Mickey Edwards is a director at the Aspen Institute. He also lectures at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He was a Republican member of Congress from Oklahoma from 1977 until 1992, and during that time he was a member of the House Republican leadership and he served on the House Budget and Appropriations committees. Since leaving Congress he's taught at Harvard, Georgetown, and Princeton, and he's chaired various task forces for the various think tanks. He is an adviser to the US Department of State. Mickey Edwards believes we should be governed by opinion poll.
In a column in Saturday's Washington Post Mickey laments the betrayal of constitutional and conservative principles by the Bush Administration, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney.
I have defended Vice President Cheney, a man I've known for decades and with whom I served and made common cause in Congress. No longer.
I do not blame Dick Cheney for George W. Bush's transgressions; the president needs no prompting to wrap himself in the cloak of a modern-day king. Nor do I believe that the vice president so enthusiastically supports the Iraq war out of a loyalty to the oil industry that his former employer serves. By all accounts, Cheney's belief in "the military option" and the principle of president-as-decider predates his affiliation with Halliburton.
What, then, is the straw that causes me to finally consign a man I served with in the House Republican leadership to the category of "those about whom we should be greatly concerned"?
It is Cheney's all-too-revealing conversation this week with ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz. On Wednesday, reminded of the public's disapproval of the war in Iraq, now five years old, the vice president shrugged off that fact (and thus, the people themselves) with a one-word answer: "So?"
"So," Mr. Vice President?
Policy, Cheney went on to say, should not be tailored to fit fluctuations in the public attitudes. If there is one thing public attitudes have not been doing, however, it is fluctuating: Resistance to the Bush administration's Iraq policy has been widespread, entrenched and consistent. Whether public opinion is right or wrong, it is not to be cavalierly dismissed.
It's government by the people, Mickey explains.
If Dick Cheney believes, as he obviously does, that the war in Iraq is vital to American interests, it is his job, and that of President Bush, to make the case with sufficient proof to win the necessary public support.
What I'd like to know is how Mickey Edwards could spend so much time in public office and in academia, and be oblivious to that notion of our founding fathers, that Congress is the body that has to be persuaded when war is in America's vital interest, not the general public. So far Congress has voted over 50 times on the war in Iraq -- over 20 times in the House and over 30 times in the Senate.
Still, according to Mickey Edwards, it's a "betrayal of constitutional -- and conservative -- principles" for the administration to abide by those congressional votes. George Bush has wrapped himself "in the cloak of a modern-day king" because he has failed to heed the dictates of what? Rasmussen? Gallup? Harris? What ever became of the War Powers Clause of the Constitution or the War Powers Resolution?
I am stunned that Edwards would write such drivel. It's downright embarrassing. I'm trying to imagine what strange ideas of conservatism drive his pompous, self-righteous declaration that public opinion polls should rule.
When the vice president dismisses public opposition to war with a simple "So?" he violates the single most important element in the American system of government: Here, the people rule.
How utterly stupid. Sorry Mickey. Here, the people elect representatives. Apparently, he's got a book coming out this year, Reclaiming Conservatism (Oxford University Press). Based on his Post column, I'm guessing it's a mystery story.
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