The Corridors of Power

The days when the vice presidency was worth “no more than a bucket of spit” are long over. Though the office has almost no formal powers under the Constitution, the power sharing dynamic between the president and vice president is a malleable, case-by-case determination. Thus, more than any other factor, the division of power often reflects the personal relationship between the vice president and president.  President Bush and Vice President Cheney had a largely unprecedented relationship—in their case, Cheney was the “senior” partner. As a result, in the last eight years Dick Cheney has exercised far more power than any previous vice president.

To begin with, Cheney’s resume eclipsed that of all his predecessors. Before hand picking himself for the vice presidency, Cheney was Chief of Staff for Gerald Ford, a U.S. Representative from Wyoming, a minority whip of the House, Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, and CEO of Halliburton, a major energy supplier and government contractor. Alex Keyssar, professor of History and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, told the HPR it was Cheney’s experience that allowed him to consolidate power. “Cheney had been around Washington a long time so he really knew where the levers of power and influence were.”

Cheney’s incredible power, however, is not indicative of a new role for vice presidents. In addition to having an unusual relationship with President Bush, his influence was the result of the jarring effects of the Florida re-count and 9/11, making it highly unlikely that future vice presidents will wield the same power.  And, the fierce public criticism of Cheney will surely hinder his successors. This does not mean vice presidents will be less influential than they were before Cheney, however. The increasingly complex challenges of governing mean that vice presidents will continue to exert substantive influence, but Cheney’s sweeping power is unlikely to be replicated.

Key Historical Events

Cheney’s ability to cultivate power was largely the result of historical timing. Two tumultuous events early in Bush’s tenure, the Florida fight for the presidency and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, laid the foundation for interventions by the vice president. While much of the Bush team trekked to Florida after the election to fight for the presidency, Cheney was left in Arlington to construct a prospective cabinet. He essentially led the transition and was largely responsible for cabinet and sub-cabinet appointments. “He was able to put into government people he knew and trusted,” said James P. Pfiffner, professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and author of Power Play: The Bush Presidency and the Constitution, in an interview with the HPR. Cheney employed his closest associates, people who were extremely loyal to him personally. “There was no reason for Bush to object to Cheney’s suggestions,” Pfiffner said. “But the vice president knew these people, and President Bush didn’t.” Nine months into Bush’s presidency, the attacks on the World Trade Center produced a permanent shift in the presidential agenda. Bush turned to his vice president, who was superbly experienced in foreign and military affairs as a former Secretary of Defense. Hence, by the end of Bush’s first year in office, Cheney was already the most powerful voice in executive decision-making.

Cheney maintained a constant pulse on White House policy through various unprecedented means. Pfiffner noted that Cheney made sure all presidential decisions and meetings were open to him and his staff. All memoranda and e-mails were routed through the vice president’s office. Additionally, said Pfiffner, two of Cheney’s staff members had the title of assistant to the president. This title allowed them to have the same status and access as any other White House staffer to the president, meaning they could sit in on meetings without being outranked. There were also parallel staff structures for the vice president and president, for every type of presidential staffer, be it domestic policy or national security, there was a parallel position in the vice president’s staff. Pfiffner noted that Cheney’s national security staff had 85 people just two months after taking office, the same number as the president’s.

Implications

But Cheney may have pushed the envelope too far. His influence was so great that he attracted media and public ridicule. “Cheney was as good an inside player of the bureaucratic game as anyone in Washington, D.C. has seen in a long time,” William Galston of the Brookings Institute said in an interview with the HPR. “He was not afraid to use his authority.” As a result, however, Galston noted, “there is a pretty broad consensus that as vice president, Dick Cheney exercised influence that should have been reserved to the president and maybe not even to him.” As “Vice-president Cheney was a constant force for expanding the powers of the executive, many people believe beyond due constitutional bounds.”

The anger and public backlash from the Cheney agenda will likely reduce the powers of the vice presidency in the long term. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that a future president will allow the vice president the same leeway and scope. With the exception of Ronald Reagan few other presidents have been delegators of policy. But even if future vice presidents can secure titles of assistant to the president or assemble a large staff, those maneuvers will not be enough. It is much more likely future vice presidents will assume a more traditional role in which they attend ceremonies and have specific policies and issues to champion, but do not establish a shadow Oval Office.

Slow and steady

This is not to say, however, that the vice presidency will assume less significance than it held prior to Cheney’s tenure. In the last quarter century, the relationship between the president and vice president has shifted to become much more inclusive, especially in the partnership between Al Gore and Bill Clinton. Gore and predecessors like George H.W. Bush were in regular contact with the president and had their own portfolio of issues. This shift was largely the result of changes to the demands on the executive office as America has emerged as a leading power in a more globalized world. Barbara Kellerman, a lecturer in Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, told the HPR, “Because the world is so much more complicated, and the United States is more powerful, the role of the presidency has changed and we need more people to do it.” This has resulted in a more “flattened executive hierarchy” with a greater distribution of power.

Cheney’s rapid expansion of power can thus be seen as a temporary exaggeration of the gradual increase in vice presidential authority over the last half century. “Cheney has greatly expanded a trend that has preexisted him, all recent presidents have given vice presidents more decision making power,” Kellerman explained. “He is not as much an aberration as an exaggeration.”