The Washington Post on Cheney, Part 3

Here is the third part of that profile on Cheney:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/index.html


Finally, here is some of the muckraking that ought to have been the standard for this entire run of articles. This section focuses on Cheney's continued and viscous attempts to undercut environmental regulations for the benefit of industry, particularly the energy industry.

Like yesterday's article, there isn't a broad theme that I didn't already know existed. If you had asked me whether Cheney was Pro-Environment or Pro-business, I would have guessed the right side of the coin. But still, the details are enough to chill the blood.

Now, this is an issue that is near and dear to my heart. I'm a hugely Pro-Environment person, to give full disclosure. I believe that the degradation of the environment is the number one issue facing humanity today, and that a solution (or rather a comprehensive solution, involving countless small changes and fixes, in both regulation and personal behavior) is in the interests of EVERYONE. And if you're a farmer, or a fisherman, or a logger, who thinks your industry will suffer from increased regulation, too bad. You shouldn't have over-fished, clear-cut logged, or over-irrigated in the first place. You've been doing whatever you want for a hundred years, now it's time for Mother Nature to get some back.

To return to Cheney, I'd like to point out something about his tendency to "reach down" and talk directly to the people involved in the issues of interest. It's something for which he has been universally praised, and that's just ridiculous. Cheney called the 19th ranked person at the EPA, and left a message on her voice mail instructing her to "call the White House." That's not attention, that's intimidation.

What I mean, of course, is that what has been interpreted as Cheney "sinking his teeth" into an issue or some such bullshit, is Cheney going low enough on the totem pole to find people he can easily intimidate with his office, and people he can fire easily if they fail to respond to his intimidation.

And fire them he has. Over and over in the article, we see evidence of the Vice demanding his way, and demanding (and getting) resignations from people that disagreed with him. He abused his position by using it as a bully pulpit against people flustered and surprised at even receiving a call from the second most powerful man in the country.

To conclude, I place a ton of blame at the feet of the people who resigned instead of fought, and on the whole did so without a lot of clarity (or outright lies) about why they were resigning. One example is the head of the EPA, who said she was resigning for "Personal Reasons". Now she comes out for this article and says that it was actually because of the White House's behavior over environmental regulation.

Coming forward now, after it's too late to do anything except place blame on top of a large heap, is a cowardly, expedient thing to do. Where was her anger and her whistle-blowing when it would have made a difference? Then she just didn't want to be bothered with the heat that would have come down for her position. Now that the popular kids are saying what a bad guy Cheney is, she figures she'll jump on the pile.

It is this kind of cowardice that facilitates the kind of abuses described in this article. See lady, when you leave, they just put someone in your place who agrees with them. That's how we got in this shitty mess. All the people of principle (I'm talking to you Colin Powell) leave, and Bush/Cheney put talking heads in their place. It's pathetic.

To anyone left in the government with some principle: Ask yourselves why you got into government in the first place. Was it to protect the things you care about? This woman was the head of the EPA. Her career had nowhere else to go. Yet she saved face and, I assume, saved her "career" by resigning for "Personal Reasons" instead of stopping play and calling foul. That is a failure of the system, it is a failure of policy, and it is a failure of personal courage.