Who cares what his poll numbers are? He did his job exceedingly well. Particularly after that job changed dramatically on 911. Let these whiny little ankle biters have their say. They're piss-ants in the big picture anyway.
Posted on 12/24/2008 7:54:49 AM PST by SmithL
In the end, the shame of Vice President Dick Cheney was total: unmitigated by any notion of a graceful departure, let alone the slightest obligation of honest accounting. Although firmly ensconced, even in the popular imagination, as an example of evil incarnate - nearly a quarter of those polled rated him the worst vice president in U.S. history, and another 41 percent as "poor" in this week's CNN poll - Cheney exudes the confidence of one fully convinced that he will get away with it all.
And why not? Nothing, not his suspect role in the Enron debacle, which foretold the economic meltdown, or his office's fabrication of the false reasons for invading Iraq, have ever been seriously investigated because of White House stonewalling. Nor is the new president, committed as he is to nonpartisanship, likely to open up Cheney's can of worms.
Cheney has even had a pass on torture, the "enhanced interrogation" policy that he initiated in his first months in office. "Was it torture? I don't believe it was torture," he told the Washington Times on Monday, a week after the release of a unanimous Senate report concluding that the policies Cheney initiated were indeed torture. In fact, the Senate Committee concluded that the model for the Cheney-Bush interrogation policy was the torture practices of the Chinese Communists during the Korean War. But it's not torture when the U.S. president does it, according to the legal judgments Cheney's chief counsel, David Addington, pushed through the administration.
Fortunately, Cheney's view of the unquestioned unitary power of the presidency was scorned by the Vice President-elect Joe Biden: "His notion of a unitary executive," Biden said, "meaning that, in time of war, essentially all power, you know, goes to the executive I think is dead wrong."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Leftist and Democrat rat bastards, all of 'em.
Since this isn't Cheney's, or anybody else's, notion of what is meant by the term "unitary executive," Biden is both right and wrong.
Unitary executive means that the President controls the entire executive branch, that Congress can't create executive bodies that are independent of the President. Given the way the Constitution is worded, this seems to be entirely correct.
But it has little or nothing to do with the President becoming a dictator in wartime. In fact, the President has no additional constitutional powers in time of war.
Had Bush "bailed out" Enron and Worldcom (MCI) before they went bankrupt, I wonder what the Democrat outcry would have been?
Enron, huh?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2150762/posts?page=12#12 Enron
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2150762/posts?page=14#14 More Enron
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2150762/posts?page=15#15 Google Enron payoffs to ‘rats
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2150762/posts?page=4#4 Abramoff payoffs to ‘rats
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2150762/posts?page=11#11 ‘Rats choose tort lawyer/donor payoff over safety of Americans
Biden, Constitutional SCHOLAR didn't even know the Article Number of the VP's duties!! What a MORON!
“Although firmly ensconced, even in the popular imagination, as an example of evil incarnate”
I’d like to think there was a time, long ago, when junior-high nonsense like this was laughed out of legitimate discourse. But we were probably always this petty. I mean, come on. Evil? Really?
By the way, the popular imagination will imagine what ever you drill into its head to imagine. Cheney = evil incarnate; Biden = Constitutional scholar/genius; Nixon = villain; Clinton = flawed hero; Bush = bloodthirsty warmonger who tortures not out of necessity but for fun; Obama = mankind’s last best hope. Does anyone else see a pattern here?
Robert Scheer is and always has been a two legged cockroach. I would have preferred Dick Cheney to have been the President.
I dare any of those polled to name just ONE vice president prior to 1900. Who are they comparing Cheney to?
You know, it might mean something if those people who think that Cheney was the worst. ever. could actually name more than two vice preseidents.
This man, Robert Scheer, has the intellectual integrity of a used car salesman.
LOL!!! Like most of those asked remember any VP’s accomplishments before Gore, who BTW, accomplished what besides collecting money from foreigners? CNN? Consider the source!
So just what are these a-holes going to do for a “bogey-man” come January 20, 2009?
“...nearly a quarter of those polled rated him the worst vice president in U.S. history”
FDR’s VP who visited Stalin’s gulags and did nothing was our most evil VP.
Who cares what his poll numbers are? He did his job exceedingly well. Particularly after that job changed dramatically on 911. Let these whiny little ankle biters have their say. They're piss-ants in the big picture anyway.
I guess that Cheney must be “more evil than Nixon” since Nixon was a VP. Or even than LBJ who some suspect had JFK killed.
“In fact, the President has no additional constitutional powers in time of war.”
True. But he does have more practical powers. There tends to be an urgency in war, and the executive branch has much greater short-term power than Congress. The president doesn’t exactly rule in real time, but he’s like broadband compared to Congress’ dial-up.
Of course, members of Congress and the outsider party pretend to be morally outraged when the president takes advantage of exigent circumstances. But that’s just politics. Can anyone look at me with a straight face and say that those who voted for the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, which was basically all of Congress, didn’t know they were giving slack to the executive branch? Ha! This is just like calling Nixon’s bombing campaign in Cambodia a war crime. If Congress gave the president carte blanche to bomb the hell out of North Vietnam, how is Cambodia any different?
This all brings me back to the question of why anyone listens to partisan criticism, but then again I’m a partisan, so I guess you shouldn’t listen to me.
I wonder how many of the 24% who rated Cheney the worst ever know that our current Congress is NOT led by Republicans.
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