Former VP Cheney just can’t seem to stay home and write his memoirs now that he’s been released from his undisclosed location. That’s what other Former VPs have done. But Cheney is eager to stay in the public eye. Is he trying to take some sort of revenge against George W. Bush for not pardoning Scooter Libbey? Perhaps he’s trying to re-write history so that when he does write his memoir, it won’t be identified as a piece of fiction. Or maybe he just didn’t get the memo that book tours are supposed to FOLLOW the actual writing. One might propose a number of reasons he suddenly seems to crave the limelight.
In any case, a statement he made yesterday on FTN contained an absolutely stunning statement. “I certainly have every reason to believe that he knew a great deal about the [torture] program,” he said. “He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential level decision. And the decision went to the president. He signed off on it.” This remark sounds a bit like saying someone is a little bit pregnant. Either you are or are not pregnant. Either the president authorized the program or he didn’t. One would hope that the president truly understood the implications of the program before he signed off on it. Is Cheney’s statement confirmation of the actual power-sharing arrangement of the Bush administration? Was the VP the man behind the curtain?
Dick Cheney was the first self-selected vice president in our history. If you’ll recall, he was tasked during the 2000 primary season with helping then-Governor Bush choose his running mate. It struck me as both odd and presumptuous that the person Dick Cheney recommended was none other than Dick Cheney. I mean, was there nobody else in the Republican Party who was suited for the job?
President Bush took it pretty easy while he was president. In bed early every night, almost every weekend at Camp David, long vacations in Crawford. And when he was in Crawford, it was pretty hard to get his attention, especially during August. Just ask Richard Clarke, his counter-terrorism chief during the initial months of the administration. Just ask the people in New Orleans.
Meanwhile, the vice president seemed always to be in an undisclosed location. The whole thing seemed a very odd management style. No wonder people wondered who was really in charge. Then the rumors started leaking out. Ron Suskind, in his book The One Percent Solution, related comments from Cheney friends and colleagues about how the events of 9/11 had brought out paranoid aspects of his personality they hadn’t seen before.
There was another statement in yesterday’s interview that caught my attention, a statement that may in fact be even more important. The former Vice President mis-quoted the oath of office. Here is the text of the oath that has used since 1884.
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Notice that the oath is to support and defend the Constitution. Yesterday, Cheney said that he had sworn to protect the country against all enemies. I am reminded of Monica Goodling’s testimony that she had sworn loyalty to President Bush and how Sen. Leahy immediately schooled her that she had sworn loyalty to the Constitution, not the President. And perhaps that’s the core problem over the past eight years. The beauty of the Constitution is that it establishes the rule of law, not of men. Our public officials swear their primary allegiance to a document, not to a person or a party or even an ideology. Our founders understood the dangers of too much power concentrated in the hands of one or two people. That’s why they gave the president such limited power. Congress, being closer to the people, held the real federal power. And that’s why the rise of the imperial presidency is, or should be, so distasteful to Americans. That’s why the argument that the role of Commander in Chief gave the President almost unlimited power was so odious to so many, and why such things as signing statements saying the President could choose unilaterally to ignore all or parts of laws passed by Congress was rejected by many people.
Let’s not forget that Dick Cheney was the architect of many of those ideas. The lesson he learned from Watergate was that the President didn’t have enough power — that the Congress had too much. This view is exactly contrary to what the Constitution says. That Congress went along, that they chose to abdicate their oversight responsibility, is to their shame.
