The Ethical Code of Dick Cheney

Please note:  This essay originally appeared in Politics in Minnesota.  Please consider subscribing to  that publication.

Has Dick Cheney ever expressed a moral qualm about anything he ever did? 
    If his comments about the Senate torture report released late last year are any indication, the simple answer is no.  Cheney’s life, both public and private, reveal a pattern of selfishness, devoid of any sense that he has ethically reflected on any of his actions or found any regret in his behavior.  He stands as the paradigm of a public official nearly devoid of a sense of personal integrity, demonstrating a sense of self-rationalization that stands as a negative example of what ethics in public office represents.
    There is a consensus among those who teach and write on government ethics that it includes a sense of personal integrity, reflection, consistency, respect for rule of law, attention to the reality and appearance of conflicts of interest, a shunning of self-dealing, respect for truth telling, and promoting the public good.  Applying these ethical benchmarks to Cheney, how does he measure up?
    Dick Cheney’s public career is long.  He served as a member of Congress, a presidential chief-of-staff, secretary of defense, and vice-president, in addition to being the CEO of Halliburton.  He has been described as one of the most powerful vice-presidents in history.  Yet almost from the start of his adult life Cheney had evidenced a selfish approach to the world, evincing no ethical maturation over time.  He is well-known for having dodged the draft and the Vietnam War with five deferments, proclaiming in a Washington Post interview that he “had other priorities in the 60's than military service."  This is the same person who as secretary of defense sent troops to Iraq in Operation Desert Storm and later to Afghanistan and Iraq again as part of the War on Terrorism.  Military service is a noble calling for Cheney; when it is others besides him who put their life on the line.  If the mark of integrity is consistency between what one says and does, hypocrisy is the badge of unethical behavior.  As philosopher Immanuel Kant once argued, a defining trait of unethical behavior is making yourself an exception to a rule you expect everyone else to follow.  This is what Cheney has done.
    Selflessly serving his country has never been an ethical priority for Cheney.  As CEO of Halliburton he did business with the US government that often amounted to gouging the taxpayer, with recurrent allegations that his company engaged in bribes to secure business.  When he gave up that post to become vice-president the New York Times reported that he may have lied about severing his ties with his former company.  It might well be that as VP he personally profited from decisions he made when Halliburton received government contracts.  Even if he did not, the appearance of conflict of interest was something  that he ignored.  Further proof of how he was inured to the appearance or reality of conflicts of interest was his hunting trip with Supreme Court Justice Scalia and how such activity might compromise the integrity of an impartial judicial system, especially at a time when the judiciary was adjudicating many Bush administration policies.
    When it comes to his conduct in government some might argue that Cheney is the consummate Machiavellian, echoing an “ends justifies the means” ethic. His comments about torture after the recent release of the Senate report that  “I would do it again in a minute” or that as he said on Meet the Press that “I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent” clearly demonstrate an ends justifies the means mentality.  But labeling Cheney a Machiavellian acting for a noble cause gives him too much moral credit.  First, his attitude in these statements expresses contempt for rule of law and human rights, something we expect of someone in a leadership position in a constitutional democracy.  Second, his statements reflect less an appeal to some public or greater good than they speak of post hoc rationalization of illegal behavior.
    Cheney is not really Machiavellian–he is simply partisan and self-interested.  In 2004 after Bush won re-election the vice-president spoke of tax cuts and spending priorities favoring his supporters by stating “We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due.”   Cheney is less interested in appeals to the greater good than his own personal interests or that of his friends. Don’t forget, Cheney too has expressed disdain for the importance of personal ethics in guiding government policy. Time once reported him saying about energy policy that: “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”
    Respect for legality, patriotism, and honesty are generally hallmarks of ethical behavior. Yet Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby was convicted of four counts of lying and obstruction of justice, and he and the vice-president are  tied to the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame in retaliation for her husband and diplomat Joseph Wilson writing a New York Times op-ed sharply critical of the Bush Administration’s false claims of Iraq’s efforts to obtain nuclear materials.  It was such claims about Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction that served as the pretext for the 2003 invasion.  Cheney continues to lie when it comes to Saddam Hussein, asserting in a 2014 Meet the Press interview that he "had a 10-year relationship with al-Qaida" even though all the evidence clearly refutes such a claim.
    Finally, some want to give Cheney credit for supporting same-sex marriage.  Yet such support may be less altruistic and principled than thought–perhaps based more on the fact that his daughter is a lesbian.  Therefore his views be less about ethics and more about personal or family self-interest.
    What do we learn about Dick Cheney’s ethics?  While his entire life has not been reviewed one can still learn a lot about his character based on choices he made in critical situations It is clear that by most standards regarding what would define someone as ethical, Cheney falls far short.  He is blind to conflicts of interest, real or apparent, is willing to lie for personal gain, and he is willing to make himself an exception to standards of conduct that most of us would expect others to follow.

Tinker, Tailor, President, Spy: American Politics at the End of 2014

The November 2014 elections already seem ancient history.  Yet in barely seven weeks a host of major events have transpired, raising interesting questions about Barack Obama and the future of American politics, both short and long term.  Let’s review some of them and see what they potentially mean.

The End of the Cold War...Finally?

 The Cold War is over. Long live the Cold War!  These are the sentiments best captured by two events this past week–Obama moves to normalize relations with Cuba and the president threatens action against North Korea for hacking SONY.  Both events

Cuba and North Korea are perhaps the two last iconic symbols of the Cold War.  They conjure up images of the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis, and a divided peninsula and war that would never end.  The two countries were supposedly the last two communist countries standing, and they both were surrogate grounds for the conflict between the US and USSR.  But at least in the case of Cuba and  Castro, it also represented a host of other rumors and conspiracies about the assassination of JFK, the FBI, CIA, and spying.

We embargoed Cuba for 50 years with no avail. No real good came of it and in fact one could argue that the embargo and US politics toward Cuba did more to hurt America’s relations with South America than help it.  It also meant that we had little leverage with Cuba when the inevitable day came when the Castros were no long around.  Obama’s move was smart–it represented or reflected the new realities of the world.  The generation that wanted to maintain the embargo is largely dead or gone (keep that in mind Senator Rubio) and Cuba is no longer a front line for the Cold War.

North Korea is different.  It is no longer the surrogate struggle between the US and USSR.  It represents a new type of battle–cyber-terrorism.  There is an old adage that says the most countries  are militarily prepared to fight the last war. The same is true with the US.  We still think of war and terrorism as the use of bombs and bullets or of physical invasion of one country by another with troops, planes, or even drones.  Think of terrorism and we think of 9/11.  But that is old thinking according to Richard Clarke who in Cyber War points out how vulnerable the US is to cyber terrorism and also how badly prepared we are to fight it.

The US may be one of the most wired and computer connected societies in the world.  Such sophistication means there is a lot to hack–anywhere from official government defense sites to power plants, trains, planes, financial institutions, and private companies such as SONY.   Clarke argues we are hackable, that are defenses are poor, and that the US is overall ill-prepared to fight back.  The terrorism is what happened to SONY and that it what the future 9/11s will look like.

Obama has vowed action against North Korea but options are limited.  Very little of Korea is computerized so points of vulnerability are fewer.  We have little trade with that country and few think that the president is prepared to deploy old-fashioned arms against it.  For now there is a standoff.

This is the new Cold War.  But this is not the only part of it.  The new Cold War is the on-going battle against ISIS.  And the new Cold War is how the Ukraine has become a symbol for what looks like a lingering or rekindling of the old Cold War between Russia and the United States.

The Lost Soul of American Politics

The on-going stories of race and policing in America and the Senate CIA torture report together raise troubling images about America, especially when one considers the reactions to both.  They paint a partisan and racially divided picture about the use of force against citizens and non-citizens around the world.   Collectively, they also question the moral legitimacy of the US.

One of the defining characteristics of America–or at least Americans like to believe–is that we are different and that we embody a set of moral principles that distinguish us from the rest of the world.  This exceptionalism–America as the shining city on the hill-gave us moral authority over the rest of the world.  Yet police violence and torture of prisoners destroy any credence in that exceptionalism.

There is also something wrong with the law that sanctions repeated police use of excessive force. I used to teach a class on police criminal and civil liability under state and federal law, including what is called §1983 violations. It is not easy to win these claims. The law and the public favor the police. Maybe once that was appropriate, but knowing that we have scores if not hundreds of police shooting Michael Browns per year leads one to question whether the law has tipped too far in favor of the former.  Conversely, I remember once doing a WCCO radio show years ago when news of torture fist hit the news.  I explained the Geneva Accords on treatment of prisoners and then took calls.  Repeatedly military vets called in to condemn torture declaring that they learned that if we tortured they (the enemy) would do the same to us or that we would be no better than them.  No surprise that John McCain was one of the few Republicans to condemn the CIA.

My point here is that the Senate report itself was not a surprise.  We have long since known that torture does not yield good information.  Nor should we have been surprised that the torture existed.  We have known that for years.  The real surprise is how some such as Dick Cheney seem completely morally tone-deaf and, to a large extent, how Barack Obama seemed to distance himself from the report.

A New Obama Presidency?

For a president who was supposedly rendered irrelevant by the 2014 elections, Obama is perhaps finally showing that there is still life to his presidency.  Yes he blew it on the Senate torture report, and ISIS, and on Syria.  But increasingly his moves on immigration and Cuba look bold.  While too much of his first six years has been marked by timidly, there is a glimmer of hope for progressives that his final two years will not be marked by constant capitulation to the Republicans.

However, there are still nagging doubts about his presidency for many on the left.  What will he give away to protect Obamacare or make it look like he is a compromiser?  The mistake the progressive  made in 2008 was to think he was progressive.  He was compared to George Bush but not compared to many other Democrats.  Obamacare was a Republican idea he embraced.  Obama was or became  a Wall Street candidate who took more money from the too big to fails than any other candidate in history.   Obama has done more to kill off campaign finance reform and limit in politics than any candidate in history.  Yes he protested Citizens United but he has raised more money than any other presidential candidate in history.  He was the first to opt out of the presidential voluntary public financing system, and he just signed a bill dramatically raising contribution limits to political parties.  His tenure a president will be footnoted as the one where money took over politics.

Start Your Engines

The Iowa straw poll is eight months away and the Iowa caucuses are barely 12 months out.  The 2016 presidential race is upon us.  All speculation is on Clinton v Bush, but not so fast.  But are running with a sense of inevitability but both are candidates with tired old names who may no longer  represent where the parties are.  At this point it is equally probable that either or both of them get their party’s nomination, but it is equally probable they do not.  Clinton has a better chance given a weak Democratic field, but a serious challenge from the left (almost anyone for the Democrats will be from the left) could change the equation for her.  For Bush, there are many other potential rivals such as Rand Paul who excite the base more than him.  Finally, both Clinton and Bush have many liabilities that could be exploited.  Long records in office give opponents lots to attack.