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Cheney vs. The Framers

Added: September 11, 2007

I still remember the first time I saw Dick Cheney. It was during the debate with Joe Lieberman during the 2000 presidential campaign. I had no idea who he was, and his performance was spectacular. He was wise without being condescending, educated without being high-falutin', confident yet respectful of his opponent, fatherly, woodsy, down to earth, self-deprecating, modest, well-informed and good-humored. He had that to-die-for delivery of a compassionate and patient father - the little chuckle before each answer, as if to say - "Yes, it is an amazing world we live in isn't it, and that is such a good question, and I've pondered it at length, and here is my wise, yet humble answer..." It was a work of art - truly. He hit every compassionate conservative mark dead-on, while leaving no doubt that he had the grit to make the tough decisions when the time came.

He came across like a frickin saint.

It was probably one of the most collegial VP debates in modern history and we all joked around the newsroom the next day that it was hard to remember a solid point of contention between the two. If I was to coach a political candidate on how to appeal to the American psyche, the result would exactly, precisely, be Richard Cheney as he appeared on October 5th, 2000.

Who was Dubya?
After the debate, I didn't think that much more about it. After all, it wasn't Dick Cheney who was going to be President, it was Dubya, and we in the media had our hands full trying to figure out what exactly was at the core of the man. Once he became President, it only got harder, as he refused to express any tangible objectives for his administration (other than the standard Republican potboilers) and then proudly set a schedule of coming in at 10am, taking a solid 2 hour workout in the middle of the day, and then leaving the office at 6.

Every day.

After the psychotic 25 hour days put in by Clinton, a seemingly non-ambitious Executive was something of a shock. We were still pondering this when Jeffords defected and the GOP suddenly lost their Senate majority and all their chairmanships 7 months after the election (read the incredible story of this event here). By the summer of 2001 it looked like the Bush administration was going to bump along from one low-level crisis to another and probably not cause too much trouble - with the prime goal of opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling and working to avoid embarrassing daddy too much.

Little did we know.

In September all hell broke loose and the Bush administration transformed itself from a wispy bit of cloud into a horrifyingly efficient machine of destruction and insanity the likes of which America has rarely seen. Soon we were neck deep in torture, murder, assassination, kidnapping, domestic spying, extortion, war-profiteering and a completely surreal full-scale land invasion of Mesopotamia (I still can't believe we actually went through with a land invasion - Good God...). Its was as if everyone in the Executive Branch took off their rubber masks and revealed that they were indeed evil aliens from another planet come to burn America to the ground. Their complete mastery of the tools of modern persuasion had millions of otherwise normal people completely convinced that the essential first step in fighting the war on terror was the undoing of America's constitutional foundation and a reversal of every foreign policy precedent set since World War II (liberal, conservative or otherwise).

It appeared that they had modeled their plan after the old Soviet scheme of domestic heavy-handedness and dull-witted international aggression to somehow springboard us into a new era of global dominance and prosperity. (Remember the U.S.S.R.? that's the really big cold war evil-empire nemesis thing that managed to go bankrupt and then fail entirely, despite having the richest supply of natural resources of any nation, anywhere, ever). The "War on Terror" was so profoundly wrong on so many levels that it rocketed up out of the stratosphere of conventional wrong and quickly entered a formerly unexplored region of extra-special-outer-space wrong where, unfortunately, it was impervious to earthly intellect. It became impossible to argue against - like talking to someone from the Flat Earth Society. In addition, all the neo-con drones were trained to start screaming "TRAITOR!, TRAITOR!, TRAITOR!" at the top of their lungs and run off as soon as they started to lose the argument.

Crazy times folks.

Within this context, my impression of Dick Cheney underwent a dramatic transformation. One at a time, the most stomach turning details of the war on terror traced back directly to the Vice President's office. The "aggressive interrogation" policies and the secret CIA prisons, The push to ignore the Geneva Conventions, The faked pre-war intelligence on Iraq, the massive war-profiteering by Halliburton and KBR, the wholesale torture and death at Guantanamo Bay and the veiled references to pending nuclear explosions, gas attacks and bioterror assaults on our major cities every time the fear level dropped to a point where people's brains might switch back on. Slowly the data points built up on the big board, painting a picture of a man eager to plunge the nation into a war for profit, eager to endorse torture, eager to broaden domestic police powers and eager to capitalize on the fear and death of 9/11 for his own gain.

Ick.

This articulate, kindly man with the lop-sided smile was quickly revealing himself to be someone thoroughly, thoroughly, vile.

For the first 3 years, it appeared that he was going to get away with it. The public was in shock. The Vice President's office had never been considered a seat of power, so there was no mechanism to deal with it. Rove's mastery of the information world was at Cheney's command, so he could change black to white, transform defeat to victory or make 2 + 2 = 5 any time it suited him.

By late 2003 the deck of our good ship of state was tilted at a 45 degree angle, the captain had roped off the wheel and barricaded himself in the pilot house with a pistol, and we were going down, down, down.

Turning the Corner
But then a strange transformation started to occur. Public support for the war began to decline. Abu-Ghraib shook the world. The courts started reversing the domestic spying and prisoner of war policies. The Joint Chiefs revolted against expanding the war into Iran. Congressional investigations began. Big players started resigning. The insurgency refused to go away.

Even with the sweaty efforts of Karl madly shoveling coal into the information management boilers down in the basement, the bad guys slowly started losing their iron grip on the situation.

Today, on the 6th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks - by a seeming miracle - Mr. Cheney and his cohorts have been rendered almost completely harmless.

The Carpathia has shown up in time.

We're saved.

We have just been treated to a lesson in "Power 101" that is truly incredible. The Republic just survived a concerted attack by a real, actual gang of frighteningly clever demagogues, who capitalized on the worst terrorist attack in history to remake America and the world in line with their deranged imaginings.

Now that the worst is over, perspective is slowly creeping in and has revealed two key elements in our deliverance.

Element of Deliverance Number One: The Framers

Yay for the Framers!

They may have lived in a time before the telephone, before the automobile, before industrialization and all had slaves, but they understood two things incredibly well - the mechanics of political power, and the threat of tyranny to the Republic. Thankfully, folks like Dick Cheney had been around since the beginning of time, and this gave them a rich and detailed history to draw upon in constructing the elaborate demagogue entrapment and neutralization system which they entitled "The Constitution".

Let's hear it for all power mad maniacs from the Classical Age!

The Framers knew that these types were way too smart to be caught by the regular criminal justice system - their delivery is too smooth, and their wizened little pre-epiphany Grinch hearts are far too deeply concealed for anyone to ever catch on in time. Nope, they knew that these guys were bound to get to the top levels of government, and once there, their potential to cause havoc would go far beyond anything that a conventional criminal could ever dream of. Ted Bundy only murdered maybe 40-50 people and he is one of the most infamous criminals ever to live. Tyrants can destroy entire nations - even entire continents with their rampages, killing or destroying the lives of millions upon millions of people.

With this as motivation, the Framers concocted a complicated system to attract this special type of individual to a foul little swamp on the banks of the Potomac with an irresistible offer of power and influence. Once lodged in the bog, they are cleverly pitted against each other in an impenetrable system of checks and balances in which any faction gaining a decisive advantage is impossible. Within this environment, the prospect of absolute power is continually tantalizing, while at the same time completely unattainable.

At 2, 4 and 6 year intervals, the country is scoured for more detainees, and those too exhausted to continue are allowed to crawl home. Upon arrival, each inmate initiates their own top-secret special plan to beat the system and either goes down in flames, lives on in infamy or quietly sneaks out of town in the middle of the night never to be seen again.

And then there's Newt Gingrich - who managed to do all three.

Yellow jacket Traps
The entire system reminds me of the yellow jacket traps that we used to set out during picnics when I was a kid. We'd roll up a piece of paper into a cone with a little hole in the end and tape it into a jar with a hunk of pork chop in it. The yellow jackets came from miles around to get a free lunch, got trapped in the bottle, and then proceeded to tear each other to shreds fighting over the meat. "Hey guys, come and get your Absolute Power right here!" Or the San Diego sheriff's department who sent out letters to all the people with outstanding warrants in the county telling them they had won a "lottery prize" and they needed to report to a local high school gymnasium to collect it. 250 people showed up to collect their "prize" and went straight to jail. "All power-mad maniacs report to the local high school gymnasium and you will be given a special prize".

Perfect.

Timeless Beauty
By pitting power-crazed humans against each other, they allowed for the checks and balances to scale with human evolution. If the human capacity for skulduggery somehow takes an exponential turn upwards (beyond anything the Framers could have ever imagined) we are still protected, because the evolution will take place across the board. All three branches will increase their capacity for ill-deeds together, and the balance of power will remain intact. As long as the three branches are taken from the same evolutionary pool of humans, the constitution will be safe forever.

The result a completely miraculous system in which the stewardship of a purely idealistic document relies completely on the greed, meanness and hunger for power of people who have been carefully selected to have these exact traits.

Its a fox-guarding-the-henhouse scenario - except the chickens stay safe.

Clever huh?

Now that the dust has settled, we can see clearly that this newest pack of alpha-dogs were nowhere near a match for the Framers. Not even close.

Its almost spooky watching the ghostly figures of Madison and Adams run circles around these modern punks who think they are so smart - its truly a thing of beauty. The 'cons thought they were visionary geniuses, but they were just winding their way through an elaborate maze built 220 years ago, following the script to the letter without even realizing they were in a play, and working their way inexorably to the shocking surprise ending - their own demise.

Before heading home in September 1787, Jefferson and the gang put the finishing touches on their masterpiece, propping buckets over every door, stringing trip wires at the tops of the stairways, barricading the doors with furniture, and dumping big bags of marbles down every hallway.

The neo-cons are now just another Home Alone punchline, dangling from one leg high up in the White House dumbwaiter shaft, bellowing down at the Capitol Police to "GET ME THE HELL DOWN FROM HERE!!"

The folks who put together our Constitution were some of the most brilliant thinkers of our age, and they make these modern wanna-bes look as sophisticated as a two bit hoodlums jacking cars for crank money.

I'm embarrassed that I ever doubted them.


Element of Deliverance Number Two: demagogues will be demagogues.

As profound as the Framers contribution was to our salvation, they cannot take more than half the credit. The other half belongs squarely in the lap of Cheney and the neo-cons themselves. Without their impossibly absurd over-reaching, they could have easily found the sweet spot just shy of triggering the wrath of the Checks and Balances, while still maintaining an incredibly profitable and long lasting grip on power.

Too bad for them.

In 2002, they had it all. The docile public, the cowed Judiciary - Congress nodding up and down with their mouths open. We were putty in their hands - and then they had to go and blow it all by trying to launch a diabolical plan for total world domination with a land army of only 150,000 troops.

Wow.

Having consolidated their power and swept aside all domestic resistance, they launched the grand armada out to conquer the world to great fanfare. Unfortunately, when the army actually arrived on the scene, it was just kind of....teeny. As it turns out, they didn't even have enough horses in the stable to conquer one hapless Middle Eastern country. They deposed and executed a second-rate dictator all right, but they were about 300,000 troops short of being able to go any further than that.

Reading the neo-con "shock and awe" rhetoric of the late '90's is a truly surreal experience. They didn't even have 1/100th the resources to execute their insane plan. At the end of WWII, America had 15 million people in uniform. 15 million. "Shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests." as the neo-cons called it (by force, of course) was, if anything, a more ambitious goal and they set about doing it with only a tiny fraction of the forces needed. How many troops would it actually take to forcibly "shape" the interests of China, India, Russia and countless smaller players into line with our own? 10 million? 50 million? 100 million? Its insane even to contemplate such an undertaking.

Demagogues throughout history have shown a very reliable tendency to overplay their hands, and we can thank our lucky stars that our home-grown demagogues were no different. We can also thank our lucky stars that they overplayed their hand so badly, that the backlash cycle started in record time. Even Hitler had a little time in the sun before the inevitable destruction of Germany and his own flaming death. These guys had like - one month - basically May of 2003, before things started to turn sour. By the summer of '03 the press conferences were already strained as they tried to explain why American forces and supply convoys were under constant attack in a supposedly defeated country.

The downward spiral continued gaining momentum, with scandals, resignations, inquiries and the ever-expanding Iraq insurgency dominating the headlines all the way up to the destruction of the Republican Party during the 2006 elections.

Now its just a matter of grinding it out until Jan. '09, and hoping that they can stay out of jail.

Considering that they set out to transform every element of American life, both foreign and domestic, and establish a 1,000 year global empire, we can safely say that they've had to lower their expectations a bit in finishing out their term.

The Core
At the core of their implosion is their failure to grasp the crucial concept that Power and Governance are not the same thing.

Cheney and the boys obviously spent lots of late nights scheming how to manipulate the press, discredit their enemies and consolidate their power, but very little time reading up on how to actually run a country - sorry guys! Dealing exclusively in negatives and ignoring the lessons of history will only get you so far. The moment they had to switch over from grabbing power to actually governing, they were doomed.

A foreign policy based on military force is pure adolescent fantasy and is sure to fail - which it did. A domestic policy based on bullying and secrecy is pure adolescent fantasy, and is sure to fail - which it did.

Negotiation, compromise and shared interest are so very boring, especially compared to a AC-130 gunship (those things are so frickin cool!), but they are the currency of our government, and of the world at the moment. We just had front row seats at a textbook demonstration of this reality.

Cheney and the 'cons thought that their ideas were "revolutionary" - when in fact their type of obsession with power has been the engine of doom for countless nations since the beginning of civilization.

They did several massive lines of cocaine, launched a diabolical grab for power, got annihilated, and then went back to the boring diplomatic stuff with their tail between their legs.

Just like clockwork.

They Didn't Get What They Wanted
Now the worst of the nightmare is over - but there is no doubt that the damage done is extensive. They put a major land invasion on the national Credit Card (guaranteed by the Bank of China), killed several hundred thousand people, destabilized the entire Middle East region and diminished the esteem of the United States to its lowest point in a Century.

This is bad. Very bad.

However, the Constitution was not publicly incinerated, we are not being carpet-bombed, nuked, rounded up into concentration camps or invaded by a massive land army - and America still exists as a nation. Compared to what happened to other countries that tried to take over the world by force in the 20th Century, we got off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

More important than all of this, however, is that they didn't get what they wanted.

The Constitution was never intended to eliminate the existence of power-mad people. These kinds of people have always existed, and they always will exist. They will be attracted to government, just like yellow jackets, and will succeed, through luck, skill or circumstance in wreaking havoc on the Republic from time to time. Despite the noble efforts of our criminal justice system and our beautiful Constitution, we will never be free of their menace.

But they didn't get what they wanted.

They wanted to create a global military hegemony, in which all nations that held interests differing from ours would be systematically beaten into submission.

They didn't get it.

They wanted to build Iraq into a docile semi-colony, that would give us unlimited drilling rights and let us maintain massive military bases from which we could dominate the entire area.

They didn't get it.

They wanted to raise the Executive to a position of dominance - standing above the other branches in a supreme position.

They didn't get it.

In essence, they wanted to do exactly, precisely what men obsessed with power have been trying to do since the beginning of civilization - expand their power until they had to answer to nobody.

They didn't get it.

Celebrate it folks.

On this 6th anniversary of 9/11 - Celebrate it.


"The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men."
    -Samuel Adams

Amen.


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