THE CALAMITY HOWLER #158
 
Resent-Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:14:41 -0500 (CDT)

THE CALAMITY HOWLER

June 28, 2007 Issue #158

Sometimes an intended epithet can be turned to good advantage in
the sole surviving issue of the Decatur, Texas Times one finds the
way Populists not only accepted the label `calamity howler but
insisted that they had ample reason to howl and would continue to
howl until their objectives had been attained. --- THE POPULIST
MIND, edited by Norman Pollack

EDITOR\PUBLISHER: A.V Krebs E-MAIL: avkrebs@comcast.net TO RECEIVE:
Send name and address to avkrebs@comcast.net

DICK CHENEY: AMERICA'S CEO AND CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD ABOVE THE LAW
AND NOT IN THE EXECUTIVE NOR THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH

In a four-part remarkable series this week by the Washington Post's
Jo Becker and Barton Gellman they have presented an in-depth
investigation of the vice presidency of Dick Cheney, the most
influential and powerful man ever to hold the office. Their stories
examined Cheney's largely hidden and little-understood role in
crafting policies for the War on Terror, the economy and the
environment.

Presented below are excerpts from the first two articles while the
excerpts from the final two articles will appear in the next issue
of THE CALAMITY HOWLER. To read the entire series see:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/?hpid=topnews

. . . 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.

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.

The vice president's reputation and, some say, his influence, have
suffered in the past year and a half. Cheney lost his closest aide,
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to a perjury conviction, and his onetime
mentor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a Cabinet purge. A shooting accident
in Texas, and increasing gaps between his rhetoric and events in
Iraq, have exposed him to ridicule and approval ratings in the
teens. Cheney expresses indifference, in public and private, to any
verdict but history's, and those close to him say he means it.

Waxing or waning, Cheney holds his purchase on an unrivaled portfolio
across the executive branch. Bush works most naturally, close
observers said, at the level of broad objectives, broadly declared.
Cheney, they said, inhabits an operational world in which means are
matched with ends and some of the most important choices are made.
When particulars rise to presidential notice, Cheney often steers
the preparation of options and sits with Bush, in side-by-side wing
chairs, as he is briefed.

Before the president casts the only vote that counts, the final
words of counsel nearly always come from Cheney. . .

. . . CHENEY, 66, grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska and Casper, Wyoming acquiring a Westerner's passion for hunting and fishing but not for the Democratic politics of his parents. He wed his high school sweetheart, Lynne Vincent, beginning what friends describe as a lifelong love affair. Cheney flunked out of Yale but became a highly regarded PhD candidate in political science at the University of Wisconsin --- avoiding the Vietnam War draft with five deferments along the way --- before abandoning the doctoral program and heading to Washington as a junior congressional aide.

He went on to build an unmatched Washington resume as White House
chief of staff, House minority whip and secretary of defense. An
aversion to political glad-handing and a series of chronic health
problems, including four heart attacks, helped derail his presidential
ambitions and shifted his focus to a lucrative stint as chairman
of Halliburton, an oil services company. His controlled demeanor,
ranging mainly from a tight-lipped gaze to the trademark half-smile,
conceals what associates call an impish sense of humor and unusual
kindness to subordinates.

Cheney's influence in the Bush administration is widely presumed
but hard to illustrate. Many of the men and women who know him best
said an explanation begins with the way he defined his role.

As the Bush administration prepared to take office, "I remember at
the outset, during the transition, thinking, 'What do vice presidents
do?' " said White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten, who was
then the Bush team's policy director. Bolten joined Libby, his
counterpart in Cheney's office, to compile a list of "portfolios
we thought might be appropriate." Their models, Bolten said, were
Quayle's Council on Competitiveness and Al Gore's National Partnership
for Reinventing Government.

"The vice president didn't particularly warm to that," Bolten
recalled dryly.

Cheney preferred, and Bush approved, a mandate that gave him access
to "every table and every meeting," making his voice heard in
"whatever area the vice president feels he wants to be active in,"
Bolten said.

Cheney has used that mandate with singular force of will. Other
recent vice presidents have enjoyed a standing invitation to join
the president at "policy time." But Cheney's interventions have
also come in the president's absence, at Cabinet and sub-Cabinet
levels where his predecessors were seldom seen. He found pressure
points and changed the course of events by "reaching down," a phrase
that recurs often in interviews with current and former aides. . .