'Angler' For Power: "It will take years to uncover and undo all the damage he has wrought."

WP: 'Angler' For Power
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, June 26, 2007; Page A21

I'm often asked why, given my lower-than-low opinion of this administration, I don't at least raise the subject of whether George W. Bush should be impeached. I answer with three scary words that tend to end the discussion: President Dick Cheney.

Then again, Cheney would probably think of moving into the Oval Office as a demotion. The president, at least, has some accountability to public opinion -- if he's going to defy it, he has to offer some explanation. The president has to hold an occasional news conference, tolerate meetings with his opponents on Capitol Hill and endure lectures from world leaders who question his policies. Cheney can just blow it all off.

Cheney will be remembered not just as the first sitting vice president since Aaron Burr to shoot someone but also as the first vice president in history clever and determined enough to turn what is usually a ceremonial office into a center of vast independent power.

It's ironic that the latest outrage from Cheney is his claim to be exempt from a presidential order concerning the handling of classified documents because his office is not actually, or at least not exclusively, a part of the executive branch. Cheney, you see, has spent the past six years pushing the envelope of executive authority, asserting for Bush and himself the right to do pretty much any damn thing they want....

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The vice president, whose Secret Service code name is "Angler," really does know all the angles. And above all, he knows how to survive. His onetime mentor Donald Rumsfeld is gone, his onetime top aide Scooter Libby is on his way to jail, yet Cheney -- defiantly, disastrously, unbelievably -- remains. It will take years to uncover and undo all the damage he has wrought.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/25/AR2007062501467.html?hpid=opinionsbox1