot idea to have gibbering moron figurehead be sock-puppeted by a scheming fuck with nothing but contempt for democracy and transparency? Well, this is valuable insight, indeed.
And given the sheer scale of secrecy and evasion, I would really hold off on the blanket pre-judgments that "[i]t was not illegal, and it was not unconstitutional". The one thing that has been amazingly consistent about this administration -- and Cheney's subversion of it in particular -- is how readily more and more disturbing facts become unearthed with just the slightest turn of the shovel. I think we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg here with the Poor Ol' Scooter debacle. I'm not interested in cheap speculation or forcing people to prove a negative, but let's face it -- every action from Cheney's office specifically has demonstrated that they have much to hide. Enough of these childish games about whether he just wants everyone to think that's the case; it's time for the actual adults to bust the clubhouse and find out exactly what's what.
What really pisses me off about Broder's analysis is how indifferent it is to the reality. His big revelation is not that Cheney is a shitbird who doesn't belong in a position of control over the lives of others; it's his admission that he, David Broder, dean of the Beltway smart set and plugged-in wankerus emeritus, was wrong. It's like hearing Fonzie stutter out the word with embarrassed reluctance all those years ago on Happy Days or something.
But Broder noticeably proposes no remedy, nor does he acknowledge that maybe all us nasty vituperative bloggerses were right the whole time, and that maybe it's time to do something. No, people like Broder never want to actually do a fucking thing, except tell those damned kids to get off his lawn. But should the Democrats get more serious about getting to the bottom of what ol' Big Time has really been up to all these years, and how their pathetic inability to keep their story straight needs to come to an end, Broder and his ilk will harrumph once more about the partisan incivility of it all, and how Henry Waxman's an asshole.
Whatever. Keep up the superb analysis, Chief; I'm sure we'll all hear about what doo-doo heads those jerky Dummycrats are soon enough. Gotsta remain objective, y'know.
Driftglass has some nice smackdown of Rip Van Broder's narcoleptic wankery, and when you're done checking that out, check out his brilliant photo essay, the final picture of which seriously belongs on the front page of every American newspaper this Fourth of July.
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