Hat tip to GreyHawk, whose comment on Land of Enchantment's diary led me to this article. - o.h.
The Boston Globe this morning has published an exquisite expose on the Machiavellian machinations of one Richard Cheney, outlining Cheney's on-the-record and behind-the-scenes maneuvering since the 1970s to expand the powers of the presidency and usurp the Constitutional role of Congressional oversight.
Cheney bypassed acts of Congress as defense secretary in the first Bush administration. And his office has been the driving force behind the current administration's hoarding of secrets, its efforts to impose greater political control over career officials, and its defiance of a law requiring the government to obtain warrants when wiretapping Americans. Cheney's staff has also been behind President Bush's record number of signing statements asserting his right to disregard laws.
[Cheney] has repeatedly said his agenda includes restoring the presidency to its fullest powers by rolling back "unwise" limits imposed by Congress after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.
"In 34 years, I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job," Cheney said on ABC in January 2002. "I feel an obligation...to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them to our successors."
Cheney's ideal of presidential power is the level of power the office briefly achieved in the late 1960s, the era of what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called the "imperial presidency."
The Globe article provides a lovely summary of Cheney's consistent push since the days when he and Donald Rumsfeld served in the Nixon administration, and chafed at the heightened oversight brought to bear by Congress, necessitated by the excesses of the Executive branch during the Vietnam and Watergate era.
Then, in December 2005, [three days after] The New York Times revealed that the administration was wiretapping Americans' international phone calls and e-mails without warrants, violating the 1978 surveillance law . . . Cheney sat down with reporters and laid out his belief "in a strong, robust executive authority." Bypassing the warrant law, he asserted, was "consistent with the constitutional authority of the president."
Cheney also indicated that he hopes to establish further precedents for the expansion of presidential authority. Listing other statutory constraints on presidential power, he said they "will be tested at some point." When Cheney was asked whether he believed that the pendulum of executive power had swung back far enough in the direction he desired, or whether it needed to swing back further, he demurred.
"I do think that to some extent now, we've been able to restore the legitimate authority of the presidency," he replied.
The article mentions, among other things, Cheney's energy task force, whcih divvied up Iraq's oil resources way back in early 2001, and the crippling court decisions (from which Cheney's hunting buddy, Antonin Scalia, refused to recuse himself) that eviscerated public-disclosure laws, mandating public oversight over Executive policy processes.
Cheney's true colors were once again revealed in 1990 when, as defense secretary under George H.W. Bush, he pushed the President to attack Iraq irrespective of the direction of Congress (emphases added):
After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Bush sent 500,000 US troops to Saudi Arabia. As they prepared to attack the Iraqi forces, Cheney told Bush that it was unnecessary and too risky to seek a vote in Congress.
"I was not enthusiastic about going to Congress for an additional grant of authority," Cheney recalled in a 1996 PBS "Frontline" documentary. "I was concerned that they might well vote 'no' and that would make life more difficult for us."
But Bush rejected Cheney's advice and asked Congress for a vote in support of the war. The resolution passed -- barely. Had Congress voted no, Cheney later said, he would have urged Bush to launch the Gulf War regardless.
"From a constitutional standpoint, we had all the authority we needed," Cheney said in the 1996 documentary. "If we'd lost the vote in Congress, I would certainly have recommended to the president that we go forward anyway."
Cheney's crusade to neuter the United States Constitution didn't start yesterday, and certainly didn't end on November 7, when Democrats won control of both houses of Congress.
All of this other stuff has just been the pre-game show. Kickoff comes January 3, 2007. And it may well be that the future of our democratic republic hangs in the balance.