alternative hippopotamus

This WaPo vignette is one of the clearest illustrations of how a small group of individuals can game a system and destroy what was up to that point a charmingly quirky democratic republic. I like this quote for starters:

But two sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Card called to reject the names shortly after the list arrived at the White House.

“The message was that there was only one candidate they wanted, and that was John Yoo,” one source said.

Yes, of course he was.

Yoo did not emerge from the head of Beelzebub post 9.11 of course. He was one of the gangsters in the Reagan justice department who came up with a series of remedies for Watergate. That is, how to prevent a future Republican presidential lawbreaker from being held accountable for a future Watergate.

Now, I know that RiverMalkin and the Meowists are satisfied that we’ll be just fine with divided government in the form of McCain and a Democratic Congress, no matter how light the Democratic seasoning of that Congress is. Having seen how Oz functions, I have little doubt that McCain will continue in the same vein. The Executive has been gamed, and it will take a generation of dedicated reformers to heal it. McCain is not that reformer. I dearly hope Obama is.

Recently I’ve finished reading Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine and Charlie Savage’s Takeover. I’d like to summarize one of the key mutual points of these books in my own words:

The Office of Legal Counsel has been used to game the system during the Bush administration. The result is that Nixon’s dictum about how anything the president of the United States does is legal, is pretty much how things go.

I think we’ve come to understand that just saying things like the Justice Department really needs to be independent of White House influence doesn’t mean much unless there’s some clear check and balance with Congress.

What I’m saying is that to de-Bushify the OLC, appointees would need to be other than friends of duck hunting partners of the president and vice-president. I’d also like to see the Federalist Society declared a terrorist organization, but that’s probably not going to happen.

Picture Dick Cheney sitting in a diner somewhere in NJ. Lynne Cheney walks in giggling, a well-thumbed copy of “Sister” under her arm. Liz Cheney enters, her mind in a whirl, caught between two worlds: foreign policy advisor to the McCain campaign, and her secret desire to be Rupert Murdoch’s dominatrix. Mary Cheney enters last, her newborn child she holds in one arm. The other she uses randomly to punch out customers in the diner.

They sit. Dick thumbs through entries on the vintage jukebox. He pauses at “1812 Overture. -A. Tchaikovsky.” A popular hit when he and Lynne began dating. Liz asks for onion rings. Dick has already ordered for the table, with extra DDT, just the way she likes them.

Then everything goes to black.

That’s my version of the story. Sally Quinn has a slightly less oblique version:

Cheney is scheduled this summer for surgery to replace his pacemaker, which needs new batteries. So if the president is willing, and Republicans are able, they have a convenient reason to replace him: doctor’s orders. And I’m sure the the vice president would also like to spend more time with his ever-expanding family.

The idea being that Cheney gets replaced by Fred Thompson, the country loves Republicans again, and everyone lives happily after.

I don’t really know that Cheney would go for something like that. I think Bush would, however. Like all presidents, he’s got to be thinking of his legacy. Right now, that legacy is to be the dumbest, lamest, most imcompetant, most partisan, most hated president in the history of the US. Add to that, the rest of the world likes him even less. Except for maybe Albania.

So, that’s something Bush would at least consider.

More: I was just reading Dan Froomkin’s White House Watch live on-line. Regarding the Washington Post series on Cheney, this is a pretty darned good question:

St. Catharines, Ontario: Hi Dan. The Cheney piece in the Post starts off with “Cheney is not, by nearly every inside account, the shadow president of popular lore,” then extensively details how nothing the president sees has gone unfiltered by the vice president. Is the possibility of “Dubya” being merely a figurehead so frightful that the mainstream media — and perhaps the American public — can’t bring themselves to say it?

Dan Froomkin: I can’t quite explain that. It was one of the few assertions in the series that was not supported by ample evidence.

And while I’m not saying that it’s abundantly clear from reading the series that Bush is just a figurehead, it’s certainly a reasonable interpretation, and deserves to be addressed head on.

Although the series begins by asserting that Cheney is not the shadow president of lore, the bulk of what’s exposed indicates just the opposite. Maybe this is journalist humor (JoHu)?