Vice President Leaves Executive Branch!

VP Cheney Not Executive Material

Vice President Cheney claims that he does not have to follow the rules that bind other members of the Executive Branch of government. We have always sensed that he believes the rules don’t apply to him. It is his unique rationale however that makes his regular rule breaking seem insipid and uninspired. His theory of why he doesn’t have to submit his records to the archives, and why it is fine and proper for him to destroy his phone records and visitor logs and not to protect secret information as others are mandated to is so creative as to be nearly admirable—as theory.

The Vice President of the United States is asserting that he is not a member of the Executive branch! Wow! A whole new “estate.” (And God knows he can afford a whole new estate, maybe even a whole state, on his Halliburton holdings.)

The argument is that the Vice President is not really wholly under the Executive because there are also Constitutionally prescribed Legislative duties, such a presiding over the Senate and voting in case of a tie.

In this original theory, he sets up a whole new way of achieving vice presidential supremacy—almost certainly not envisioned by the Founders. According to Cheney’s reasoning, the most powerful position in the American system is the Vice President, for in this office the Executive and Legislative meet. Like a Colossus, it bestrides the other two. Now, if he could only gain control of the Judicial, by putting his people in the Attorney General’s office and guiding Supreme Court nominations…

If this sells, the office of Vice President will be worth far more than the “warm bucket of spit” that Vice President John Nance Garner called it. In leaving the Executive branch, all Cheney would have to give up in trade for this unprecedented power, would be executive privilege. Might want to re-think this one.