Gonzales Answers to Cheney Before Bush -- So Does Everyone Else

Alberto Gonzales is in it for the long haul unless it puts Cheney's job in jeopardy.  A recent NYT story revealed that Dick Cheney, not President Bush, sent Alberto Gonzales in 2004 to pressure heavily sedated, bed-ridden Attorney General John Ashcroft to stop resisting the warrantless eavesdropping program.  In other words, Gonzales is Cheney's man.

Then again, doesn't everyone answer to Cheney?  As former vice president Walter Mondale wrote in yesterday's Washington Post, Dick Cheney controls what the President hears, knows and decides:

Through his vast government experience, through the friends he hadbeen able to place in key positions and through his considerablepolitical skills, he has been increasingly able to determine theanswers to questions put to the president -- because he has been ableto determine the questions. It was Cheney who persuaded President Bushto sign an order that denied access to any court by foreign terrorismsuspects and Cheney who determined that the Geneva Conventions did notapply to enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan and Iraq .

Ratherthan subject his views to an established (and rational) vettingprocess, his practice has been to trust only his immediate staff beforetaking ideas directly to the president. Many of the ideas that Bush hassubsequently bought into have proved offensive to the values of theConstitution and have been embarrassingly overturned by the courts.

So actually our current Vice President is really the man in charge.  All decisions will be made in a way that benefits Cheney, not Bush.  For example, President Bush is already slated to go down as probably the worst president since the Great Depression.  Dick Cheney, on the other hand, will go down as the most powerful and politically influential vice president since Harry Truman.  That is Cheney's legacy.  He knows what he is doing -- even if the 'what' is hurting our country.