There really isn't anything too surprising in this article, but it does further confirm who is really in charge in the White House.
The article starts by showing how an order started in Cheney's hands, and in less than an hour became a military order stripping terrorism suspects of all access to the judicial system. No lawyers, no trials, nothing. It completely bypassed all review, even by the Colin Powell, then Secretary of State and Condi Rice, National Security Adviser. Neither was aware of the order until it was announced on CNN that night.
The power that Cheney has taken unto himself is frightening.
In roles that have gone largely undetected, Cheney has served as gatekeeper for Supreme Court nominees, referee of Cabinet turf disputes, arbiter of budget appeals, editor of tax proposals and regulator in chief of water flows in his native West. On some subjects, officials said, he has displayed a strong pragmatic streak. On others he has served as enforcer of ideological principle, come what may.
This has been well understood for many years. Bush, however smart or dumb he may actually be (I've heard he has an above average IQ in the 120 range), is not engaged in his position as President. He lets his subordinates do the grunt work, and he behaves very much as a patrician.
The next section is also revealing.
Cheney is not, by nearly every inside account, the shadow president of popular lore. Bush has set his own course, not always in directions Cheney preferred. The president seized the helm when his No. 2 steered toward trouble, as Bush did, in time, on military commissions. Their one-on-one relationship is opaque, a vital unknown in assessing Cheney's impact on events. The two men speak of it seldom, if ever, with others. But officials who see them together often, not all of them admirers of the vice president, detect a strong sense of mutual confidence that Cheney is serving Bush's aims.
I've heard this before, as well. It presents Bush as the man in charge, listening to Cheney, but overruling him when he thought Cheney's advice was too far out there. But all of this is coming from Bush officials who are absolutely loyal to the President. Even they say the relationship between Bush and Cheney is unknown. For all we know, it could be nothing more than political theater. Bush overrides Cheney in public, but gets his way in private.
In meeting with Dan Quayle shortly after taking the oath of office, Dan Quayle recalled
"I said, 'Dick, you know, you're going to be doing a lot of this international traveling, you're going to be doing all this political fundraising . . . you'll be going to the funerals,' " Quayle said in an interview earlier this year. "I mean, this is what vice presidents do. I said, 'We've all done it.' "
Cheney "got that little smile," Quayle said, and replied, "I have a different understanding with the president."
"He had the understanding with President Bush that he would be -- I'm just going to use the word 'surrogate chief of staff,' " said Quayle, whose membership on the Defense Policy Board gave him regular occasion to see Cheney privately over the following four years.
Again, from this comment Cheney appears to be the one in charge. They have different "understanding". I would love to have such "understandings" with my supervisors.
Secrecy is one of the most important aspects of the vice president
Stealth is among Cheney's most effective tools. Man-size Mosler safes, used elsewhere in government for classified secrets, store the workaday business of the office of the vice president. Even talking points for reporters are sometimes stamped "Treated As: Top Secret/SCI." Experts in and out of government said Cheney's office appears to have invented that designation, which alludes to "sensitive compartmented information," the most closely guarded category of government secrets. By adding the words "treated as," they said, Cheney seeks to protect unclassified work as though its disclosure would cause "exceptionally grave damage to national security."
Even everyday operations are considered classified. This is a man who wants to hide what he had for breakfast inside Fort Knox. It is the mindset of a CEO, not of a public servant.
His latest move is to exempt his office from disclosure of official documents he has classified. Notice the order, Cheney says he is exempt first, then Bush follows a day later, as if he is trying to give legitimacy to the vice president retroactively.
Cheney's actions, when they are discovered speak much louder than any words to the contrary. He selects himself to be VP and he held secret energy meetings even before 9/11. After that, his power grab has become unprecedented, all of it for ill of the nation, and much of it unconstitutional.
This is a sad period in our history. Of course we'll never know, but I think Bush might have been a somewhat better president if he had had a different VP, say the John McCain of 2000. And Dick Cheney might have been a better VP if he had a better president above him, again let's say the McCain of 2000. Under George H. W. Bush, for example, he did not exhibit these tendencies as Secretary of Defense. Under Nixon, however, he was just as bad as he is today. The combination of a weak willed president and a vice president obsessed with increasing his own power have done serious damage to our nation.