Mondale issues blistering attack on Cheney

Mondale issues blistering attack on Cheney

Former Vice President Walter Mondale today accused the current vice president, Dick Cheney, of a wholesale assault on the Constitution, the balance of powers, and the system that evolved since World War II to coordinate intelligence and defense policy.

"They wrecked that system," Mondale said this morning at a University of Minnesota scholarly conference on the vice presidency.

This isn't some academic difference of opinion over the proper balance between branches of the federal government, Mondale said, during a question and answer session after his prepared remarks:

"I think this was a brutal, deliberate policy to ignore a wide range of written laws and constitutional principles and the legitimate powers of Congress…It's different than anything we've seen in American history and I think it ought to be seen not as two responsible positions, but ought to be seen as a dramatic challenge to American's system of government."

In the case that led to the conviction of Cheney's top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Mondale said Cheney functioned as "an ideological enforcer, silencing dissent, punishing critics, to sustain a flawed war policy based on cooked facts. It's all there. Read the case."

Mondale challenged an occasional theme that arises in interpreting the Cheney vice presidency, holding that because Cheney had no presidential ambitions of his own, he was more useful and faithful to the president. On the contrary, Mondale argued, this freedom from higher political ambition freed Cheney to disrespect the Congress, the American people and the law.

Mondale said: "The other morning, Mr. Cheney was on 'Good Morning America.' A reporter asked him: 'Well, polls now show that two thirds of the American people are opposed to this war. Shouldn't that mean something?' And [Cheney] said, 'So?'

"Y'know, maybe he didn't say it correctly or say it the way he meant it. And I don't say that public opinion should govern everything. But public opinion deserves respect and the president and the vice president ought to be worried about it.

"I think our vice president ought to wake up every morning, like I did, wondering what he can do to enhance public support and respect. And I believe an election-free unaccountable vice president, clothed with some of the aura and power of the president may, as this vice president has, act as though he were beyond accountability to anybody but the president — beyond the reach of the Congress, the court, the press, the Constitution and the American people.

"It scares me and I think we ought to be thinking about it this fall as we pick a vice president."

In a blistering close to his 30-minute presentation at the Humphrey Institute for Public Policy, Mondale said that in looking back on his tenure as Jimmy Carter's vice president, he took pride in three claims: "We told the truth; we obeyed the law; and we kept the peace." The Bush-Cheney administration, Mondale said, "can't say any of that with a straight face about those first four years. And it's cost us terribly. Let's not make that mistake again."

Scholars views on Mondale, Cheney
It's not surprising that Mondale feels this way, and he has criticized Cheney publicly before. The event, sponsored by the Humphrey Institute's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance (CSPG) and the journal Presidential Studies Quarterly, was supposed to be about the upcoming choice of running-mates for the 2008. And the other scholars and former public officials who spoke devoted most of their remarks to the assigned theme.

But Mondale clearly decided to seize the occasion to go further, deeper and stronger than ever before into what must be described as his disgust with the way Cheney used the office that Mondale once held.

Mondale may have special standing on the topic. Scholars of the vice presidency are unanimous that he was a breakthrough figure in turning the office into an important part of the executive branch, based on an understanding that he reached with Carter. The same scholars agree that Cheney now holds the title of most powerful vice president ever. Mondale said he wasn't sure whether Cheney had Bush's agreement for some of the policies he pursued, or whether he had turned the vice presidency into an independent power center, a possibility that Mondale clearly thinks would be far outside the Constitution.

Mondale said his criticisms of Cheney had nothing to do with policy differences. He had no fundamental objections to the way other vice presidents have worked. While fielding questions from the audience and from Larry Jacobs, director of the CSPG, Mondale reiterated the criticisms he had made in his prepared remarks.

When Jacobs asked what the administration could do about the problem, Mondale replied: "It's not that difficult. If you're doing something that's against the law, stop it…We never thought we had the right to ignore laws that were clearly applicable to the president."

Although Mondale's strong word choices about what he sees as Cheney's abuses of power were consistent with many arguments made by those who argue for an impeachment drive against Cheney and/or Bush, Mondale explicitly rejected the idea, saying impeachment "just tears us apart — wouldn't get anywhere."

The second audio link below contains the question and answer session. Warning, it's about 30 minutes long and includes not only an expansion of Mondale's criticisms of Cheney and Bush, but also questions about likely running mates for this year's presidential nominees and other topics.

Answering to No One

Answering to No One

By Walter F. Mondale
Sunday, July 29, 2007; B07

The Post's recent series on Dick Cheney's vice presidency certainly got my attention. Having held that office myself over a quarter-century ago, I have more than a passing interest in its evolution from the backwater of American politics to the second most powerful position in our government. Almost all of that evolution, under presidents and vice presidents of both parties, has been positive -- until now. Under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, it has gone seriously off track.

The Founders created the vice presidency as a constitutional afterthought, solely to provide a president-in-reserve should the need arise. The only duty they specified was that the vice president should preside over the Senate. The office languished in obscurity and irrelevance for more than 150 years until Richard Nixon saw it as a platform from which to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 1960. That worked, and the office has been an effective launching pad for aspiring candidates since.

But it wasn't until Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency that the vice presidency took on a substantive role. Carter saw the office as an underused asset and set out to make the most of it. He gave me an office in the West Wing, unimpeded access to him and to the flow of information, and specific assignments at home and abroad. He asked me, as the only other nationally elected official, to be his adviser and partner on a range of issues.

Our relationship depended on trust, mutual respect and an acknowledgement that there was only one agenda to be served -- the president's. Every Monday the two of us met privately for lunch; we could, and did, talk candidly about virtually anything. By the end of four years we had completed the "executivization" of the vice presidency, ending two centuries of confusion, derision and irrelevance surrounding the office.

Subsequent administrations followed this pattern. George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle and Al Gore built their vice presidencies after this model, allowing for their different interests, experiences and capabilities as well as the needs of the presidents they served.

This all changed in 2001, and especially after Sept. 11, when Cheney set out to create a largely independent power center in the office of the vice president. His was an unprecedented attempt not only to shape administration policy but, alarmingly, to limit the policy options sent to the president. It is essential that a president know all the relevant facts and viable options before making decisions, yet Cheney has discarded the "honest broker" role he played as President Gerald Ford's chief of staff.

Through his vast government experience, through the friends he had been able to place in key positions and through his considerable political skills, he has been increasingly able to determine the answers to questions put to the president -- because he has been able to determine the questions. It was Cheney who persuaded President Bush to sign an order that denied access to any court by foreign terrorism suspects and Cheney who determined that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Rather than subject his views to an established (and rational) vetting process, his practice has been to trust only his immediate staff before taking ideas directly to the president. Many of the ideas that Bush has subsequently bought into have proved offensive to the values of the Constitution and have been embarrassingly overturned by the courts.

The corollary to Cheney's zealous embrace of secrecy is his near total aversion to the notion of accountability. I've never seen a former member of the House of Representatives demonstrate such contempt for Congress -- even when it was controlled by his own party. His insistence on invoking executive privilege to block virtually every congressional request for information has been stupefying -- it's almost as if he denies the legitimacy of an equal branch of government. Nor does he exhibit much respect for public opinion, which amounts to indifference toward being held accountable by the people who elected him.

Whatever authority a vice president has is derived from the president under whom he serves. There are no powers inherent in the office; they must be delegated by the president. Somehow, not only has Cheney been given vast authority by President Bush -- including, apparently, the entire intelligence portfolio -- but he also pursues his own agenda. The real question is why the president allows this to happen.

Three decades ago we lived through another painful example of a White House exceeding its authority, lying to the American people, breaking the law and shrouding everything it did in secrecy. Watergate wrenched the country, and our constitutional system, like nothing before. We spent years trying to identify and absorb the lessons of this great excess. But here we are again.

Since the Carter administration left office, we have been criticized for many things. Yet I remain enormously proud of what we did in those four years, especially that we told the truth, obeyed the law and kept the peace.

The writer was vice president of the United States from 1977 to 1981.