Today's Financial Times puts what for us must be a chilling slant on the recent departures of Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales from the Bush administration. Coupled with today's piece in the NYT suggesting that Condoleezza Rice's influence in the Bush Administration is waning, the FT article makes the case that while we've been celebrating the collapse of the Bush cabal, Mr. Cheney has been consolidating his power. The story's lede says it all:
Dick Cheney once jokingly referred to himself as Darth Vader - such was his dark reputation with the mainstream US media. With the departure of Karl Rove on Friday, George W. Bush's electoral mastermind, the US vice-president is seen as "the last man standing" in the administration.
While we aren't inclined to view any of the dear departed as voices of sanity or reason, at least President Bush could hear multiple voices in his most private councils. Now, the "Texas Mafia" of Rove, Gonzales, Miers, and Bartlett are gone. Cheney is all that's left:
It was this informal coterie that would retreat with Mr Bush to his private quarters after formal White House meetings and take the hard decisions. "These were the people Bush trusted and where he could say anything," said a former Cheney aide. "Cheney will now be unchallenged."
We don't know how much of a check any of the Texas Mafia ever really were on Cheney. But the FT argues that Rove, at least, had equal standing in Bush's eyes. Rove's agenda was also somewhat different from Cheney's. Rove was all about manipulating policy for Republican political gain. Cheney is more about arrogating power -- especially the power to make war (never mind that making war is one of the few enumerated powers of Congress) -- to the Executive Branch. Or to the Fourth Branch.
We have good reason to believe that Bush himself is weak and easily manipulated. So now, if Cheney is the only real player left standing with the access necessary to do the manipulating, his power has possibly grown truly frightening. Accordingly, we need to be watchful of what happens with respect to Iran -- starting with the much-diaried propaganda offensive we may face beginning next week.
Possibly more important will be the nomination of Gonzales's replacement as Attorney General. The calculus for us on the AG issue will be tricky. There are two ways a new AG could act as a check on Mr. Cheney -- one from within WH councils, and one from outside. I'm inclined to favor the outsider approach, since vigorous enforcement of the law (especially the laws this Administration has flouted) is such an important principle. But we also need to recognize that for the next seventeen months, there won't be any internal Administration check on Darth Cheney's reign.
The check on Cheney's influence will have to come from Congress. We need to keep up the pressure on our Representatives and Senators to maintain the barricades against unfettered Executive (and Fourth Branch) power. And we need to make sure that our Congresspeople understand that it's in their own best interest to do so.