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Cheney had been well taken care of by 41 and his crowd, but Cheney wanted more. Besides, hadn't Cheney been SecDef under 41 and been denied that overwhelming "victory" over Saddam in '91?
I could get real tinfoil-hattish if I let myself -- Cheney allows himself to be appointed by 41 to serve as junior's point man in the hunt for a VP nominee in 2000, and takes advantage of the opportunity to put himself in the spot. Can the 41 camp protest? Not hardly; they can't let it be known that they're manipulating junior's campaign. And no doubt they get assurances from Cheney that no one can keep an eye on "the boy" the way he can.
So when junior gets almost elected -- and family fixer Baker comes in to seal the deal -- the trick is to keep the 41ers happy (or at least off balance) enough to leave things alone. Cheney and Rumsfeld make their PNAC plans, with the help of old buddies Perle and Feith and Wolfowitz and Adelman and all the rest, and just to keep things tense, they bring in Colin Powell.
Powell is the worst kind of token in the 43 administration: he's given a high-profile spot so the image is of a respected black man in a position of authority and power in the 43 administration, but he's effectively silenced. He has sold his soul to them -- and his son's soul, too -- and can't get out. Powell, who may have brought as much black vote to the GOP in 00 and 02 and even 04 as they would ever have got under any contemporary circumstances, was a sucker. But he was also neutralized, and when they got him to support their assault on Iraq, they knew they had him by the testicles. They used him, then they threw him away; the most respected black republican was neutered politically.
And of course they replaced him with another sucker -- Condi Rice. Not only black, but a woman to boot! Whoooheee!
While all this is going on, 43 is making a mess out of everything -- 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Plame, Swiftboats. He does absolutely nothing right. Nothing. But the 41ers and the PNACers (sometimes the same folks, sometimes not) have to prop up 43 for their own interests. Chief among these not-so-Mayberry Machiavellis is Cheney himself. And I think he kept the old guard pacified for a while, kept them bamboozled enough to think he still had their best interests at heart. (Yeah, right, what heart???)
The idea, of course, was to keep things stable enough to let Jebbie come on the scene and make the dynasty complete. I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't some sort of "plan" to let Jebbie clean up 43's mess so beautifully that the booooshies would be voted in as perpetual leaders. (I'm not saying this would ever work, but I do believe there are people who believe this would be a good idea, booosh after booooosh after booooosh. . . .) Oh, sure, it wouldn't make GWB look very good if his baby bro had to clean up after him, but hey, it's all in the family, right? And it's ultimately more about 41's legacy than 43's anyway.
But Cheney, who started out as 41's man, rogued out and took the vulnerable boyking under his own tutelage, thinking maybe he could get a bigger cut of the imperial pie than the old guard would give him. Cheney pumped up that arrogance, widened the oedipal rift, and took control. He needed 43 as the figurehead -- the photo opper, the fund raiser, the glad hander -- but Cheney knew he himself was the power. He could even cut his buddy Rumsfeld loose while keeping him in the loop.
Did the old guard foist Gates on the boyking, or did Cheney, who hasn't quite yet consolidated his absolute power, not have the strength to resist their pressure? Is Gates, like Baker, essentially an enforcer, and an open mole into the Cheney-controlled kingdom?
As I've said, we'll see how this falls out.
TG
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