Conservatives Without Conscience

Frist’s behavior in the incident was quite remarkable, given the simple message he had delivered to the Senate in his maiden speech on January 11, 1995, when he first came to Washington. “As a recently elected citizen-legislator, I carry a very distinct advantage: closeness to the people,” Frist explained. He had listened to people’s thoughts and concerns, and he shared them with his colleagues: “Get the federal government off our backs…. The arrogance of Washington is stifling us, and we are capable of making our own decisions.” [68]

The Authoritarian Vice Presidency: Evil Is Not Excluded

Dick Cheney is the most powerful vice president in American history. His power comes from his knowledge of how Washington really works, and it far exceeds that of the man he ostensibly works for. Unlike Bush, Cheney relishes the minutiae of government policy and process, and he has surrounded himself with a staff that is stronger and far more competent than the president’s personal staff. Unlike prior vice presidents, Cheney and his people have often taken the lead on issues, with the White House staff falling in line. Cheney has long been a behind-the- scenes operator, for he was badly burned by the news media during his tenure as White House chief of staff. His ego does not need the spotlight, and his dark view of the world and life is, in any case, better suited to working behind closed doors.

Notwithstanding Cheney’s claims that the powers of the presidency are insufficient to fight terrorism, the office has enormous inherent powers. And when it does not, the president traditionally goes to Congress to petition for whatever additional power is needed; no Congress is going to deny any president essential powers to protect the nation. Cheney, it seems, had been traumatized as Ford’s chief of staff when the Congress began dismantling Nixon’s imperial presidency. “In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate,” Cheney told the Wall Street Journal, “there was a concerted effort to place limits and restrictions on presidential authority…the decisions that were aimed at the time at trying to avoid a repeat of things like Vietnam or…Watergate.” For most people adopting such measures would be considered good government; Cheney believes otherwise. “I thought they were misguided then, and have believed that given the world that we live in, that the president needs to have unimpaired executive authority.”[69] He has repeated that line time after time, without ever explaining exactly why the post-Watergate measures were misguided, or why efforts by Congress to prevent another Vietnam, which took some fifty thousand American lives for no good purpose, were faulty. Since Cheney has been vice president he has never been interviewed by a reporter inclined (or permitted) to ask the hard questions, so Cheney has never had to explain himself. The man he works for looks only at the politics of any given matter, and does not have the depth of knowledge to challenge his vice president. Cheney’s relationships with his staff and his informal advisers in and out of government are ones in which the vice president poses the questions, and he is never required to give answers. When Cheney speaks publicly—which is not often— he pontificates, or dictates.

It is true that Dick Cheney has served at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. He held positions in both the Nixon (and got out before Watergate) and Ford White Houses. He spent over a decade on Capitol Hill, first as a congressional aide, and later as a congressman from Wyoming who worked his way up the House GOP leadership ladder, before being named to a cabinet post, as Secretary of Defense (under Bush I). It is an exceptional government career. Cheney did not become the youngest White House chief of staff by accident; he did not become the number-two leader of the House Republicans because of his mild manner; and he did not serve as both chairman of the board and chief operating officer of the Halliburton Corporation because of his good looks. Cheney is an authoritarian dominator. He studies the landscape, and then figures out how to get the ground he wants for himself. He has demonstrated remarkable ability in making it to the top, most recently by selecting himself as vice president of the United States. What is always overlooked with Dick Cheney is how he performs when he arrives in his various jobs. The answer is, in truth, not very well. Cheney is surely proof of the “Peter Principle” (that people in a hierarchy eventually rise to their level of incompetence).

Josh Marshall,[*] writing in the Washington Monthly, was the first journalist to observe this fact about Cheney; the piece was titled “Vice Grip: Dick Cheney is a man of principles. Disastrous Principles.”[70] Marshall had discovered that Cheney has made one serious mistake after another as vice president, although “in the Washington collective mind,” he has the reputation of a “sober, reliable, skilled inside player.” Marshall found that the facts belie Cheney’s reputation, and he has made a consistent string of “mistakes—on energy policy, homeland security, corporate reform.” Since Marshall wrote his piece this list of serious errors has only grown. Marshall attributed Cheney’s ineptness to a career that has largely isolated him from the real world. As Marshall described it, Cheney is part of the “hierarchical, old economy style of management [that] couldn’t be more different from the loose, nonhierarchical style of, say, high-tech corporations or the Clinton White House, with all their open debate, concern with the interests of ‘stake-holders,’ manic focus on pleasing customers (or voters), and constant reassessment of plans and principles. The latter style, while often sloppy and seemingly juvenile, tends to produce pretty smart policy. The former style, while appearing so adult and competent, often produces stupid policy.” Marshall is also describing the distinction between a nonauthoritarian White House and an authoritarian operation.

An examination of Cheney’s career reveals that it is marked by upward mobility and downward performance. For example, the best thing Cheney did for Halliburton as chairman and CEO was to step down and help them get no-bid contracts to rebuild Iraq and federal help with their asbestos claims liability; Cheney’s attempt to run for president failed at the conception stage; he was undistinguished as Secretary of Defense, and many believe he was actually disappointed when the cold war ended on his watch, and not by his doing; his years in Congress have left a voting record that any fair-minded person would be ashamed of; and he was way over his head as Ford’s chief of staff, which resulted in the remaining Nixon staff’s appreciating how good Haldeman had been in the job; and, of course, he helped Ford lose his bid to become an elected president in the race against Jimmy Carter.

Bad judgment is Dick Cheney’s trademark. It was not George Bush who came up with the idea of imposing blanket secrecy on the executive branch when he and Cheney took over. It was not George Bush who conceived of the horrible—and in some cases actually evil—policies that typify this authoritarian presidency, such as detaining “enemy combatants” with no due process and contrary to international law. It was not George Bush who had the idea of using torture during interrogations, and removing restraints on the National Security Agency from collecting intelligence on Americans. These were policies developed by Cheney and his staff, and sold to the president, and then imposed on many who subsequently objected to this authoritarian lawlessness. It was Cheney and his mentor, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who convinced Bush to go to war in Iraq, which is proving to be a protracted calamity. As Colin Powell’s former top aide, Laurence Wilkinson, rather bluntly puts it: In 2002 Cheney must have believed that Iraq was a spawning ground for terrorists, “otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.”[71] Colonel Wilkinson, it appears, has a rather solid take on the vice president’s thinking, for there is no evidence that Cheney believed—or had any basis for such a belief—that Iraq was a spawning ground for terrorism—before we made it into one.

The issue of Dick Cheney’s judgment must be raised because he is the catalyst, architect, and chief proponent of Bush’s authoritarian policies. In fact, Cheney’s authoritarian vice presidency has simply swallowed the president, and Cheney sought to take the office way beyond even Nixon’s imperial presidency, which they had accomplished by the end of the first term.[*]Insidiously, Cheney and his staff are proceeding with strategic moves, largely out of sight, that are undertaken regularly to accomplish his goal, and often at the political expense of the president, which creates periodic, but growing, rifts between the men. These include things like ramming through the White House a presidential signing statement regarding a new law. Rather than vetoing legislation when it arrives at the White House, the White House (read: Cheney and his staff) issues a brief statement giving its interpretation of the new law as it relates to presidential powers. These statements are consistently different from the clear intent of Congress, so Bush and Cheney have, in effect, told Congress to go to hell on the few occasions when the Republican Congress has stood up to the White House. Typical was its response when Senator John McCain (R-AZ) sought to end the use of torture by Americans when interrogating putative terrorists.

George Bush has repeatedly insisted, “We do not torture.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has repeatedly claimed that the United States does not engage in “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.” And CIA director Porter Goss affirms that his agency “does not do torture. Torture does not work.” But no one believes the Bush administration on this issue, and for good reason. When the so-called torture memos prepared by the Department of Justice were leaked—after the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib had surfaced—they revealed that the