Tom Ashbrook at On Point with guests:
Guests: Ron Suskind, Pulitzer Prize-winning, former senior national affairs writer at the Wall Street Journal whose latest book is "The One Percent Doctrine" -- a deep study on Dick Cheney's stamp on national security policy and more; and from Austin, TX, Lou Dubose, former editor of the Texas Observer, long-time observer of George W. Bush and the vice president whose latest book is "Vice: Dick Cheney and the Highjacking of the American Presidency"; Laura Rozen, senior correspondent for “American Prospect”; and Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University.
Tom Ashbrook: Dick Cheney has been the most powerful vice president in the history of the US. So what's he up to right now when Washington is divided on Iraq, when US aircraft carriers are threatening Iran, when Cheney -- the nation's #1 proponent of executive authority still has two years in the side-saddle, no election to face, and -- some say -- nothing to lose. ... It was just last fall when the New York Times' David Sanger and Eric Schmidt -- and many others -- were saying that the vice president's influence was "on the wane. His power no longer goes unquestioned." Now here we are in crunch-time, post November election, on Iraq policy and maybe Iran and war, and the vice president is very much back in the limelight. Ron Suskind, what do you make of that? Does it mean his influence is resurgent? Or something else?
Ron Suskind: Well, I was never one that believed that the vice president's power had waned. I think there was maybe a little bit of spin in that! They're obviously all very good reporters. But Dick Cheney has a pattern of surfacing and submerging at times of his choosing or times of political expediency and convenience for many years. That period last year was a time when he decided to submerge. I don't think his power has diminished at all in fact. As the president becomes increasingly isolated and fewer so-called honest brokers have access to the president, I think it's been a pattern for the past few years. Cheney's power, in fact, is augmented. Ever more, the decision-making-tree here -- the loop -- is the president and vice president in the room with the door shut. Condoleezza Rice is overseas on various campaigns, negotiations of modest success in many cases. Stephen Hadley is even less consequential than Condoleezza Rice was in the National Security Adviser's job. There isn't even an Andy Card around anymore. Josh Bolten is a different kind of character. I think what you find is the vice president and the president are essentially a team of two making these decisions. Those conversations are ones I'm sure Lou and I both want to get inside of. Maybe history will help us there. But that's the key.
TA: Lou Dubose -- how do you see it? a conversation of two, two years to go, neither man standing for election again -- that gives them an awful lot of free rein. The Republicans are making plenty of noise of their own right now. How do you see the vice president's influence right now as President Bush looks at Iraq, as the president looks across the border at Iran with increasingly bellicose noises... how do you see the VP's stamp, Lou?
Lou Dubose: I'm inclined to agree with Ron. But I'd like to add the institutional underpinnings to this. You have an Office of the Vice President that only recently -- with FOIA requests and from reporters sneaking about -- are we learning who the staff is. You have an OVP that has really overpowered the Office of the President. When we started out, we Texans thought highly of the "iron triangle" of Karen Hughes, Karl Rove and Joe Allbaugh. Karl's brilliant but Karen and Joe are pretty middling characters. In the office of the vice president you had and still have David Addington, who has been involved with Dick Cheney since they served together on the House Intelligence Committee and the Iran-Contra Committee. So you have people with an institutional history of infighting, bureaucratic infighting in Washington against a president who had limited experience there. So I think there's an institutional capacity in the office of the vice president. Jon Turley can grade the lawyers later but Attorney General Gonzales is no match for David Addington. I think the president is also out-staffed in dealing with a vice president who understands how power works.
TA: A vice president with an office far larger than in the past and Dick Cheney talking a lot in the last couple of weeks and Washington in many quarters responding with paroxysms of frustration... Dick Durbin, as Maureen Dowd pointed out, on the Senate floor denouncing the vice president as "delusional," and then Maureen Dowd -- who can wield quite a pen -- says “Delusional is far to mild a word to describe Dick Cheney. Delusional doesn’t begin to capture the profound transcendental, one-flew-over daftness of the man...” Fightin’ words to a vp... Here’s the vice president last week talking with Wolf Blitzer: Dick Cheney said the administration is “committed to moving ahead with its plan to send more troops to Iraq...”
Vice President Cheney: The fact is we can complete the task in Iraq. We’re going to do it. We’ve got General Petraeus taking over. It is a good strategy. It will work. But we have to have the stomach to finish the task.”
Wolf Blitzer: What if the Senate passes a resolution saying this is not a good idea. Will that stop you?
Cheney: It won’t stop us. And it would be, I think, detrimental from the standpoint of the troops, as General Petraeus said yesterday.
TA: ...“It won’t stop us.” Ron Suskind... what about the rhetoric here? Dick Cheney siding with Chris Wallace -- “enormous progress in Iraq” -- when of course we’ve all see what we’ve seen there. Look at the administration’s credibility problems which seem fairly patent when his own former chief of staff is on trial for perjury, calling all that “hogwash” and saying “Congress won’t stop us...” Asked if he cares about Brent Scowcroft and others’ criticisms saying “I’m the vice president anad they’re not.” Ron, what do you make of this latest rhetorical sally?
RS: It’s getting folks into the mind of Dick Cheney. I’ve been sort of doing that for a few years, talking to senior advisers, Cabinet-level people who walk out of meetings with Cheney stunned, in many cases. It’s Dick’s world and you’re just a visitor! That’s kind of the philosophy! And that goes for Dick Durbin or “nay-sayers” 0r “dead-enders” -- doubters, if you will, throughout the government. Cheney is, in his view, in a conversation with history. That’s his view. And the rest of the folks are in a “conversation with news-cycles” -- that’s Cheney’s position. So that, arming himself with this clarity (in his mind), the stuff just bounces off him. Including some of the most sober and responsible advice from folks who have been with Dick Cheney for decades in many cases. Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell, a guy that I wrote about at one point Paul O’Neill. This is a small list. The list goes around the block. And that why I think what we’re finding now is increasing isolation as Cheney’s conversation with history, as he sees it, gets ever deeper and more personal. He looks at this situation and says we don’t have th stomach for it and that’s our problem. He’s placing the Iraq campaign in the light of World War II, for instance, with 400,000 men dead. He says, “Compared to that, what’s 3,000 casualties on the US side? We’re in a global struggle for the future of everything that’s sacred.” That’s the Cheney position and the fact is that we barely have the stomach, in his view for a very “modest” sacrifice that we’ve made up until now. His view, again, is that we’ve made progress by action. This is the key. Cheney believes in the primacy of action and he’s brought Bush into an embrace of action. It’s in Bush’s nature anyway to go with his gut, his instinct. But that’s really Cheney’s architecture. Action is what works here. Especially when you have few options you act. We can’t stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, Cheney says. The key is we need to act and keep our enemies on the defensive and that cult of action, I call it -- continuous action -- is one that I think is guiding events and may guide us into other campaigns in Iran and elsewhere.
TA: Yes, exactly. As the White House looks across the border at Iran, Maureen Dowd writes “Cheney assumes the more people think he’s crazy, the saner he must be. He sees himself as a prophet in the wilderness.” What about the president, though? George W. Bush! You know him well! In the State of the Union address, the president talked about the possibility of failure in Iraq and talked about compromise with Congress. The very next day Cheney’s out with almost a directly contradictory kind of message. How does the president see the VP when he gets up on his high horse with rhetoric that doesn’t line up with the president’s own?
LD: It’s a pattern, not the first time it’s happened. If you go back to the run-up to the war in Iraq, you had Colin Powell and the president talking about letting inspectors do their work on the ground. Several days later, to Powell’s astonishment, Cheney goes to the VFW National Convention in Tennessee and essentially declares war, undercutting Powell, as he frequently did. I don’t know whether he is pushing policy with his speeches or whether he’s actually giving us the better read of the policy decisions already made inside the White House. But it’s a pattern with Dick Cheney to take the more aggressive position among the two and at times it’s in direct opposition to the president. As Ron pointed out, since the Nixon administration where he was a minor player and in the Ford administration where Dick Cheney was the chief of staff along with Don Rumsfeld, he closes the door and makes the decision with the president.
TA: ...Here’s Vice President Dick Cheney on January 14th talking with Chris Wallace on Fox New Sunday about Iran and its neighbors:
Cheney: Iran’s a problem in a much larger sense. They have begun to conduct themselves in ways that have created a great deal of tension throughout the region. If you go and talk with the Gulf States, or if you talk with the Saudis, or if you talk with the Israelis or the Jordanians -- the entire region is worried, partly because of the conduct of Mr. Ahminejad, the president of Iran, who appears to be a radical, a man who believes in apocalyptic visions of the future and who thinks it’s imminent...
TA: ...The VP talking tough on Iran and that talk has just gotten tougher in the White House since then. Let’s go to a caller, Joe, in Des Moines, Iowa:
Joe: I’ll tell you what. I just thank god for rock-ribbed, steel-jawed, Scotch-drinking conservatives like Dick Cheney right now to give advice to George Bush. Picture if you will the president going it alone with the weight of the world... We’re waging World War III. These people aren’t to be reasoned with. I think that sad as it is and repugnant as it is to a lot of people, brute force is going to be ultimately what’s necessary to gain the respect those that would kill our children and loved ones.
TA: Joe, let me ask you, what do say to those who say what we need here is not more stomach but more brains? What do you say to those who say this administration is driving us off a cliff?
Joe: (loudly) Here’s what I’d say. The brains are there! George Bush is as stupid and crazy as a fox, okay? Dick Cheney has the guts and the brains and like Barry Goldwater said, “When I need a PhD, ah hires one!”
TA: ...From Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, William:
William: I appreciate the opportunity to speak and what a great show! I tend to agree with a lot of what the last caller said. Having been in a much lower level position of executive leadership, no leader brings to the table a complete array of talents. The best leaders in the world are the ones who can bring in strong people like Dick Cheney. That doesn’t necessarily mean Bush agrees with Cheney on all things. But the last thing you want when you’re in a leadership position like Bush is in is a bunch of people who are just going to tell you what you want to hear..
TA: ...Who do you think is the boss in this White House, William?
William: I really do believe that George Bush is the boss. I truly, honestly believe that. I think he’s stood up many time and accepted responsibility very clearly and very openly for decisions that have been made..
TA: ... Do you think Dick Cheney has helped put the country in a stronger position than it was in four years ago?
William: ...Absolutely! I don’t think there’s any question. If you read the number of terrorist attacks that were against American assets for the last ten or twelve years -- I forget the exact number -- they came to a screaching halt with 9/11 and no American asset has been attacked since this administration has been in.
TA: ... Well, except maybe 150,000 troops in Iraq. But we take your point. Scott’s calling from Nashua, New Hampshire.
Scott: I have to admit I’m a bit aghast at the previous two calls. My main question is, Is it possible to impeach the vice president? Cheney has been behind arguably the worst foreign policy decisions in the last century. Yet he’s essentially unanswerable. If President Bush was impeached, Cheney would be forced out into the light, as it were. More to the point, getting directly to what I think is a huge problem in the country, is it possible to impeach the vice president?
TA: So we have a couple saying “lift him up” and Scott you’re saying let’s use the law and take him out. The Democrats promised not to impeach the president. But they did not promise not to impeach the vice president. And you hear that span of views. Ron, what do you make of it? How do you interpret the American response to the vice president?
RS: I think the president and the vice president are a bit hard to separate which might make it difficult for an impeachment proceeding. But certainly anyone can be removed from office by the will of Congress. What’s interesting is the mix of callers -- all quite thoughtful in their way. Joe and William were talking about something I hear from inside the White House. There’s a phrase they use about our enemies, the folks in the Mid East, which is “Speak to them in a way they can understand.” It’s a condescending kind of phrase but it’s one that says “Force works and force is all that works with ‘these people’.” I think that we’re seeing, however, the limits of that position, that idea. Because it drives us toward the base, if you will, toward a kind of model that’s all tactics and not much strategy and, frankly, tactics with a very limited shelf-life. What we’re finding is that it’s not worked...
TA: Lou? What do you say about that span of American opinion in response to this VP?
LD: It’s interesting because you’re talking about a vice president whose numbers hover around 20%. So we’ve gotten an interesting sample this morning.
TA: Talk about “the base” -- that’s the basement! That’s ten points lower than the president!
LD: I think the great concern here is, when we talk about the use of force and the force option, I think if you look at Ron’s calculations and analysis at the low threshold that’s required to justify preemptive military force, and you look at a vice president who stood out in 1975 with Gerald Ford and Don Rumsfeld on the night that Saigon was evacuated, and right then saw the presidency at its lowest point and has spent the rest of his life expanding the presidency, that roll of the dice has now failed in Iraq. Which makes Iran the last chance to vindicate his idea of a unitary executive and the use of force effectively. So I think it’s a real dangerous equation when you look at those variables.
TA: Ron -- you’ve looked at the “one percent solution: Cheney’s view on security” -- do you see him looking across that border to Tehran and saying “George, maybe we should get in there while we’ve still got two years! Let’s go to war”?
RS: I have no doubt that’s the way he views Iran. The one percent doctrine, which is a Cheney construct and which is the heart of the US playbook in foreign policy, says essentially if there’s a one percent chance that a rogue state or terrorist group can get their hands on a WMD, then we need to treat it as a certainty. Not an analysis of the preponderance of evidence -- Cheney dismisses those things. ...The fact is that right now there’s well more than a one percent level of evidence, if you will, about Iran and its intentions and certainly the path that Iran is on. Cheney is, I’m sure, sitting there right now saying, “ How can we embrace action, real action, forceful action in terms of Iran. That’s the discussion that’s occurring now and it’s been occurring for the last few months inside the White House driven by Dick Cheney.
TA: And you’ve got a new aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf and the vice president talking about the “Iranian threat...” I want to welcome into our conversation from Washington, Laura Rozen. She’s senior correspondent for American Prospect. She reports on national security and foreign policy. She’s been following the Scooter Libby trial. And recently in the Washington Monthly had a piece entitled “Cheney’s Deadenders.” ... Laura Rozen, you write about what you call “Cheney’s state within the state.” What is that?
Laura Rozen: He has loyalists throughout the bureaucracy and they’ve been very effective at making end-runs around the policy experts inside the federal bureaucracy and allowing Cheney’s office to get their way.
TA: But Wolfowitz is gone. Feith is gone. Rumsfeld is gone. Does he still have a state within the state?
LR: Yes. He doesn’t really have bureaucratic equal, a bureaucratic foil within the administration. You see with Secretary of State Rice and National Security Adviser Hadley and even now with the new Defense Secretary Gates a kind of accomodation of Cheney within the administration that serves to move the whole government policy closer to Cheney’s position.
TA: You call his state within a state “dwindling and beleaguered but not to be underestimated.” Who’s carrying water now, effectively?
LR: You can see... Last May Secretary of State Rice that the US would consider joining in direct talks with Iran if Iran would agree to suspend uranium enrichment. In other words, the policy was moving towards possible engagement with Iran, and Cheney’s office kind of waited this out and now you see the policy moving in an entirely different direction -- towards confrontation. The whole State Department is being dragged along with it. Cheney’s daughter wasa lead official in the State Department until last summer with people working for her who were leading this new Iran-Syria operation group that are running an inner-agency process for figuring out ways that we can poke at Iran. One of the officials working on that policy group may move over to Cheney’s office. Instead of running it from the National Security Council, it’ll be run out of Cheney’s office. It’ll be very hard for Congress or the press to get insights into what this policy group is working on. Very similar to what was happening in advance of the Iraq war.
TA: Let’s go to New York City and Vincent:
Vincent: At this point how can you really constrain Cheney. It doesn’t seem that there’s any stomach for impeachment as people were talking about before. The most the Congress can do is pass a non-binding resolution. At this point are people just waiting for Bush and Cheney to leave? They don’t seem to want to stop them from continuing these conflicts.
TA: A long time and a lot of potential firepower applied between now and them leaving office -- what do you say, Ron Suskind?
RS: It’s a good point, Vincent. I think what we’re probably looking at over the next two years is a series of constitutional crises, to be frank -- between the power of the legislature and the courts to try to proscribe -- rein in -- executive power. Cheney is armed and ready for this. He has very clear views about the unitary executive, so called. And the diminishment of executive power over the last three decades. I’m not sure what history he’s been reading... The presidency seems to have been repaired fairly soundly since the mid-’70’s. In any event what you’re going to find is Cheney moving forward and various parts of government attempting -- I don’t think they’ll succeed because the clock is ticking, after all -- to rein in the executive and what the executive decides to do on this foreign front. Short of Congress cutting off funding which is a very, very serious step -- especially with 150,000 young Americans in the middle of peril -- there is not a whole lot that can be done. Certainly the courts, as Jonathan Turley I’m sure will tell us, are not things that Cheney gives much mind to when it comes to the primacy of action and the need to act.
TA: Lou Dubose, it’s now a couple of years since the election. A lot has changed in Iraq since then. Two more years to go with this VP and president. Cheney saying straight up about Congress: “It won’t stop us.” So -- to Vincent’s question. Can there be any constraint on this duo or this man?
LD: That’s the big question. I think that’s the question that’s going to play out as Ron described it -- in a series of confrontations that may rise to the level of constitutional crises. Dick Cheney is the first vice president in the history of the US that had an office in the House of Representatives. There is no constitutional role for the vice president in the House of Representatives. Cheney went over and asked Denny Hastert who was utterly lacking in institutional patriotism, and asked him for an office. And Cheney had an office in the House. He believes in an expanded unitary executive the likes of which was never envisioned by the founding fathers. I want to return for just a second to Iran, though. When the war in Iraq was still a success, the Iranians approached the State Department -- going back to what Laura addressed -- right after the troops rolled into Baghdad, the Iranians approached the State Department through the Swiss and offered to negotiate. They offered to negotiate on nuclear, on terrorism, on relations with Israel. The State Department was interested. That initiative was killed by the vice president. So you’re practicing this muscular diplomacy through war and at the same time, when you achieve your objective and bring people to the table you refuse to negotiate. I think that’s what we’re looking at in Iran -- which is a terrifying prospect.
TA: Still a big power with a lot of power. Let’s go to Matthew calling from Weymouth, Massachusetts:
Matthew: Aside from national security concerns, could there be a purely domestic political argument going on here? Namely: if we can make the American public afraid enough of Iran, then we have to stay in Iraq as long as Iran is perceived as such a threat. That means the Democrats are put into a box.
TA: There already was plenty of fear last fall, wasn’t there? And yet the Democrats thumped the GOP.
Matthew: Well, we’ll see. But in the Senate it’s very difficult for Senate Democrats to argue that we should reduce... leave Iraq if it sounds as though that will strengthen a hated enemy like Iran.
TA: We’ve got it. Thanks for that. Laura Rozen? What about it? Fear as a political tool here? Paranoid or legitimate concern?
LR: I think that’s an excellent point. I think the administration is using the threat of Iran as an excuse, blaming Iran’s presence in Iraq for why things are going so badly in Iraq. I talked to someone in the administration yesterday who said, “Is Iran meddling in Iraq? Yes, they are. The administration is soon going to make a case about what Iran is doing in Iraq.” But, someone asked, “If Iran totally got out of Iraq altogether would our problems be solved?” And the person said, “No.” But you can see already that the administration is almost convincing itself that Iran is the main obstacle to success in Iraq.
TA: Ron, how do you think the vice president is looking at this? Genuine security threat? Political opportunity? Both? Are they separable in Dick Cheney’s mind?
RS: They’re inseparable in the minds of the American public. There’s no accountability here. You’ve got secrecy, intelligence, and action all tied very tightly together. The administration will make claims about Iran and its threat to us directly. And we will be in the same situation because the structure hasn’t changed. The same situation we’ve been in before as to what to believe and not -- with a clock ticking... A clock the administration is holding up. We’re in a very tough spot right now.
TA: ...Lou is calling from Milwaukee:
Lou: One of your guest mentioned that Vice President Cheney believes the citizens of this country don’t have the guts to make the sacrifice we need to make to succeed in Iraq.
TA: He said he believes Al Qaeda believes that and it has to be disproved.
Lou: He sacrifices the lives of American soldiers and it’s well documented that Cheney himself dodged the draft several times to get out of serving in Vietnam.
TA: He had “other priorities,” he said...
Lou: ...Right. I think it’s sadly ironic that he doesn’t mind sacrificing other American’s lives but when it was his turn to put his life on the line, he thought otherwise.
TA: Lou Dubose -- is that the kind of irony that would give the vice president pause?
LD: Not for a moment! As you said, he had “other priorities.” Dick Cheney was working in the Nixon White House when he should have been serving in Vietnam. He had four student deferments and a timely pregnancy and Dick Cheney dodged the bullet on Vietnam. You know, there’s an interesting fact, though. He was, as Secretary of Defense, that was never really an issue when he was George Bush Sr.’s Secretary of Defense because of the respect he paid to the military and the authority with which he made his decisions. He was highly regarded as SecDef. He’s anathema at the Pentagon now, if you talk to generals who are looking at the military being dismantled. A much larger issue than his avoiding the draft is his leaving the US military terribly impaired at a time when it’s desperately needed.
TA: I wonder about the constitutional issues here for a moment -- since we’ve never seen a vice president who’s exercised the office in quite this way. Let me turn to Denver, Colorado, and Jonathan Turley. He’s a law professor at George Washington University joining us to day from Denver. ...Jonathan Turley, step back with us for a moment and just look at the role this vice president has made for himself. Does it fit in the constitutional construct that we’ve had for a couple of centuries and more?
Jonathan Turley: I think that many people don’t appreciate this role really is. If you recall someone like “Cactus Jack” Garner who was the vice president to FDR one referred to this position as worth “a warm bucket of spit...” And even LBJ when he was vice president really was not used as much as he should have been. In fact he was kept at arm’s distance.
TA: ... and talk about a power. I mean he had plenty of engine power.
JT: The vice presidency was always the guy holding the hand of the president and waiting for the EKG to go flat.
TA: But that’s just precedent! Does the constitution permit it? if you’ve got one that steps up like Mr. Cheney has?
JT: It definitely permits it. The president can rely on anyone for advice. And certainly the vice president is the natural choice. What is problematic is that the vice president has created almost a feudal estate within the White House. That’s something Laura Rozen has talked about quite eloquently. Constitutionally it raises serious problems because by removing -- I think this is the purpose -- by removing much of this action from the Justice Department and the Department of Defense...
TA: ...which action, Jonathan?
JT: ...It actually ranges from the energy bill to Iraq to Iran to you-name-it...
TA: ... Surveillance?
JT: ...Yeah. A lot of this has come directly out of Cheney’s office. It not only reflects the fact that he’s the center of gravity within the administration, I think he’s actually more of a center of gravity than the president. But it also insulates those decisions and those actions from review. It’s much harder for Congress to conduct oversight of the White House than it is these other agencies...
TA: ... Because it’s the “executive” after all?
JT:... That’s right. In some ways this administration has been gaming the system. They’ve been quite clever in finding ways to reduce transparency and really to reduce the role of the legislature. Cheney’s view of the Constitution is almost that it’s... I think he thinks the Constitution is just Article II. Executive powers. And the rest of them are just appendages to Article II. And that reflects how the administration has been constructed around Cheney’s office.
TA: Jonathan -- stand by for a moment. I want to take a call from Savannah, Georgia. Robert’s on the line.
Robert: I believe that Dick Cheney is the most dangerous man since Benedict Arnold. I think that if anything should happen to George W. Bush, this country would be sunk.
TA: Why so dangerous? Benedict Arnold! That’s a pretty big claim!
Robert: Well, I consider myself sort of prescient. Going back to the Crusades, it seems like the whole administration is ignorant of history. This war really began about a thousand years ago, almost, with the so-called Christian Crusades...
TA: Robert -- you’re taking a very big view there. We’ll try and get our heads around that... One more call from Cambridge, Massachusetts. David, you’re on the air.
David: ...I hope we don’t get to talk about Dick Cheney’s daughter because that’s just a distraction which they love right now. I’m sure she wants to have a child and she’s going to love her baby and that’s wonderful.
TA: ... Call it a distraction, but the homosexuality issue and gay marriage did have a big political impact.
David:... The question is how we’re going to drive a stake through the heart of this monster. What I want to know from your folks there is why has the establishment -- people represented by George Bush’s father, Scowcroft, Colin Powell, James Baker -- why have they been so impotent in the fact of this guy? Is it just.... has he discovered some new political force in the country -- the force of bogus masculinity?...
TA: ...or dark energy? Ron Suskind, what do you say?
RS: From the start, the question among that group, David, that you mention is “did we not know Dick or did he change?” That was the debate among the Scowcrofts and the Bakers and the folks around “41” (so-called). What you’ve seen over the past six or seven years is that crowd not being able to assert much authority and then less and less authority as things moved forward. Interestingly, Cheney has positioned himself brilliantly, I think, between the two presidents. Part of the victim of that positioning has been the honest brokering (so-called) -- pragmatists, mostly -- that surrounded “41,” his father. They have very little currency in this administration. I think the Baker Hamilton Commission is a perfect example. That’s a “41,” old-style, pragmatic, bipartisan kind of group. Look how much power and effect that group had. Zero, frankly. They had some political help that they offered in terms of the election, but after that people were saying, “My goodness, they ignored the recommendations of the commission.” Folks who observed Dick Cheney closely said “What surprises you about that!”
TA: Let’s go to Christine in Boston.
Christine: I appreciate all this talk. I hear everything everyone is saying and agree wholeheartedly. But I’d like to know how we get beyond the talk immediately and do something...
TA: ...Do what?
Christine: Let our voices be heard immediately.
TA: We’ve heard voices on this show saying “Bravo Dick Cheney!” I hear you talking in another direction, so what kind of action are you seeking?
Christine: Non-bravo Dick Cheney! Non-bravo Bush! Stop the war. Stop this continuation of killing soldiers and Iraqi people. Not just our troops but what about the Iraqi people.
TA: So what’s the action path to that? Jonathan Turley? How about it? Two years is a long time. There’s a lot of fire power at Dick Cheney’s disposal. He’s shown in the past he’s ready to push for its use. Congress right now not so happy with the direction of the administration but still cutting it both ways. Resolution against but probably funding for... Are there reins to be pulled on this vice president and his president?
JT: There’s plenty Congress can do. It’s remarkable they haven’t done more. Dick Cheney may be the most unpopular president since Spiro Agnew. It’s almost statistically impossible to go lower in the polls than he has been for some time. Congress, if you talk to them privatly, clearly most of them believe this war can only end badly. It’s not as though the Shiites and the Sunnis are suddenly going to find a level of brotherly love. But the Democrats are not prepared to go nose to nose, toe to toe, in a real sense. The framers intentionally divided the authority of conducting what they called “foreign entanglements and wars” between Congress and the president. They wanted to create tension. They wanted to give Congress enough authority that they can stop the war. They have that authority. They can also limit it. Congress in the past prevented administrations from going into Angola and Nicaragua by preventing money from going forward.
TA: But Cheney says, “They won’t stop us!”
JT: The biggest concern I have -- he must be speaking politically... he may believe that constitutionally but he’s wrong! -- the biggest concern I have is that they’re putting so many carriers and surface vessels near Iran, if something were to happen, if a single Iranian frigate were to get into a problem with one of those vessels in that closed space, the president would have authority, without the approval of Congress, to attack Iran. If Iran then responded -- and they have a rather unhinged president so I wouldn’t be surprised -- then he could escalate further. This could go easily on auto-pilot. I don’t think people realize that this is an administration that really believes in its inherent authority. They believe that if anything happens in that closed space, they can go after Iran. And it’ll be sometime later before they go to Congress.
TA: In that case... in that description, an awful lot rides on the president, George W. Bush. He’s sitting right next to Dick Cheney. He talked a little bit more compromising line in his State of the Union address. Do you seem him casting any doubting glances at his mate there? Might the president put his foot out of the door of this car to slow it down, break away, or not?
LD: I think if he had, he would have after Cheney’s remarkable performance with Wolf Blitzer. I think the two work in collaboration. And what Professor Turley is describing in Iran is creating the precise problem that we now have in Iraq, which is what bewilders and bedevils the Democrats. To put the Congress into this situation in which it can’t lose and it can’t win. I think the vice president does a great deal of the big thinking in the administration. The White House is out-staffed by the office of the vice president. You know, you have for a time, and I don’t know that it’s still going on -- you have vice president that created his own National Security Council office inside the Office of the Vice President. They read all the email traffic of the president’s National Security Staff. The president’s National Security staff couldn’t read the vice president’s NSC staff. You had White House employees meeting in hallways and talking on phone to avoid email, to avoid the surveillance of a vice president who is just immensely powerful. I don’t see the president slowing him down. I see them working in tandem.
TA: Laura Rozen, you’ve been following the Scooter Libby trial, former Chief of Staff to the vice president, on trial for perjury. Any chance something may come out of that trial that would lay a finger on the vice president, trim his sails a little?
LR: There’s this tremendous disconnect between what we’re all talking about. There’s the tremendous power of the vice president and his unwillingness to internalize any of the signs that his power should be diminished. He should recognize that. The Scooter Libby trial, which has all these comical elements of his press aides complaining that the press never calls them to get their side of the story after Joe Wilson’s op-ed appears attach the administration case for war. So there are these comical elements showing that this most powerful office is so petty and so upset by an opinion article. Dick Cheney himself is writing on the margins of Wilson’s op-ed. There’s a huge campaign from that office to try to protect their integrity.
TA: Maybe funny for just a second, but it’s deadly serious stuff. Let me get one more call from Concord, Massachusetts.
Jim: This whole situation is so ambiguous. I look at Dick Cheney as a very bright man and yes, I did vote for the Bush-Cheney ticket. I saw no alternatives, in my view. But I look at Dick Cheney in the same way as, oh, maybe you keep a tough dog in your house for guard duty. Although Cheney is willing to go further than maybe you’d like to see him go, I think there’s still a leash around him and I think the control still comes from the top.
TA: So you don’t think the dog’s calling the shots!
Jim: You know what? I do think that happens sometimes, but I think that’s because it’s allowed to happen. I think it takes the pressure off the president a little bit. This is the guy who puts fear into everybody. I notice that when they went to talk to Cheney about his daughter, he quickly put the fear of god in all the reporters.
TA: “You’re out of line, Wolf..”
Jim: Absolutely. That type A personality is like all of a sudden you get...
TA: Bottom line, Jim. Are you glad he’s there now or not?
Jim: (sigh)
TA: You voted for him!
Jim: I’m not happy with the whole situation. I hate the way we went into the war to begin with. I understand it was nice to give this guy a boot in the butt. I never quite understood the connection to the terrorism.
TA: Ron Suskind, how do you see this playing out? Do you see the vice president actively pushing military confrontation with Iran?
RS: There’s no doubt that’s in the vice president’s lens at this point. As Jim says, the codependency, if you will, between the presidency and the vice presidency is one of history great riddles. We’ll be arguing about it for a long time. The best way to think about it is that Dick Cheney has built an architecture in the White House inside of which George Bush can be George Bush and still be president. He can indulge his instinct, be a man of action, and move forward after 9/11. That gets to the core of how the ship of state is constructed at this point. I think it leads people to some reasonable fears about where that ship may be heading.