1 Boring Old Man

Cheney gets last laugh

Vice President Dick Cheney has won his battle to withhold records from the public despite efforts by Congress and other critics who say they should be open to scrutiny. The Democrats are conceding defeat. The party’s top investigator in the House of Representatives acknowledges that there is nothing more he can do to force the vice president’s hand.

“He has managed to stonewall everyone,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do.” Waxman said that despite Cheney’s turning this administration into “one of the most secretive in history,” there’s not much he or anyone else can do because the administration has only a few more months left in office.

Cheney argues that, as the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, he is not exclusively part of the executive branch and therefore not subject to the public-records standards that have been applied to past administrations…

I don’t see it that way. Dick Cheney’s earlier years were certainly no success story. He went to Yale, but flinked out after two years. Returning to Wyoming, he knocked around, finally finishing at a local college. After a successful career as a draft dodger, he went to Washington as an Intern, landing a job as Donald Rumsfeld’s Assistant. Ultimately, he became Gerald Ford’s Chief of Staff, helping Ford lose the 1976 election. So back to Wyoming where he became a U.S. Congressman for six terms. He had a record of voting conservatively and became the House Minority Whip. He was chosen as George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense and was in that capacity for the First Gulf War. In all of this time, he wielded power, but made little or no contribution to the Law of the Land. He was a Contrarian, opposing much, adding nothing.

His Assistants, Paul Wolfowitz and Stephen Hadley, prepared a Defense Guidance foreign policy document that Papa Bush nixed after it was leaked. Cheney spent the Clinton years as a Right Wing Think Tank type, until landing a job with Halliburton as C.E.O. He made a weak attempt at a Presidential run in that period. As Vice President, he’s again wielded tremendous power, but his contributions have been one disaster after another. His only success was to undermine the Constitution and stonewall anyone who questioned his idiosyncratic views of Presidential [and Vice Presidential] powers. He pushed for a War that was a failure.

So in his forty years in Washington, he has repeatedly amassed power, but misused it – leaving only destruction and failure in his wake. His only real accomplishment has been to be successfully Contrarian. It’s the storyof a man with a mighty big ego which he throw around by operating in the shadows, but in the end, accomplish nothing. This article in the Hill suggests that he has the "last laugh," having successfully avoided Congressional scrutiny or oversight. What kind of accomplishment is that? the pointless success of avoiding being a part of government.

Dick Cheney avoided the Draft, he avoided being a meaningful member of Congress, he never made it to his goal – President, and he leaves a legacy of non-accomplishment in his forty years of government service. It’s been about his own personal power. At best, he might be considered a success like a professional criminal is a success – avoiding getting caught; or, pehaps, like a latter-day Don Quixote who vanquished every windmill in his path.