The Dark Lord Speaks

By Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei, Washington Post Staff Writers

The clash over the secret domestic spying program is one slice of a

broader struggle over the power of the presidency that has animated the Bush administration. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney came

to office convinced that the authority of the presidency had eroded and have spent the past five years trying to reclaim it.

…

The vice president entered the fray yesterday, rejecting the criticism and expounding on the philosophy that has driven so

many of the administration’s actions. “I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we

live in demands it — and to some extent that we have an obligation as the administration to pass on the offices we hold to our

successors in as good of shape as we found them,” Cheney said. In wartime, he said, the president “needs to have his constitutional

powers unimpaired.”

Speaking with reporters traveling with him aboard Air Force Two to Oman, Cheney said the period after the

Watergate scandal and Vietnam War proved to be “the nadir of the modern presidency in terms of authority and legitimacy” and harmed the

chief executive’s ability to lead in a complicated, dangerous era. “But I do think that to some extent now we’ve been able to restore

the legitimate authority of the presidency.” …

“He’s living in a time warp,” said Bruce Fein, a constitutional

lawyer and Reagan administration official. “The great irony is Bush inherited the strongest presidency of anyone since Franklin

Roosevelt, and Cheney acts as if he’s still under the constraints of 1973 or 1974.”

Sen. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) said:

“The vice president may be the only person I know of that believes the executive has somehow lost power over the last 30

years.” …

“The problem is, where do you stop rebalancing the power and go too far in the other direction?” asked David

A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. “I think in some instances [Bush] has gone too far.”

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