Cheneyism Preserved But Attenuated in New Plum Book
Updated below
In the George W. Bush Administration, Vice President Dick Cheney advanced the idea that the Office of the Vice President is not part of the executive branch, and that it was therefore exempt from the sort of oversight mechanisms — including classification oversight — which it might otherwise be (and previously was in fact) subject to.
Somewhat unexpectedly, this conception of a Vice Presidency that transcends the three branches of government reappears in the 2012 edition of the Plum Book, an official publication which lists thousands of employment positions for appointees within the federal government and which is published every four years.
“The Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter,” the new 2012 Plum Book states in Appendix No. 5, reproducing identical language from the 2008 Plum Book.
This language was first introduced in 2004, when that year’s Plum Book also stopped listing most of the previously identified staff positions in the Office of Vice President, with the exception of the Chief of Staff (I. Lewis Libby) and one other assistant.
By 2008, even those two staff listings had been deleted from the Plum Book as the Office of the Vice President retreated into further concealment.
However, while replicating the language of Cheneyism, the latest Plum Book restores the deleted coverage of the Office of Vice President.
Thirteen current OVP positions are now listed. And the Office of the Vice President appears — as it did prior to the Bush Administration — under the heading of the Executive Branch.
Update: The statement that the Vice Presidency “belongs neither to the Executive nor to the Legislative Branch but is attached by the Constitution to the latter” is derived from a 1961 Office of Legal Counsel opinion (at p. 11), which termed the question a “semantic problem.” Under the George W. Bush Administration, however, this semantic problem was invoked to alter established oversight practices in the direction of greater secrecy.
Satellite imagery of RAF Lakenheath reveals new construction of a security perimeter around ten protective aircraft shelters in the designated nuclear area, the latest measure in a series of upgrades as the base prepares for the ability to store U.S. nuclear weapons.
It will take consistent leadership and action to navigate the complex dangers in the region and to avoid what many analysts considered to be an increasingly possible outcome, a nuclear conflict in East Asia.
Getting into a shutdown is the easy part, getting out is much harder. Both sides will be looking to pin responsibility on each other, and the court of public opinion will have a major role to play as to who has the most leverage for getting us out.
How the United States responds to China’s nuclear buildup will shape the global nuclear balance for the rest of the century.