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As the prospective presidential nominees ponder choosing their running-mates, the spectre of Vice President Dick Cheney looms large. 

Eight years ago, Cheney's selection as George W. Bush's running mate was widely praised as sober and responsible. He had been a party leader in Congress, a White House chief of staff and a secretary of defense. In announcing his choice, Bush touted Cheney's experience and proclaimed him "capable of serving as president" if destiny so dictated. 

But in many minds now, Cheney's free-wheeling exercise of executive power has impinged on the authority of the presidency. And his stormy and controversial tenure in the Bush White House may well produce a less powerful vice president in the next administration.

That is just as well. The vice presidency should never have been raised to a full partnership in running the country. Ronald Reagan prompted talk of a "co-presidency" when he flirted with the notion of taking former President Gerald Ford as his running mate in 1980, but cooler heads prevailed. The wisdom of that dismissal has been confirmed in the Cheney experience. 

Still, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain should be cautious about overreacting to Cheney. They would be wrong to downplay the importance of past government service when appraising prospective running mates, and they would be unwise return the vice presidency to irrelevance. Overall, the elevation of the importance of the vice presidency has been a largely constructive trend. 

The Constitution, you'll find, is vague about the role of the vice president. For much of its history, the office was relegated to obscurity and subject to ridicule. John Adams, America's first vice president, complained: "My country in its wisdom has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."  

Thomas Marshall, vice president under Woodrow Wilson, lamented that holding the job was like being "a man in a cataleptic state; he cannot speak; he cannot move, he suffers no pain, and yet he is perfectly conscious of everything that is going on about him." Wilson agreed. "The chief embarrassment in discussing this office," he once said, "is, that in explaining how little there is to be said about it, one has evidently said all here is to say." 

Don't Let Cheney Ruin It

affront man

Speaking in the splendour of the palace Orangery, Schama described Mr Bush as a "comical little front man" for what ought to be considered the "Cheney administration".

Did we know that?... see toon at top... 

meanwhile the dummy...

US Vice President Dick Cheney's treatment for an abnormal heart rhythm "went smoothly and without complication" and he has returned home and resumed his normal schedule, his office has.

"An electrical impulse was delivered to restore the heart to normal rhythm. The procedure went smoothly and without complication," spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said in a statement.

Mr Cheney, whose doctors performed the procedure at George Washington University Hospital in downtown Washington, is home and resumed his normal schedule, she said.

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Meanwhile the dummy, like Pinocchio let loose on its own, played with Monopoly money. See toon at top... The wise Gemini cricket was not to be seen anywhere...

in the puppetmeister's footsteps

 How to Angle
10 Tips for the Next Vice President

By Barton Gellman
Sunday, October 19, 2008; B01

Vice presidential power was a term of mirth in governments past. Not anymore. Vice President Cheney may be the nearest thing we have had to a deputy president, and that hasn't escaped the notice of the candidates vying to succeed him. At the vice presidential debate, Sen. Joe Biden called Cheney "the most dangerous vice president" in U.S. history for his efforts to "aggrandize the power of a unitary executive." Gov. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, praised Cheney for "tapping into that position" and the Founding Fathers for "allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president."

Imagining Palin as "Cheney: The Sequel" is now fodder for cable television news. When CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked me the other day whether Palin could reprise Cheney's role, I gave a quick TV reply: Ambition and capability are two different things. Palin lacks Cheney's Washington savvy and policy depth. But that's not the end of the story. Anyone can learn Cheney's methods. For busy aspirants, I offer an executive summary of the Cheney Rules.

Fly Under the Radar.

When candidate George W. Bush asked Cheney to help choose a running mate in 2000, Cheney devised the most intrusive vetting process ever used in a presidential campaign. He insisted on waivers that gave him unrestricted access to the medical, IRS and (via the Freedom of Information Act) FBI files of each contender. He asked them to specify in writing whether they were vulnerable to blackmail and, if so, why. (Note to applicants: If you have to think twice about that one, discard the questionnaire.) But when Cheney became Bush's choice, he did not fill out his own paperwork. The cardiac surgeon who vouched for Cheney's heart now says he never met the man or reviewed a page of his records. Cheney "went down through everybody's negatives," former vice president Dan Quayle told me. "And everybody has negatives. . . . And nobody really vetted him on what his negatives were."

2. Winning Is Easy When the Other Side Doesn't Know About the Game.

the Viceroy...

A Life of Vice

Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, Barton Gellman, Penguin Press, 384 pages

By Steve Clemons

 

An old adage about America’s first helmsmen is that “Washington reigned, Hamilton ruled, and Jefferson complained.” The contemporary version might say that “Bush reigned, Cheney ruled, and Congress, the nation, and the world complained.”

Richard Cheney has sculpted the vice presidency in a way never seen before. He revolutionized an office that has turned many of its occupants into obscure eccentrics—one that Benjamin Franklin referred to as “Your Superfluous Excellency.” Cheney refused to do state funerals. Instead, he rerouted the in- and outboxes of power in the White House and turned himself into the nation’s most consequential political force. Whether George W. Bush approved or not, his VP animated most of the controversial policies that will define for decades the Bush II presidency.

read more at The American Conservative and see toon at top....

biden to demote the vice-dictatorship

December 21, 2008, 12:03 pm

Biden and Cheney Clash on Role of No. 2

By Brian Knowlton Vice President-Elect Joseph Biden talks about the economy with George Stephanopoulos. (Lauren Victoria Burke/ABC NEWS)

WASHINGTON — The vice presidential transition was in strikingly clear view Sunday.

Vice President Dick Cheney was unfazed by the stinging criticism of the job he and the president have done and was combative in reacting to comments by the man who will succeed him, Joseph R. Biden Jr. Moreover, while President Bush has struck a decidedly thoughtful and at times self-critical tone in the interviews he has granted as his presidency winds down, Mr. Cheney was as unyielding as ever.

The sharp edge of some of Mr. Cheney’s statements might not be terribly surprising; during the election campaign, after all, Mr. Biden had criticized Mr. Cheney as “probably the most dangerous vice president we’ve had in American history,” and one who had taken a “recklessly” expansive view of the powers of his office.

The current vice president , appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” taught a lesson in constitutional law before brushing off Mr. Biden’s criticism as “campaign rhetoric”:

[Mr. Biden] also said that the — all the powers and responsibilities of the executive branch are laid out in Article 1 of the Constitution. Well, they’re not. Article 1 of the Constitution is the one on the legislative branch. Joe’s been chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a member of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate, for 36 years, teaches constitutional law back in Delaware, and can’t keep straight which article of the Constitution provides for the legislature and which provides for the executive. So I think — I write that off as campaign rhetoric. I don’t take it seriously. And if he wants to diminish the office of vice president, that’s obviously his call.

Mr. Cheney said that the Bush Administration legally exerted the kind of authority found in Article 2. “We did it in a manner that I believe and the lawyers that we looked to for advice believed was fully consistent with the Constitution and with the laws of the land,” he said. “And there’s, I say, ample precedent for it. If you think about what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War, what F.D.R. did during World War II, they went far beyond anything we’ve done in the global war on terror.”

Regarding the difference in roles played by the outgoing and incoming second-in-commands, Mr. Cheney said that if Mr. Biden “wants to diminish the office of the vice president, that’s obviously his call.”