Part of the reason that neutralizing Cheney is a more pressing imperative than taking out Bush is that on the two most dangerous policy areas that this administration can pursue largely outside of congressional authority -- the arrogation of power to the executive, and war with Iran -- the most extreme views continue to emanate out of Cheney's office. In the New York Times today, historian Sean Wilentz recalls the roots of Cheney's adoration of centralized presidential authority, and how it came out during the Iran-Contra debate:
Mr. Cheney the congressman believed that Congress had usurped executive prerogatives. He saw the Iran-contra investigation not as an effort to get to the bottom of possible abuses of power but as a power play by Congressional Democrats to seize duties and responsibilities that constitutionally belonged to the president.
At the conclusion of the hearings, a dissenting minority report codified these views. The report's chief author was a former resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael J. Malbin, who was chosen by Mr. Cheney as a member of the committee's minority staff. Another member of the minority's legal staff, David S. Addington, is now the vice president's chief of staff.
The minority report stressed the charge that the inquiry was a sham, calling the majority report's allegations of serious White House abuses of power “hysterical.” The minority admitted that mistakes were made in the Iran-contra affair but laid the blame for them chiefly on a Congress that failed to give consistent aid to the Nicaraguan contras and then overstepped its bounds by trying to restrain the White House.
The Reagan administration, according to the report, had erred by failing to offer a stronger, principled defense of what Mr. Cheney and others considered its full constitutional powers. Not only did the report defend lawbreaking by White House officials; it condemned Congress for having passed the laws in the first place.
This is exactly how Cheney approaches the Bush presidency. And he does so from a position of enormous influence. Folks forget that Bush's template for governance was Texas, where the governor is the fifth most powerful position, and largely defers to the Lt. governor, who actually runs the show. In Cheney, Bush found a trusted, steadying hand who he could delegate much of the actual micro work to, just as he did to Bob Bullock when he was governor. It's the same set-up he had in Texas, and it means Cheney is virtually controlling this presidency. Impeach Bush, and you just make it official.
