Cheney’s inherent vice

The talking points on the centrist news networks like CNN and especially MSNBC, constantly barrage us with talk of the erosion of norms. Trump and his administration, so the narrative goes, has engaged in systematic undermining of the norms of democracy. He tramples over the procedures and guarantees of the constitution and functioning democracies and tries to assert his personal will over the good of the nations. Not surprisingly, although not exclusively, this narrative is forwarded by disaffected Republicans, who want us to return to the “normalcy of the Bush and Regan administrations, and they even admit that Obama and Clinton were normal in this respect too. But Democrats too engage in this trope and almost daily bemoan the loss of a traditional sense of the rule of law. Mostly however, this is a self-congratulatory story line, that celebrates and legitimizes the often-unjust conditions and creeping authoritarianism of prior administrations. By making a hard and fast distinction between, Trump and the Republicans who went before him, the narrative serves to rehabilitate Republican leadership like Reagan and Bush I and II who have not fared well, in court of educated public opinion. If you watch NBC and MSNBC, there is quite a bit of Bush and Reagan worship going on. The deaths of George H. W. Bush and his wife Barbara were occasions for celebrating a kinder gentler machine gun hand (apologies to Neil Young) and an era of “reasonable” politics where members of both parties get along. George Bush’s daughter is employed by the network, and a constant stream of ex Republicans, mostly from the Bush administrations, whose homiletic praising of the virtues of Bush are far too reverential.

One of the “virtues” of the film VICE, the story of the rise and fall of Dick Chaney, is to disabuse of the notion that the expansive view of presidential power for which Trump is rightly criticized is unique or outside the norm. It has a longer history, going back as far as Nixon. The core of the republican party of which Cheney was as central operative, used notions of expansive executive power which have come home to roost in the figure of Trump. The strict distinction between a lawful republic, and the renegade Republicanism of Trump is illusory.  At the center of the film’s narrative is the rise of the doctrine of unitary executive authority, a view of constitution that in Cheney’s interpretation gives the president almost unlimited powers. While article 2 of the constitution gives the president fairly broad executive powers, the strong version of the unitary executive theory reads these in the strongest possible fashion to give the president unlimited authority over the executive branch and limiting the power of congress in a way that seems inconsistent with the separation and balance of powers. On these readings the president is the executive branch, Perhaps most troubling is the view that when carrying out his commander in chief function the president has unlimited authority. He cannot be limited by any laws passed by congress; This is the interpretation Cheney favored.

Richard Nixon famously forwarded an interpretation of unitary executive, in his assertion that the president can’t do anything illegal. As the supreme authority he is the law, What he does is always just. This seems to be a reading that is closer to the German political theorist Carl Schmitt, who gave support to Hitler not Montesquieu’s theory of tripartite government.

The film shows how the younger Chaney something of a ne’er do well like the young George W. Bush happens upon government service and meets Donald Rumsfeld, forging a political alliance largely around this notion of unitary power. When they both emerged as players in the Reagan administration this doctrine was put to good use, Reagan began the extensive use of signing orders, which some thought allowed the president to specify what parts of a law the president was going to enforce, allow him a defacto line item veto.

The most prominent use of this doctrine during Reagan was the Iran-Contra scandal, Cheney famously argued in his report on Iran Contra that the actions of the Reagan administration were legal because the president was acting in his capacity as commander in chief.

Cheney’s full use of the powers of the executive came to the fore. He redefined the vice presidency as a free-floating position neither fully in the executive or the legislative (due to its role as president pro tempore of the senate) and literally gave himself sweeping powers no previous vice president had. In many ways he acted as president. The attacks of 9/11 gave Cheney his greatest opportunity to employ his interpretation of the unitary executive. As a series of secret memos released after the fact indicated the administration in addition to spying illegally on citizens, took almost total and dictatorial powers. It was John Yoo, a rather undistinguished legal scholar picked for his views rather than his acumen. Scholar Chris Adelson sums up some of these powers

The unitary executive theory, as implemented by the Bush administration, was claimed to justify effectively unchecked presidential power over the use of military force, the detention and interrogation of prisoners, extraordinary rendition and intelligence gathering.

The use of torture, unprecedented in American history and explicitly banned by international laws the US accepted, the use of Guantanamo Bay and other places as offshore prisons in order to skirt American Law are among the darkest moments in American history. I might also add a fake justification for a politically motivated war on Iraq. G.W. Bush also greatly expanded the use of executive orders and signing statements, Bush used 130 signing statements more than any other president by far and often invoked the unitary power of the executive to justify these statements. Obama cut back on these statements, but still used executive orders and powers notably in his incursion into Syria? While he clearly stopped torture and other practices, his failure to prosecute those who condoned torture and used extraordinary powers to subvert the constitution, meant he failed to stem the tide,

Of course, what Trump has attempted goes beyond even the distorted visions of Cheney and G.W. Bush and it is scary to see what he has done; However, it is a mistake to see Trump as sui generis. The ground for his extreme notions of presidential authority was prepared by the very republicans that alienated republicans champion today, Some old republican hands like new attorney general William Barr continue to defend the unitary executive theory and use it to absolve Trump of collusion and other charges.

Vice allows Cheney the last word. He defends his actions as necessary to protect the county from foreign enemies. History and the film tell us otherwise. Not only did the invasion of Iraq have no clear link to any terrorist threat, there is no reason to believe that torture or other rendition techniques provided information that saved lives. It was evil policy badly conceived and poorly executed. If we take away anything from the film Vice, it is the insight that our present dilemma with the “erosion of norms” was long in coming and may be difficult to eradicate. The malign ghost of Cheney and his cohorts hangs heavily on us still.