Score A Big One For George W Bush
I never thought I would say this, but Bush earns big thanks from me
for sticking to his principals on this matter. Good for him.:)
Cheney 'Furious' at Bush, Could This Be?
February 17, 2009 11:54 AM
ABC's Stu Schutzman from New York:
Cheney "furious" at Bush, could this be? Sure could.
There appears to be some new evidence that the eight year political marriage between the two men may have hit a stone wall shortly before the Bush Presidency ended last month. At the time there was little doubt the Vice President was upset at his boss' refusal to pardon his long-time aide and friend, Scooter Libby. Libby was convicted of lying to a grand jury about the Valerie Plame CIA leak affair. The President commuted Libby's jail sentence, but refused to go any further.
Cheney publicly disagreed. "Scooter Libby is one of the most capable and honorable men I've ever known," Cheney told the Weekly Standard. "He was the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice and I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon. Obviously, I disagree with President Bush's decision."
Now, according to today's New York Daily News, it sounds like Cheney was more than just upset at Bush, he was outraged and not shy about communicating it. Reporter Thomas Defrank paints a portrait of a relentless Dick Cheney refusing to take no for an answer. "He tried to make it happen right up until the very end," said one Cheney associate to the News. "He went to the mat and came back and back and back at Bush," said another. "He's furious at Bush," said yet another.
John Dean of Watergate infamy, (remember "a cancer on the Presidency" etc.), offered an interesting scenario in the Daily Beast.com. Dean, who was a consultant to director Oliver Stone for the movie "Nixon" suggests Stone should have waited to make the film "W" until after Bush left office.
In Dean's version, dialogue like the following could have been included:
CHENEY
"You've not responded to my memo on Scooter Libby. I think---"
BUSH
"Whooooe. Let's not go there big fella. I told you when I commuted Scooter, keeping his sorry bleep out of jail, that I wouldn't pardon him. I haven't changed my mind. That was your bleeped-up scheme that backfired. My daddy really chewed my bleep out for revealing a CIA covert agent. You went too far, big guy. Strikes me, Scooter's such a bleep poor liar you're lucky ole Fitz, Fitz what-ever-the-hell-his-name-is(federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald) didn't nail your bleep too."
You get it, a frustrated President living in the shadow of his Vice President for years and now exacting his revenge. But questions about the status of his Vice President have dogged George Bush throughout his Presidency. Who was really making the decisions? Whose policies were really being carrying out? In essence, who was really pulling the strings?
Historians will no doubt mull these questions over for generations. They will attempt to dissect the dynamics of the relationship between George Bush and Dick Cheney for years to come. Will it reveal a strong Chief Executive firmly in charge or a weak acolyte fronting for an all powerful Vice President and a cadre of 80's ideologues. The verdict in the case of Cheney v Bush is a ways away...stay tuned.
February 17, 2009
