That Dick Cheney, He’s A Good Fella

There have been many jokes made about Dick Cheney selecting himself as the Vice Presidential candidate when he was put in charge of the search committee, but no one’s really laughing anymore. Cheney has been the most influential and powerful Vice President in history. Perhaps he saw his opening to be President, without ever having to be elected to that office. I guess the joke is on us.

George Bush is a lightweight. He has no intellectual curiosity, he views the world in a very limited and simplistic way and he understands very little about public policy, diplomacy or how the government works. Bush was a blank slate, someone Cheney could sweep aside or at the very least manipulate. It appears that Cheney holds the power, he just let’s George think he’s in control by presenting him with binary choices that, of course, have clear right and wrong answers. “Hey George, what do you think, should we let Saddam Hussein continue to terrorize his neighbors, develop nuclear weapons and murder his own people OR should we do something about it?” Bush may be the “decider” but his choices are likely limited and once the decision is made, Cheney deals with the details.

There are so many things that are unprecedented about this Vice President, the lighter side of things being, he shot someone in the face. On the more disturbing side, He made numerous personal trips to the CIA when gathering, or rather cherry-picking, intelligence to support an invasion of Iraq. He convened secret meetings to set our energy policy, a policy that has resulted in the rip off of public utilities by Enron, record high gas prices for consumers and obscene profits for oil companies. The latest unprecedented role of the Vice President to be revealed is that, Cheney may have been given the authority to preside over National Security Council meetings. Cheney’s presence at these meetings has resulted in what an unnamed senior official describes as “the most dysfunctional NSC that ever existed.”

Clearly, Cheney knew exactly what he was doing when he resigned his post at Halliburton and picked himself to be the next (Vice) President of the United States. This may not have been an ideologically driven move on his part, but rather an offer he simply couldn’t refuse to extend to himself. James K. Galbraith, in his article “Predatory State” appearing in the June issue of Mother Jones, writes about the “profit is king” culture in which our current leaders are steeped:

That a government run by people rooted in this culture should also be predatory isn’t surprising—and the link between George H.W. Bush, who led the deregulation of the S&Ls, his son Neil, who ran a corrupt S&L, and Neil’s brother George, for whom Ken Lay sent thugs to Florida in 2000 on the Enron plane, could hardly be any closer. But aside from occasional references to “kleptocracy” in other countries, economic opinion has been slow to recognize this. Thinking wistfully, we assume that government wants to do good, and its failure to do so is a matter of incompetence.

In Cheney’s hands, Bush provides the perfect cover for the looting of our treasury. Bush seems to have no aversion to criminal behavior, in fact it runs in the family, and when the theft becomes noticeable, just blame the lost funds on his incompetence. I mean, really, how hard is it to sell the idea that Bush just wasn’t smart enough to make the government work? It’s almost hard to imagine Cheney not taking the opportunity when, like Henry Hill said in Goodfellas, “Everything was for the taking.” For someone like Dick Cheney, “everything” would be awful hard to pass up.

So what do we do about this rogue administration with Cheney at the helm? One of the most common reasons given by those on the left for not getting behind impeachment is the fear of President Cheney. Well, for all intents and purposes, we already have a President Cheney so how could that possibly matter? But for those who still can’t imagine legitimizing his power, how about this? As David Swanson suggests, impeach Cheney first. Sounds like a winner to me.