President Dick Cheney

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Alright, gents, we now have a firm date for Armaggedon.

Been nice knowing you all. Hope to see you in Heaven.

 

It takes an a**hole to hand the presidency over to a guy like Cheney....but, anything is better than Bush if even for a couple of hours.

 

nuns,
I disagree. Cheney is probably worse than Bush because he is both crazy _and_ capable. He is the guy who pushed through all the controversial stuff, in agreement with Bush. Cheney's homey Addington wrote the unitary executive theory and so forth. Anyone who sees Cheney as a rogue actor is out of his mind. In Bush's loyalty powered administration? Bush and Cheney apparently have an agreement and that sais Cheney gives Bush plausible deniability.

That is btw a complete change of view to 2000 when I held that Bush ain't that bad because he has grown-ups like Cheney around him. Boy, had I known....

I pray that nothing happens that can be taken as an excuse to bomb Iran.

 

I thought he was the brains of the operation anyway...

 

Hmmh... how much of the world can you destroy in 2.5 hours?

 

Actually, thanks to the anesthetics, it's not that bad - especially if they put a monitor in front of your gurney so you've got something to watch.

Personally, I'd like the handover to start maybe 48hours earlier, since you have to fast for two days and take laxatives and purgatives to 'clean out your system.' I was crankier than I'd ever expected when I had to spend that weekend sleeping on the bathroom floor with only water and 'ginger-lemon' Fleet oral laxative to take.

If'n I'd had authority to cause spiteful damage to others, I would have likely abused that power...

 

BTW, who gets to be chief if Bush and Cheney both get to have colonoscopy? Rice?

 

There's a long and 'set-in-stone' succession that details who's up next and in what order.

I guess Congress spent plenty of sleepless nights wondering "Okay, but what if everyone down to the Secretary of the Interior ate tainted fish at a State Dinner?"

Condoleezza is actually third-in-line behind 'Tricky Dick II.'

 

Get a grip people.

Cheney would be just fine as a president. He is currently the bulldog of the administration, that is the role he is given. This administration's policies come from President Bush, it is Cheney's job to carry out those policies. He's probably the most effective Vice President we've seen in this country in a very long time.

Personally, I would be more afraid if the President and Vice President were to both die. Pelosi does not inspire confidence.

 

Why? I don't recall Pelosi being a party to lying to the country and the world in order to perpetrate a baseless war which not only engendered hostility from most of the world, but actually caused the exact opposite effect it was aiming to cause by making the Middle East less stable and providing terrorist groups and militants who weren't present before or were considerably weaker a new foothold in the region.......and, on top of everything else, without an exit strategy.

In fact, Pelosi, like most house democrats, did not to support Bush's war. She voted against it.

 

Though I don't always agree with your viewpoint T2, I consistently find admiration and respect for you and your take on things. But this...rather frightening...statement just made it a bit harder, I have to admit.

Precisely why he's so scary. The office of the vice president was never meant to attain such power. Anyone so paranoid and unethical attaining such unprecedented executive power should give anyone pause, especially a conservative. If you honestly think Pelosi would be worse than the clowns we currently have in office, I can't help but question your priorities.

Sidenote: do you really think this administration's policies come from President Bush?

 

I think that Cheney has a deal with Bush, and that Cheney does what the president publicly cannot. That doesn't mean Cheney doesn't push through his own ideas, with great skill (doesn't make them good or sane ideas).

Cheney is by far the most powerful, influential and capable actor in the entire administration, but make no mistake: Bush is the decider.

The people who envision Cheney as the 'puppet master' should get out more.

 

I don't presume to speak for T2Bruno, but I suspect that his priorities are to keep a radical left-winger like Pelosi out the President's office.

 

DR: Yes, I believe Bush sets the policy. He is quite biased in who he trusts -- looking at Iraq you can plainly see he places more trust in his political appointees than in the professionals. Military leaders are more apt to disagree with the President because they swear an oath to the Constitution, not the President -- this makes those leaders not as trustworthy in Bush's eyes. He has more control over the political appointees and would not have placed them in the position they are currently in if they did not buy into his view of the world hook, line and sinker.

Bush is not stupid -- many people fall for the slow talk and flubbed words, assuming he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He is quite shrewd and very capable. His weakness is his biases (that's true for everyone though, isn't it). His worst decisions and policies come from his intentional disregard of experts who are not in his trusted circle. Those in his trusted circle can alter his stance very slightly, but mostly they just push him in a direction he wants to go in (Iraq, stem cell research, and global warming are cases in point). Bush is very hardline conservative Texas republican (which is slightly different than the nationwide conservative republican).

I think if Cheney was in charge you would see a much different tact being taken. Cheney is more apt to listen to experts as opposed to political appointees. Currently, Cheney's role is to play 'bad cop' to Bush's 'good cop' -- a role Cheney does quite well. It takes a lot of heat off Bush. As far as effectiveness I would say he wields as much power as Vice President as Nixon did under Eisenhower, which is not necessarily a favorable comparison.

Yes, I believe Pelosi would be worse -- much worse. But that discussion should be left to a different thread.

[ July 25, 2007, 20:09: Message edited by: T2Bruno ]

 

If you think Pelosi is a radical, you really need to get out more. Like most democrats, Pelosi is just a little left of center. But that's about it. She only appears radical when compared to the far right....which isn't actually saying much. Compared to the other GOP presidential hopefuls (and the neo-cons who currently run the GOP), John McCain looks like a radical leftist.

 

@ T2,

Bush sets the policy, yes, but that's not what I asked. I asked if you think the policies "come" from Bush, as you said. I think it's a stretch to suggest that he comes up with even a fraction of Bush Administration policy on his own.

He's essentially convinced of which policies to champion by his advisors, as evidenced by his stance on many issues, from the FMA to the numerous bumblings in Iraq. But he doesn't calculate, research, or (IMO) have a strong personal drive to champion such policies based on his own conclusions. He goes by what he's told. Karl Rove, Cheney, and a few others drive the policy (quite clearly, IMO), he's just "the decider." He has no reason to think he's making the wrong decisions because it never occurs to him that his advisors could wrong - either deliberately misleading him or merely drawing the wrong conclusions from the given facts of a situation. His "gut" tells him they're on the right track.

Let's be clear on something else as well. I don't think Bush is stupid. Even a C student at Yale has to be pretty intelligent to become so, as Yale is no cakewalk. What I think he is is intellectually lazy, incurious about the world, and is detached and out to lunch in any matters than require deep thinking and careful analysis. He surrounds himself with people who do all that for him, in a Paris Hilton sort of way. This is a man who's never had to deal with the consequences of his decisions and therefore doesn't take a vested interest in the ripple effects of those decisions. Nor does he weigh such consequences before making his decisions - at least in an intellectually honest way. He feels no need to revisit past bad decisions because he feels his "gut" steered him right the first time and was therefore right the first time. Hence, no significant changes in Iraq policy (or even his rhetoric) since the outset. So though I don't think that HE is stupid, I think it's clear that he believes his supporters are.

Cheney scares me because for all his capability - and I will certainly agree that Cheney is a machine of capability - he has consistently taken steps to provide his office with more powers, more secrecy, more access, and fewer checks, than was ever intended for the VP to have. Cheney has routinely demonstrated his belief that the executive is above the rest of the government and should essentially have the freedom to do whatever it wants in advance of its goals. He's even tried to argue - with a straight face - that since he provided over the Senate in the event of a tie-breaker, that technically he isn't part of the Executive branch and is therefore not subjected to the checks put on the Executive.

Sidenote: as to your "good cop, bad cop" reference - if these people weren't so driven by petty partisanship and actually focused on meaningful policy, they wouldn't have to play that game. While I agree that Cheney plays this role extremely well, I really don't see how you can consider this a good thing given the rationalle behind it. He's literally shielding Bush from the backlash of policies they BOTH know very well will piss people off, yet do it anyway. And this makes them respectable leaders? Also - he may take the advice of experts more than Bush does, but that isn't very reassuring considering that he decides who is and isn't an expert.

As it applies to this thread - I don't care that Cheney was president for a few hours this week. But to say that a man like Cheney becoming president is so much more preferable than Pelosi stepping up strikes me as being more than a little hysterical about the "radicalness" of a moderate Dem like Nancy Pelosi. Take a look at her voting record and the positions she's taken. With a few exceptions here and there, she's hardly a radical by any honest assessment. And calling her one in defense of Dick Cheney of all people reaks of partisanship. (edit - after a reread I just realized that it was Dinsdale that used the word radical, but since you don't seem to be disagreeing with him I won't remove it unless you say otherwise).

Say what you want about Pelosi...at least she knows which branch of the government she belongs to.

[ July 25, 2007, 20:51: Message edited by: Death Rabbit ]

 

It'd be better if he were stupid; then he'd have an excuse.