The Imperial (Vice) Presidency-By Jonathan Alter (Newsweek)

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.

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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.

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So Cheney has quietly figured out how to avoid answering the messy questions that are a vital part of a modern democracy. His message to the Washington press corps is the same as the one he delivered to Sen. Patrick Leahy in the Senate cloakroom, when the Democrat had the temerity to criticize him: "Go f--- yourself." By not holding a press conference since 2002, Cheney is telling the men and women assigned to cover the White House that they are irrelevant. No wonder they went crazy after learning of the shooting accident from a Texas paper.

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more at:

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

any given chance.

Thanks for posting (last paragraph is dead center).

I especially like how Alter explains that the press uses these little mini-scandals (stories that don't seem to have much to do with governing the nation) as metaphors for what they are seeing and want to communicate to the public about those in power.

But this is my favorite passage:

Damn...Cafferty nailed it again. How true is that? "Brit Hume interviewing Cheney is like Bonnie interviewing Clyde." Except in this case it's even WORSE. Hume calls himself a "journalist." He's not. He works for the fascist government and portrays himself as a "fair and balanced" journalist when he's nothing but a propagandist.

Great srticle by Alter! :thumbsup:

from NYU Journalsim school. Rosen made the same points last week in an interesting post called:

"Dick Cheney Did Not Make a Mistake By Not Telling the Press He Shot a Guy"

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/

snip>

Cheney took the opportunity to show the White House press corps that it is not the natural conduit to the nation-at-large; and it has no special place in the information chain. Cheney does not grant legitimacy to the large news organizations with brand names who think of themselves as proxies for the public and its right to know. Nor does he think the press should know where he is, what he’s doing, or who he’s doing it with.

snip>


and much more