What Democrats Can Learn From Cheney

The Vice President is so incredibly unpopular that Sally Quinn has an op-ed in the Washington Post today suggesting that Republicans might prevail on him to resign and replace him with Fred Thompson. Oh, please. Does anything in Cheney's path to power suggest that he would abandon power? If anything, this week's much-heralded series in Quinn's own paper only reinforces the impression that Cheney will do anything to wield power and will not give it up easily and gives not a whit what anyone thinks.

Everyone knew, of course, that Cheney was powerful before this series. But the level of detail in the Post story is really quite stunning. The story of how he set administration policy on torture by doing an end run around the National Security Adviser, the Secretary of State and the Attorney General is stunning. We've now reached the point where John Ashcroft is emerging from news pages as a moderate, voice of reason.

Beyond the series, Cheney is even willing claim that he's not a member of the executive branch. He's in a running fight with the National Archives over its attempt to enforce an order dealing with the handling of classified information. Because he's president of the Senate, Cheney has claimed that he's uniquely exempt from any National Archives purview over his documents.

But give this to Cheney: He took power and he knows how to use it. Anyone who's admiringly read Robert Caro's books on Lyndon Johnson or Robert Moses has to be impressed by Cheney's raw ability to insinuate himself over the command of so much so completely. FDR's first vice president, John Nance Garner, famously said that the #2 spot wasn't worth a bucket of piss. But beginning with Walter Mondale, vice presidents have built their power and Cheney has turned it into an office of exceptional breadth. It's hard to imagine any of the persons who will likely become the next president allowing a Cheney to rise up in their midst. Hillary? No way. Rudy? Not likely. None of them have the combination of Bush's delegation style and his lack of experience. Plus all of them have seen what the Cheney model has wrought.

Still, just as an expression of human will, of Ayn Rand, Nitzchean pure gumption, you have to admire Cheney's ability to shape the world the way he sees it. Democrats have every reason to be disdainful of Cheney but they also have some reason to emulate him, too, not his every technique and certainly not his policies. But his willingness to do what he wants in the service of his beliefs and to stretch the law accordingly is something worth studying in detail.