While reporters Gellman and Becker have raised blogosphere hell over their four-part Cheneyfest that starts in today’s Washington Post, I posit that everybody else has missed the real meat of Sunday’s story. We already knew that Cheney hides his appointment schedule, his staff list and his own middle name in some impenetrable secrets chest. The blogosphere long ago covered how Yoo, Addington and Fredo Gonzales cooperated to ensure that America would stop respecting such trivialities as FISA and the Geneva Conventions. But one point is news to me:
When James A. Baker III was tapped to be White House chief of staff in 1980, he interviewed most of his living predecessors. Advice from Cheney filled four pages of a yellow legal pad. Only once, to signify Cheney’s greatest emphasis, did Baker write in all capital letters:
BE AN HONEST BROKER
DON’T USE THE PROCESS TO IMPOSE YOUR POLICY VIEWS ON PRES.
Cheney told Baker, according to the notes, that an “orderly paper flow is way you protect the Pres.,” ensuring that any proposal has been tested against other views. Cheney added:
“It’s not in anyone’s interest to get an ‘oh by the way decision’ — & all have to understand that. Can hurt the Pres. Bring it up at a Cab. mtg. Make sure everyone understands this.”
In 1999, not long before he became Bush’s running mate, Cheney warned again about “‘oh, by the way’ decisions” at a conference of White House historians. According to a transcript, he added: “The process of moving paper in and out of the Oval Office, who gets involved in the meetings, who does the president listen to, who gets a chance to talk to him before he makes a decision, is absolutely critical. It has to be managed in such a way that it has integrity.”
Two years later, at his Nov. 13 lunch with Bush, Cheney brought the president the ultimate “oh, by the way” choice — a far-reaching military order that most of Bush’s top advisers had not seen.
According to Flanigan, Addington was not the first to think of military commissions but was the “best scholar of the FDR-era order” among their small group of trusted allies. “He gained a preeminent role by virtue of his sheer ability to turn out a draft of something in quick time.”
That draft, said one of the few lawyers apprised of it, “was very closely held because it was coming right from the top.”
Now that’s an interesting data point. Working under a famously dim underachiever Dick Cheney became exactly the kind of bureaucratic disaster that he himself used to warn people about. What happened? Delving too deeply probably risks getting into the weeds of psychohistory, but it is interesting to note that so many of our recent troubles could have been avoided if Dick Cheney had listened to Dick Cheney.
Zifnab
That comment is deep and confusing on entirely too many levels.
Rome Again
Cheney is his own worst enemy.
ThymeZone
That’s our Dick. Nobody can lick him.
Horselover Fat
Cheney went nuts when he had his cardiac bypass operation.
Google “pumphead” for details of this syndrome.
wvng
Horselover said what I was going to. Serious illnesses, particularly illnesses or procedures that impact blood flow to the brain, can cause profound and permanent behavioral shifts. Since many of Cheney’s old friends and coworkers have noticed and commented on his behavioral changes it seems reasonable to suggest that they are real. Seems to me that we would be well served in this country if medical assessments of our leaders included assessments of cognitive abilities and pathologies. Not sure what we would do with the information, not being able to vote a government out of power, but it would be nice to know.
Double-secret anonym
It’s Bruce.
VP Cheney’s middle name, that is.
But don’t tell anybody; it’s probably classified.
Remfin
I think you’re ignoring the simplest explanation
Dick Cheney was against direct feeds to the President when he wasn’t in a position to be the feed. Dick Cheney is in favor of direct feeds to the President when he is the feed.
There is no evidence he was following his “advice” when he was one of the feeds originally as a CoS, at least none I’ve seen
S.W. Anderson
wvng wrote:
Had Cheney’s brain been denied oxygen because of illness or a procedure to such an extent that he suffered permanent damage that resulted in “profound behavioral shifts,” you would have seen a noticeable loss of cognition and intellectual capabilities. You’d probably first notice it as a compromised ability to communicate.
While Cheney might be ornery, selfish, ideologically bent and exhibit strong paranoid personality traits, he’s not stumbling along on a noticeably reduced IQ or ability to engage in higher-level thinking.
Those statements I just made are based on some specific knowledge, so please overcome the temptation to pounce on them with snark.
Friday, on Air America, “The Randi Rhodes Show” and “The Rachel Maddow Show”, much was made of how remarkably Cheney’s income and net worth have grown during his White House years. Rhodes and Maddow also had plenty to say about how fuzzied the information about our creepy veep’s income and net worth are (no surprise).
It may be that Cheney has succumbed to some unfortunate characteristics hardly unknown among people transitioning from middle to old age: greed, suspiciousness, vindictiveness and being resentful much of the time.
Chad N. Freude
Fixed.
D. Mason
I wonder what it is about the “FDR-era order”, whoever that is, that makes their activities so relevant to the current debacle in Iraq. If anyone more knowledgeable than myself has any idea what this particular quote might be referring to I would be highly curious to read about it.
George B.
9/11 changed everything.
Redhand
That’s an actual quote from Cheney, when asked why he endorsed the 2003 Iraq invasion after counseling against it in 1991.
Kind of reminds me of the Reichstag fire. That “changed everything” too.
Rome Again
You don’t happen to be from Colorado, do you? I know a certain group of people in Colorado who have a fascination with the name Bruce. Just curious. Do you know the definition of Igg?
DougJ
Just saw this on Atrios. It blew my mind.
I guess maybe to a guy who lives in a bunker, being buried alive doesn’t sound that bad.
TAX ANALYST
Tim F says:
” but it is interesting to note that so many of our recent troubles could have been avoided if Dick Cheney had listened to Dick Cheney.”
But Tim, everybody knows, including Dick Cheney, that nobody with any brains listens to a fuck-head like Dick Cheney…Christ, he was down to a 19% approval rating when Dubyah was still in the mid-30’s…in fact, at that point I recall Cheney was less popular than “beating your child in public”. What could Dick-o be polling now? Maybe 7%? And most of those people are probably in favor of burying people alive…Hell, some of them may actually have already done something like that.
Pb
Pfft, what behavior shift? He’s always been a dick.
Jill
Dick Cheney changed everything.
Tulkinghorn
I am astonished about the detail where Cheney had Yoo at the Justice department feeding memos written by Addington to Gonzales, who then then forwarded them to Bush under his own signature. Everybody in the chain is either completely incompetent, or completely unprincipled, or both.
Rome Again
Unprincipled, definitely. Incompetent, perhaps… or else the conspiracy theory that he’s a reptilian shapeshifter really is true, and something otherworldly is impeding him. ;)
I kid, I kid.
Tax Analyst
Many a Truth’s been said in jest…I heard that somewhere…
Jake
To summarize Remfin: IOKIYADick.
And while Dick is the one having surgeries that might affect his brain, the President is the one with all of the symptoms of damage. Call Bill Frist!
Tax Analyst
It’s OK, man…Bill said they’re both every bit as cognizant as Terri Schiavo was.