Hamilton’s to blame for Dick Cheney

Did you ever dread going on vacation because you left pressing things back at the office and you knew that someone else might ruin your project?

Imagine how Thomas Jefferson and John Adams felt when they got home from Europe, after an important trip garnering support for their fledgling country, and learned that the dunderheads they had left in charge of finishing the Constitution had created the office of vice president.

Both Jefferson and Adams were against it, but it was too late. And while Benjamin Franklin argued against it at the time, he was out ‘gunned’ by another patriot.

So, it’s actually Alexander Hamilton’s fault that we have Dick Cheney.

Talk about irony! Hamilton remains one of only two victims of a vice president’s bullet. The man who created the office died at the hands of its third occupant – Aaron Burr. Dick Cheney’s victim, Harry Whittington, has thus far survived the vice-presidential bird shot discharged into his face and chest. Perhaps the cosmos considers befriending vice presidents less egregious than creating them.

Anyway, while the smart guys were busy in Europe, Hamilton convinced the Constitutional Convention delegates that the runner-up of the presidential race should become vice president. This second-place candidate would wait in the wings prepared to serve if anything happened to the president. It’s kind of like the Miss America pageant, only the runner-up got a title and a salary.

If you are wondering why Al Gore or John Kerry didn’t get to be VP, I’ll get to that shortly. (Although it is fascinating to consider how the intelligence and tedium of either of those two might have augmented the excitability and folly of President Bush).

After the delegates created the office of vice president, they realized the occupant wouldn’t have anything to do except wait for, or even design, the president’s demise. So they tasked him as “president of the Senate” to vote on bills in the infrequent event of a tie.

Now actually, in the beginning, the runner-up got the job so the tie-breaker was always a member of the president’s opposition and when the vote got really close the tie-breaker could restrain a domineering commander in chief. But, by 1804, the presidents had had enough of these restraints and Congress passed an amendment, ratified by the states, guaranteeing that the VP would come from the president’s own party.

Poor founding fathers, what a mess we’ve made of their grand design.

See for yourself, if you go to the U.S. Senate Web site, you can read a dandy outline describing our brilliant Constitution, the three cleverly designed branches of our government, and the necessity of keeping those branches apart.

But now it’s all messed up: Our current vice president claims that his duties as Senate president make him not only a member of the executive branch, but of the legislative branch as well.

Hang tight, here’s where it really gets crazy: President Bush issued an executive order that inadvertently triggered an internal investigation of the vice president by the Information Security Oversight Office. Now Cheney, our second in command chief executive, defiantly says he doesn’t have to comply, because those orders affect only the executive branch.

Vice President Cheney, not Sen. Cheney, not Rep. Cheney, Vice President Cheney says that because he’s president of the Senate, he’s not in the executive branch: at least not exclusively.

If that sounds kind of bizarre to you, you aren’t alone. California Rep. Henry Waxman wrote a letter to Cheney this week telling him, “Your decision to exempt your office from the president’s order is problematic because it could place national security secrets at risk. It would appear particularly irresponsible to give an office with your history of security breaches an exemption from the safeguards that apply to all other executive branch officials.”

Waxman chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform. This vice president needs both: and really, more’s the pity that we have a vice president at all.

I think Adams and Jefferson would be horrified by some of what our country has become. Maybe we’d have fared better if those two hadn’t missed a few days work.

Pat LaMarche, a former Green candidate for governor and for vice president, can be contacted at PatLaMarche@hotmail.com.