The most powerful vice-president ever? (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website
***
Dick Cheney is regarded as one of the main articulators and architects of the Bush administration.

Descriptions of him include "eminence grise", the "most powerful vice president ever" and even "Darth Vader", a reference he has picked up himself. There was joke in Washington after Mr Cheney's heart condition became known that "George Bush is just a heartbeat away from the presidency."

New book attacks

A new book about him called "Vice" has just been published by two Texas journalists, Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein. Mr Dubose is an old foe of the Bush team, having written, with Molly Ivins, a criticism of George Bush himself in 2000. It was called "Shrub".
***
"Vice" is in effect the case for the prosecution against Mr Cheney. The charges are that he has over-extended the powers of the executive and has in the process turned the office of vice president into an office of excessive power, "exercising authority that often subsumes the president's".

The authors argue that the vice president's predilection for presidential power was strengthened by the events of 9/11 that turned him into a "strategic hysteric".
***
more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6096042.stm

"Strategic Hysteric" -- wow, what a trenchant phrase! It captures the manipulative, conniving nature of WH fearmongering perfectly.

[driver8]

1. He's probably one of the most powerful VP's ever...he is also, without a

doubt, the most evil and the most crooked!

I despise everything about that piece of shit.

[neilepi]

3. The authors were interviewed on Bloomberg Radio about a week ago

One question asked was how they thought Cheyney felt about his <20% approval rating. The response was "not in the slightest concerned" though others around him with futures to worry about took a very different view. One interesting fact to emerge was that it is apparently extremely unusual for a VP to visit the CIA HQ in Langley; most VPs apparently avoid Langley like the plague and if a visit is necessary it might be once in an entire term. In Cheyney's case, however, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq he apparently visited Langley at least 8 and possibly as many as 13 times to review the (WMD) intelligence and direct further gathering.

When asked what reasons the author attributed to Cheyney's success I recall that the response was "intelligence and ruthlessness".

The new, unique, 2007 Anti-Bush Graffiti Calendar and related items

[Kolesar]

2. "strategic hysteric"-- America could put that on her 21st century coinage

Then anybody around the globe looking at it would know exactly what we are going through.
BTW, Dubose & Ivins "Shrub" was a good book.

[bemildred]

4. The only one that ever selected himself for the job. nt