A lot of coverage has gone to what Dick Cheney said to John Edwards, during the so-called vice presidential
debate last Tuesday:
"<...> in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of the Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight."
Immediately following that remark, the left-leaning part of the blogosphere jumped gratefully on that quote as the latest instance of Dick Cheney making a false statement. Not surprisingly, the clear evidence of Cheney's 'misstatement' also resonated in
mainstream media.
However, very little coverage has gone into the significance of that statement:
why Dick Cheney uttered that easily verifiable lie on national TV. And I believe that is a fundamental question that deserves even more attention than the rather self-evident untruth of what came out of Cheney's mouth. Consider the following parting shot by Boston Globe's Susan Milligan in her post-debate
review:
Cheney correctly noted that Edwards has been rarely seen in the Senate since he began running for national office. But Cheney himself -- despite his role as president of the Senate -- meets with only Republican senators during the party's policy luncheons on Tuesdays, and Democrats have long said the vice president ignores senators of the other party.
"I've been here 30 years. He's the first vice president I've known who's spent time only with members of his own party," said Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. "He zips into the Republican conference and zips out."
As president of the Senate, the vice president is tasked with casting tie-breaking votes but rarely presides over the chamber's proceedings. But Leahy said earlier vice presidents -- including President Bush's father -- spent time on Capitol Hill talking to senators in both parties.
Sounds familiar? It should, if you tracked either
Tom DeLay or
Rick Santorum's peculiar interpretations of the transparent political process in a
representative body:
Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, was admonished by the House ethics committee on Wednesday night for the second time in less than a week, this time for appearing to link legislative action to political donations and for sending federal officials to search for Texas legislators during a fracas over redistricting in that state.
...
Last Thursday, the panel formally admonished Mr. DeLay for improperly trying to persuade a Michigan Republican, Representative Nick Smith, to change his vote on prescription drug legislation that passed the House by a narrow margin last year. The panel said it had determined that the majority leader offered to endorse Mr. Smith's son in a Congressional primary if the elder Mr. Smith voted in favor of the measure, which was then teetering on the edge of defeat.
Mr. Smith did not change his vote, but the legislation passed. His son lost the primary.
Before that, DeLay had received a warning from the same ethics panel due to his shenanigans in the
K Street Project:
Republicans involved in the effort said they plan for it to be used by White House officials, lawmakers and staff to determine who can meet with party leaders in discussions of policy matters. The idea is to alert GOP officials and staff members to Republicans who ‘deserve’ such access and to Democrats who don't, said one lobbyist involved.
But that's 'just' the House. Tom DeLay's equivalent role in the Senate is Rick Santorum. In the summer issue of 2003, Nicholas Confessore
wrote in
The Washington Monthly:Santorum's Tuesday meetings are a crucial part of that effort. Every week, the lobbyists present pass around a list of the jobs available and discuss whom to support. Santorum's responsibility is to make sure each one is filled by a loyal Republican--a senator's chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated. After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors.
In the words of
Judicial Watch:
“The development of political dossiers and access/”black” lists is both sinister and crass for a political party that claims to want a ‘big tent’ and promotes conservative values,” stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman. “This is the sort of reprehensible and illegal behavior that got Tom DeLay admonished by the Ethics Committee back in 1998. Some people never learn.” Klayman added.
So, pulling this impolitical racket together, we have Tom DeLay making sure only loyal
bushistas have access to representatives and get to co-author laws in the House, while in the Senate it's Santorum regulating the flow of traffic with favors, contributions and loyal partisanship to enforce the Bush administration's agenda. And on Tuesdays, Dick Cheney drops by to eat with
only Republican Senators that receive his marching orders for the week, and report to him what progress they've made in ramrodding their agenda, Democracy be damned.
I think
that aspect of undemocratic - nay: brutally corrupt behavior in which Dick Cheney plays a pivotal role deserves more, much more attention than his silly, slimy and transparent "Senator Gone" spiel. Because it's that fundamental corruption of a representative democracy, with its carefully designed system of checks and balances, that is teetering on the brink of a
coup.Dick Cheney's cheap lie about Edwards' senatorial attendance record is a momentary lapse that reveals his shameless authoritarian bent, because even if Edwards had attended each and every session in the Senate, Cheney wouldn't have seen or noticed him. Along with anyone else who doesn't contribute to and blindly march to the tune of the
junta.Note: feel free to reproduce - just point to the source when you do -- nv1962 (as an amateurish & unpaid blogger I stick to Creative Commons rules)
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