Dennis Robaugh: Cheney turns democracy into a joke
Now that the din of fireworks has faded and patriotic displays have been put away to await the next great American holiday, let attention turn to the hobgoblin of democracy.
Vice President Dick Cheney.
Every year, the vice president's wife reads to children from her picture book, "America: A Patriotic Primer," published in 2002. From A to Z, the book offers kid-friendly explanations for the Constitution, Declaration, equality, freedom, patriotism, rights and so on.
"Y ... is for YOU and all you will be in this greatest of countries, the land of the free."
Perhaps Lynne Cheney should sit her husband down for some remedial tutelage in the Constitution, however, for in this greatest of countries Dick Cheney has been free to tread roughly on the underpinnings of the very democracy he professes to protect.
In a yearlong investigative effort published in June, the Washington Post outlined in detail how Cheney has reinvented the vice presidency and inserted himself thoroughly into every significant policymaking decision. Unlike any vice president before him, Cheney stands directly between the president and various staffers and departments that bring issues to the president's attention. Cheney shapes the choices the president considers. And in some cases, through his manipulation of the information pipeline, Cheney offers the president advice on policy matters the vice president himself set in motion through proxies.
In recent weeks, Cheney set tongues wagging when he suggested the vice president isn't part of the executive branch of government. As the presiding officer of the Senate, the vice president reasoned, he has a foot in the legislative branch, too, meaning whoever occupies the office need not follow executive orders regarding the White House's handling of classified information.
As the Post reports, Cheney has been the driving force behind some of the most controversial decisions -- and some of the most legally suspect -- in the Bush White House.
Even while Americans awaited the legal outcome of the 2000 election and word of who our next president would be, Cheney got busy laying the groundwork for a Bush administration featuring Cheney allies in key positions. With these people, his deep knowledge of government's inner workings and his attachment to a naive and manipulable president, Cheney established his own shadowy reign over the land of the free.
And now we're not as free as we once were.
While the attacks of Sept. 11 were under way -- the World Trade Center towers were still smoking -- Cheney began assembling lawyers to secretly stake out legal justification for expanded executive powers. We didn't even know who we would be fighting, but somehow our vice president knew that two centuries of precedent wouldn't be enough. The wartime powers historically wielded by presidents -- willingly given by a Congress that understood the gravity of war -- paled in comparison to the leeway Cheney staked out.
Now, six years later, the blowback from these clandestine power grabs which led us into war, torture and the abrogation of civil rights may have weakened the White House as an institution.
"The irony with the Cheney crowd pushing the envelope on presidential power is that the president has now ended up with lesser powers than he would have had if they had made less extravagant, monarchical claims," Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, told the Post.
Cheney's furtive legal manipulations laid the groundwork for Americans to perpetrate torture abroad and warrantless eavesdropping at home. He was a lead architect of the war in Iraq. We deposed a ruthless dictator but -- lacking any post-war plan -- also sparked a civil war that claims American lives every day.
Cheney's accomplishments don't stop there. Environment, tax and energy policy all feel the hand of Cheney, in overt and covert ways.
"You know that experiment where you pass a magnet under the table and you see the iron filings on the top of the table move?" former Bush speech writer David Frum told the Post. "You know there's a magnet there because of what you see happening, but you never see the magnet."
That's Cheney.
One obscure congressman, so moved by the damage of Cheney's actions, drafted articles of impeachment back in April. U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, cites the manipulation of intelligence that led us into war in Iraq and the unconstitutional eavesdropping in the United States as reason enough for setting impeachment in motion. You may find it interesting to know 54 percent of Americans support impeachment of the vice president, according to an American Research Group poll, which is about 10 percent more than those who would support such a move against the president himself.
A collection of liberal congressmen have endorsed Kucinich's effort to impeach the vice president: Yvette Clarke, William Lacy, Keith Ellison, Bob Filner, Jesse Jackson Jr., Hank Johnson, Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, Jim Moran, Jan Schakowsky, Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey and Albert Wynn.
Republican mouthpieces say the impeachment bid is just a publicity stunt for a pathetic presidential campaign. Those who recognize the name at all may know Kucinich as the oddball, big-eared Democratic candidate who polls in the low single digits. For sure, the jokes made about Kucinich on Jay Leno and David Letterman outweigh whatever national press the congressman has gotten for his desire to set right the ship of state.
But by most accounts, he's a pretty good representative.
Once upon a time, 30 years ago, he was the fumbling boy mayor of Cleveland. Still, that horrible stint in public office spoke volumes about his idealism and his character. Kucinich was so squeaky clean he insisted the city's garbage contract be put out for honest bid.
Can you guess who controlled the garbage haulers? Organized crime. Can you guess how angry they got that Kucinich wanted to pull their beaks from the public trough?
Recently, Cleveland's former police chief revealed that the mob ordered a hit on Kucinich, going so far as to bring a shooter in from out of state who planned to off the mayor in front of his favorite diner. Eventually, his failures helped push him out of office via the election. The contract on his life went away.
Sadly, this is what we've come to.
As the most powerful, secretive and dark figure in the White House since Richard Nixon, Cheney is being targeted for impeachment by a little-known congressman with big ears who's waging a hopeless campaign for president.
As with most everything in politics, this issue comes down to a tradeoff in values. Cheney believes security is worth the sacrifice of liberty, primarily yours, and he's willing to counter the extremism of our enemies with his own extremism. Kucinich maintains that by overstepping the law and hiding the truth from the American people we all pay too high a price.
This can't be a liberal cause. Those of us in the middle and on the right need to be asking hard questions about these decisions made in the dark.
"Y ... is for you ..."
Will you take the time to figure out which man really has your nation's best interests at heart?
On the Web:
The Washington Post series: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/ <http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/>