Newsweek's Jonathan Alter: The Imperial (Vice) Presidency

The Imperial (Vice) Presidency

Since Cheney doesn't have a real chance of moving up, he felt he could change the rules.

By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
Feb. 27, 2006 issue - Fox news's exclusive interview with vice president Dick Cheney was, as CNN's Jack Cafferty sniped, "like Bonnie interviewing Clyde," but Brit Hume posed some good questions. When asked if he still thinks after everything that happened that he handled the story the right way, Cheney replied, "I still do." To me, this was the most revealing part of the whole episode. Cheney believes in what might be called partisan accountability—you answer only to your own side, on your own terms, not to the jackals of the mainstream media.

-snip-
Before Walter Mondale became the first consequential vice president of the modern era in 1977, no one much cared if the No. 2 wanted to stiff the press. FDR's first veep, John Nance Garner, said the vice presidency "wasn't worth a pitcher of warm piss." (When a reporter changed "piss" to "spit" for taste reasons, Garner called him a "pantywaist.") But in the last three decades, vice presidents have steadily gained power. Their taxpayer-funded traveling retinues have become so large (Cheney even travels with his own medical team) that pretending to be normal citizens wouldn't wash. When Al Gore said there was "no controlling legal authority" on his fund-raising, it was at a hostile press conference, not an interview with The Harvard Crimson.

Cheney has simultaneously expand-ed the power of the vice presidency and reduced its accountability. Because his health made him the first veep since ancient Alben Barkley (under Harry Truman) with no realistic chance of moving up, he felt he could change the rules. Fears of terrorism made his decision to go to an "undisclosed location" understandable, but he has taken secrecy about his whereabouts to inexplicable lengths. News organizations went along with this partly to save money by not sending reporters to cover his trips. They rationalized it by explaining that Cheney never said anything to reporters anyway.

-snip-
The shooting could hardly be a better metaphor for Cheney. It neatly packages his faulty judgment, insularity and arrogance in a story that is not cataclysmic on its own terms but will prove hard to forget. That's too bad for Cheney, and certainly for Harry Whittington. But it is a blessing for anyone hoping to restore some accountability to a government that increasingly believes it is a law unto itself.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11434566/site/newsweek/

There are a million BS distractions that this adminstration could fall back on, Cheney shooting a man is not one of them.

in Al Gore. Especially demeaning to Gore is to mention him right in the same paragraph with John Nance Gardner.

It's as if the reference to Gore or Clinton is just obligatory hoping that they might pick up a few conservative readers who will read the piece.

What this does though is continue the "Everyone does it Meme" that the Repugs/Rove are so good at. And allows the Wingers to go off on Gore rather than Cheney.

I used to respect Jonathan Alter...and sometimes he still tries but putting those "code words" in every article is a turn off.

Still...it's worth the read, I guess. :-(