Forget the President: Impeach Cheney
by Marc Romano Wednesday December 27, 2006

As late as September 1973, it was almost impossible to imagine that within a year the Nixon administration would be no more than a bad memory. By November 1973, however, Vice President Spiro Agnew—Nixon’s pugnacious and seemingly unassailable bulldog—had resigned in the face of incontrovertible evidence that that he had committed income tax fraud during his tenure as Maryland’s governor. A chink had appeared in the administration’s armor for the first time, which paved the way for the Senate’s Watergate hearings in May 1974. Three months after those began, Nixon too was gone.

By any measure—secrecy, arrogance, venality, contempt for the Constitutional process—the administration of George W. Bush is far worse than that of Richard M. Nixon. It is natural that its opponents should wish to seek remedy by impeaching the president, especially now that he no longer enjoys the cover offered by a pliable Republican congress. Should not, many Democrats ask, we take this opportunity, at last, to show future chief executives that there are limits to the power any president can co-opt?

Yet 2007 is different from 1974 because the political arena has become so much more ideologically divided. Bill Clinton was impeached simply because a Republican House wanted to test its newfound power. That event was a travesty on its face; worse, it also ensured that the next Republican president could never be impeached, since it would be easy to convince a distracted public that any attempt to do so was nothing more than cheap political payback. The Clinton impeachment effectively inoculated Bush against the consequences of any misconduct he wished to engage in.

Vice presidents, however, do not have the political gravitas of chief executives. They serve at the pleasure of the president, not of the people, and are consequently more vulnerable in the court of public opinion. This is especially true in the case of Dick Cheney, who is unarguably the least admired vice president in the nation’s history. It is probably true that his approval ratings are so low even among supporters of the administration because he represents the sort of political being who is most distrusted by Americans: the shifty, cunning power behind the throne. Dick Cheney is not the sort of person—straight-talking, no-nonsense, but nonetheless engaging and friendly—who embodies the ideal American politician.

There is, of course, no lack of charges to be brought against Dick Cheney, from outing a covert CIA agent for political purposes to manipulating intelligence about WMD programs in Iraq. On the other hand, Cheney has consciously arrogated to himself as vice president all of the protections inherent in presidential privilege. It is immaterial whether, constitutionally speaking, he can make this claim. As the Libby case shows, the mere assertion of privilege by anyone in the West Wing can effectively stymie an investigation, or at least drag it out for so long that its political effects are minimized. And all matters of privilege aside, Cheney and his associates have woven such a tangled skein around their activities (the energy commission, for instance) that any investigation into them will be so laboriously involved as to eventually confuse and bore the American electorate.

As the investigation of Spiro Agnew showed, however, American politicians, even cunning ones, are most vulnerable to charges of low crimes and misdemeanors. This is Cheney’s Achilles heel: His close association with Halliburton and the great financial gains he has made from it during his two terms in office can easily be shown to be criminal. Even a short congressional investigation can uncover damning documentary evidence proving that the vice president’s office was instrumental in awarding vast no-bid contracts to Halliburton in both Iraq and the Gulf Coast. Why Cheney benefits is equally easy to prove (and equally damning): The company’s stock has tripled in value since he took office. Cheney and his lawyers will attempt to cloud the issue, but charges of straightforward graft proffered on the floor of either the House or the Senate are likely to stick, at least politically, to a figure who is so widely reviled. (And charges can be brought in the Senate against Cheney in his capacity as a de facto member of that body—a simple majority is all that is required to do so.)

Impeaching and convicting Cheney on charges of graft would at the least force him out of the West Wing. All other eventualities—a presidential pardon chief among them—are secondary. Absent the protection of his office, Cheney cannot assert privilege in future civil suits brought against him; nor can he afford to ever leave the country, since any number of foreign powers would be likely to seize him and bring him to trial for war crimes or violations of human rights. And the Bush administration would be fatally contaminated—and so politically neutered for the next two years—by mere association.

Whatever else he might be is unimportant; the vice president is demonstrably a crook. With luck, his resignation or impeachment might lead to graver consequences for him, but at the very least it will ensure that future presidents choose their seconds in command more judiciously. A sure outcome is that no Republican in 2009 will be able to accuse Democrats of playing partisan football with Dick Cheney, because no one cares enough about the vice president to make that charge plausibly stick