Executive Privilege: A marriage of convenience

Now let me get this straight...

Dick Cheney's buddy-buddy consultations with oil companies over what sort of national energy policy would be best for them cannot be made public because he has a special privilege for the advice he receives as a member of the Executive Branch of our government. He had Executive Privilege that enables him to keep the advice he receives secret.

Dick Cheney's office does not have to turn documents and other information over to the National Archives as required by law and ordered by an Executive Order from his ostensible superior, President(*) George W. Bush, because he is a member of the Legislative Branch of government and, therefore, is not subject to Executive Orders.

Pardon me, but is that not the very paradigm of having one's cake and eating it too?

We know that "Republican" is a synonym for "hypocrite" (also for "criminal" and "war criminal") but this seems to rise to a new level. It is a level that even Alberto Gonzales' situational Alzheimer's Disease doesn't quite reach. The level of cynicism required to make that argument with a straight face is utterly incomprehensible to most people who are not or haven't been Fox News employees.

One could, I suppose, make the case that the Dubya Bush Administration has been the most ironic in American History given the consistent and complete disconnect between its statements and its actions, but I think that we've gone far afield from irony. An American Administration that blathers about "spreading democracy" at every turn but works vigorously to undermine democracy in America cannot be described as ironic any longer. Something far more vile and sinister is involved here.

The Republican Party and its leaders long ago (in the 1870s) decided that most people's acquaintance with democracy was purely as a word or an oddity. Most people understand that democracy exists in the same sense that they understand that those weird, luminescent fish that live in the dark ocean depths exist. They have the sense that it is a good thing, something that they even are supposed to venerate. Still, in the minds of the true Republican, people have no concept of what real democracy is. The vague understanding that it is a good word is sufficient. Even if people should connect it to the line in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (entirely unknown in the old Confederacy) about "government of the people, by the people and for the people" there's still next to no concept of the meaning. Popularly, if we get to vote every so often and then go home, shut up and accept whatever lies out leaders deign to spout, that's democracy. Democracy is, therefore, an advertising slogan like "Fahrvegnugen" and about as intelligible to the average American in the thinking of most Republicans.

For that minority that does have some deeper understanding of genuine democracy, the Republicans effectively neutralize them by deriding them as "ACLU-types", "effete Liberals" and by questioning their patriotism. That is, of course, supremely ironic and surpassingly cynical to have those who despise the founding principles of America questioning the patriotism of those who most honor it. But let me return to the specific case of the current Vice-president, the Galactic Emperor.

The concept most basic to democracy is an educated and informed public governing itself. That's not some opinion I've just cobbled up. It was the opinion of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and most of the men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to write our Constitution. A public without information is, by definition, deprived of information necessary to making informed decisions about its governance. Depriving citizens of that information also deprives them of the basics of democracy. The secrecy in which Cheney envelopes himself is utterly anti-democratic. It most resembles the kind of government from which the Continental Congress rebelled in 1775 or the governments which we fought from 1941 through 1945. It in no way resembles American representative democracy.

Some apologists for neo-fascism make the case that our government must have some secrets lest we surrender the means of our defeat to our enemies. Taken on its face and unquestioningly that statement is certainly true. But who is the "enemy" from whom we must withhold the consultations over the Dubya Administration's energy policy? Is there some evil power that can attack America with the information on how we support or don't support ethanol production? Is some terrorist group going to use information on tax breaks for oil companies to poison our water supply? Of course not. The "enemy" from which Cheney withheld information about his consultations with oil companies is the American people. Were we to have been informed of the graft, quid pro quos and general malfeasance that went into creation of the Dubya Administration's energy policy, the 2004 election would not even have been close, a Democrat would now be president and Cheney and his cohorts would now be fighting indictments in court.

But let me give Cheney the benefit of the doubt. Let's pretend for a moment that every act of the Office of the Vice-president has met the highest moral and ethical standards. Let's pretend that Scooter Libby's unquestionable obstruction of justice was a total aberration or vicious persecution by an overzealous, out-of-control prosecutor. What is the point of hiding the information about the consultations for an energy policy? What is the point of refusing to archive documents that will not be made available to the general public while one is in office?

I think that the inescapable answer is that the point is that Cheney and his staff need to hide unethical and even criminal behavior from a public to which the criminality of that behavior would be so thoroughly obvious that the Vice-president could not remain in office for more than a few hours after the release of that information.

Some neo-fascist apologist, probable P. J. O'Rourke or Bill O'Reilly, will object that it's the principle of the thing. They will try to obfuscate by claiming that were the Vice-president to release the discussions in his energy policy deliberations or archive his records would require that the Vice-president to publicly reveal sensitive information that would harm our national security (another phrase of which few know the meaning). Again, that is utter nonsense. It supposes that the judiciary generally is out to undermine the security of our nation, a premise that is ridiculous on its face. The judges to which the Executive Branch could appeal are officials of this nation just as much as are Dubya and Cheney themselves. We know from an unbroken chain of precedent and experience over more than 200 years that judges are reliably circumspect when it comes to maintaining national security.

The only principle which Cheney, evidently with Dubya's support, defends is one of imperial immunity from examination by the citizenry. And that is neither American nor democratic not Constitutional.

The president and vice-president take an oath to defend the Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." I would suggest to you that they are in violation of that oath because they themselves are the domestic enemies of our Constitution. The terror that they have visited on America since January 20, 2001 has done more damage to this nation than Timothy McVeigh or Mohammed Atta and his fanatic gang. It is also worth remembering that, for his attack on this nation, we executed Timothy McVeigh.


(*) We know that Dubya has never won a free and fair election and could not do so without the neo-fascist coup in 2000 and the vote fraud by Diebold and others in 2004.)