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By Philip Bobbitt and Stuart Taylor Jr. "Whether George W. Bush or Al Gore ends up winning the presidency, the Constitution charts a course for him to carve out with one bold strike of bipartisanship the best conceivable way of pulling the country together. If Bush wins, the 12th Amendment not only permits but explicitly requires that--under the present unprecedented circumstances--Joe Lieberman be chosen as vice president. That's right. It would be the Bush-Lieberman administration, not the Bush-Cheney administration. This would be a wise resolution of the controversy in any event: Bush and Lieberman are well suited to work as a team to overcome the partisan bitterness that could consume either a Bush-Cheney or a Gore-Lieberman administration. The 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, begins: "The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves." This means that no Texas elector can vote for both George Bush and Richard Cheney because both are "inhabitants" of Texas. And in an election this close, that means that Bush or Cheney can be elected but not both. It was this 12th Amendment language that prompted Cheney's hasty change of voting registration to Wyoming. But the Constitution is not so easily circumvented. The purpose of the quoted language was to prevent one big state from using its votes in the Electoral College to capture both the presidency and the vice presidency. If, for example, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison of Virginia had run as a ticket, the 12th Amendment would have barred Virginia's electors from voting for both. It is inconceivable that Madison could have avoided this result by moving to North Carolina a few months before the election. "It is also clear that as a matter of Texas law, Cheney's Wyoming gambit cannot instantly end his legal status as a Texas "resident" (or inhabitant). Residency cannot be altered overnight as a matter of convenience. (Just ask the parent of any college student at a public university who seeks "in-state" tuition, or a taxpayer who's tried to escape the income tax of a state where he or she has recently been a resident.) Two objections to this logic help explain why you haven't heard more about Cheney's 12th Amendment problem. The first is that it is unlikely that the courts would order Texas's electors not to vote for both Bush and Cheney (although one court has been asked to do so in a lawsuit). The answer to this objection is that constitutional provisions that are "nonjusticiable"--not enforceable by judges--are binding on electors no less than on members of Congress and the executive branch. The second objection is that this provision is anachronistic, because few of us today care whether both president and vice president come from the same state. But it would ill-become "strict constructionists" to suggest that constitutional provisions deemed anachronistic should be ignored.
"To be sure, it may be unrealistic to expect the 12th Amendment to make a difference in this impasse unless Bush and Cheney were to ask the Texas electors to honor it. But if Bush, Cheney and Gore got behind this idea, it would be unstoppable. Republican reluctance to accept Lieberman as vice president would be offset by the opportunity to move the Senate--with Lieberman resigning and being replaced by Connecticut's Republican governor--from a 50-50 deadlock to a 51-49 Republican majority.
The Constitution also provides a way for a victorious Gore to make Bush his vice president. Step one would be for Lieberman to resign as vice president-elect in order to stay in the Senate and prevent Republican control; that would be worth quite a bit to a President Gore facing a hostile Republican House. Step two would be for Gore to use the 25th Amendment to nominate a new vice president, subject to confirmation by both House and Senate. Who could be confirmed amid the current partisan bitterness? George W. Bush. Unlikely? Gore and Bush may be at swords' points now, but if they are the patriots we believe them to be, they could work it out.
Such a mixed party government would not be altogether new. More important, a Bush-Lieberman or Gore-Bush solution would embody a commitment to more teamwork and less partisan warfare."
Well, we finally got to hear a debate of presidential caliber. Too bad it was between the candidates for Vice-President. Both Dick Cheny and Joe Lieberman were articulate, poised, intelligent, knowledgable, and witty. Joe won the debate, however, because he was better able to deal with Cheney's obvious strengths in foreign affairs than Dick was able to deal with Lieberman's obvious strengths in dosmestic affairs. While Lieberman was not able to supply the wealth of detail on foreign affairs that has come from Cheney's experiences as Secretary of Defense and CEO in control of Brown and Root, the foreign oil branch of Haliburton, he was able to fend off most of his attacks with a combination of specifics based on his years as a U.S. Senator as well as his recollection of various bills and causes that he backed over the years. Cheney, on the other hand, spent too much of his time discussing domestic affairs with the same misinformation supplied by George W. Bush just two evenings ago during his debate with Gore. It must be added, however, that where Bush said "is," Cheney would say "is roughly." And just two evenings ago the winner of that debate, Al Gore, earned the same score as loser Cheney. Both Cheney and Lieberman were the total package, being able to hold their own on both policy and presentation, which was not the case with Gore-Tex, although, perhaps, things will change in next week's debate between the two candidates for president. But getting back to this evening's debate, Cheney's limitation, aside from his use of misinformation on domestic policy ( for examples, see my analysis of the Gore-Tex debate), is his low-key, bureaucratic soullessness. In answer to Question #15, What would you bring to your job that your opponent would not? Cheney matter-of-factly summarized his career resume. Pretty cold. Joe's response was more rounded, touching on both his personal and his professional life. Of course, Cheney was right. A resume is exactly what he would bring to the job, and little else, according to his answer. Previously, Cheney had a Dukakis moment, one that called for some emotion, and he was unable to deliver. Moderator Bernard Shaw asked him to imagine he was black and was being profiled by a cop on the basis of the color of his skin. Cheney very correctly said he wasn't black and could not imagine how he would feel, but went on to provide a very sincere, thoroughly acceptable answer, even quoting Martin Luther King. Lieberman's answer, on the other hand, was both passionate and filled with specifics that indicated how he and Gore intend to eliminate racial profiling if they are elected. Cheney, interestingly enough, never mentiond George W. Bush in his answer. The structure of the 90 minute debate moderated by Shaw was better-paced than Tuesday's debate moderated by Lehrer. In that debate, the candidates ran out of gas by the 60 minute mark, but the questions didn't get any less detailed. Here, Shaw started with questions on domestic policy, which turned out to favor Lieberman, went on to questions of foreign policy, which were bound to favor Cheney, and ended up with questions that were not as data-driven. Both candidates did poorly on the first question, one that needs to be answered by the presidential candidates: Why do you base your budget plans on predicted surpluses you can't guarantee? Neither really answered that one. Liberman did best on the question of what to do about Milosevic, defending the idea that military actions should reflect our sphere of influence in values as well as interests. Cheney did best on what to do about Saddam re Bush's remark about "taking 'em out." On the other hand, he did poorest on the questions of equal pay for women and opposition to the newly approved abortion pill. Joe was poorest on the first question about the surplus, taking nearly all of his two minutes shmoozing, and question #10, failing to push Cheney on his answer to an environmental question. Shaw asked Cheney why he fought and prevented drilling for oil in Wyoming, his home state, and is fighting for drilling in Alaska on equally pristine land. Cheney answered, "You have to make choices." "Yes, Dick," Lieberrman should have asked, "but on what basis?" --Bill Brasin, 10/5/00 Reporters Believe Veep Candidate Cheney Needs An Attitude Adjustment
[Sam] DONALDSON [on ABC's "This Week"]: All right, let’s talk in the short time remaining about another issue: prescription drugs. The Democrats are going to make a big case this week, they’ve told us already, that Governor Bush has no prescription drug program, although you’re running ads which say, and I quote, “We will make prescription drugs available and affordable for every senior who needs them,” end quote. All right, what’s the specifics that you’re talking about? CHENEY: Well, the specifics are being worked on right now. The policy’s been laid out and we’ll have an announcement in the not-too- distant future of exactly what our proposal is with respect to prescription drugs. DONALDSON: So you don’t have any specifics. How can you promise in an ad that all the seniors who need them will get them? CHENEY: You can make the statement, for example, Sam, that we want to fix the Social Security system and lay out some principles in connection with that, for example, partial privatization of it. There’s still a lot of detail to be flushed out yet, but that’s a very solid proposal, it’s a sound proposal; same thing with prescription drug. That’s a high priority for us, and we will shortly have the details of a proposal to lay out on the campaign. DONALDSON: Do you say shortly; are we talking about this month, the month of August, when? CHENEY: Well, I’m not writing policy, I’m busy out campaigning, but I would expect it’ll be in the near future. Note. Since the above interview last Sunday, Gore has said that it's "put up or shut up time" for Bush on a perscription drug plan. Bush's non-response was to criticize Gore for using "un-Presidential language." --Politex, 8/30/00
It has been said that a presidential candidate's choice for vice-president is his first major decision and indicative of the kind of administration we could expect if elected. The Bush-Dick ticket has been called the most conservative in the last 100 years. Based on Cheney's selection of Bush...er...Bush's selection of Cheney, we could expect Poppy II and, perhaps, Gulf War II. Whatever's good for big oil is good for the country. As Secretary of Defense, Cheney worked to privatize the system, awarding a particularly large contract worth millions to Brown and Root, a division of Halliburton. Then, when Cheney became a private citizen, he was hired as CEO of Halliburton and earned around $50 million in five short years to continue to contribute to the growth of that oil company. (An Op-Ed piece in the NYT this morning reports how Cheney's privatization of the Department of Defense plus his Pentagon connections have paid off. In five short years the feds have awarded his company $3.2 billion.) We were particularly dismayed to learn that as Sec. of Defense Cheney was very hawkish as he protected corporate oil interests in the Gulf by proposing to fight a war over the opposition of such a plan by Colin Powell. Cheney tells us that he was surprised that U.S. casualities in the Gulf War were so low. In other words, he was willing to sacrifice many more American lives in the defense of our corporate oil interests. Or should we say, his corporate oil interests? --Politex, 8/3/00 (Image: Wizard of Whimsy)
What About Cheney's Defense of the Use of Chemical Weapons Over the Objections of President Bush?
Read his letter to the Foreign Relations Committee below...
 HON. JAMES R. SCHLESINGER, FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, READS CHENEY LETTER Dr. Schlesinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At the outset, I will allow Secretary Cheney to join us vicariously. He has sent a letter, as you indicated, and I shall read it into the record. This letter is dated April 7, from Dallas, Texas.
Hon. Jesse Helms, Dear Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your letter inviting me to join several other former Secretaries of Defense in testifying in early April when the Foreign Relations Committee holds hearings on the Chemical Weapons Convention. Regrettably, other commitments will preclude me from participation. I hope that this correspondence will be sufficient to convey my views on this convention. During the years I served as Secretary of Defense, I was deeply concerned about the inherent unverifiability, lack of global coverage, and unenforceability of a convention that sought to ban production and stockpiling of chemical weapons. My misgivings on these scores have only intensified during the 4 years since I left the Pentagon. The technology to manufacture chemical weapons is simply too ubiquitous, covert chemical warfare programs too easily concealed, and the international community's record of responding effectively to violations of arms control treaties too unsatisfactory to permit confidence that such a regime would actually reduce the chemical threat. Indeed, some aspects of the present convention--notably its obligation to share with potential adversaries, like Iran, chemical manufacturing technology that can be used for military purposes and chemical defensive equipment--threaten to make this accord worse than having no treaty at all. In my judgment, the treaty's Articles X and XI amount to a formula for greatly accelerating the proliferation of chemical warfare capabilities around the globe. Those nations most likely to comply with the Chemical Weapons Convention are not likely to ever constitute a military threat to the United States. The governments we should be concerned about are likely to cheat on the CWC even if they do participate. In effect, the Senate is being asked to ratify the CWC even though it is likely to be ineffective, unverifiable, and unenforceable. Having ratified the convention, we will then be told we have ``dealt with the problem of chemical weapons'' when, in fact, we have not. But ratification of the CWC will lead to a sense of complacency, totally unjustified given the flaws in the convention. I would urge the Senate to reject the Chemical Weapons Convention. Sincerely, Dick Cheney
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This week Dick Cheney told reporters, "I come from the West. A man of few words," painting himself as a kind of latter-day John Wayne. Based on Wayne Masden's story about Halliburton, Inc.'s human rights and environmental violations as well as murky questions about its relationship to the intelligence community under Cheney as CEO, we can see why Bush's veep candidate doesn't want to waste his few words on national reporters who might ask some embarrassing questions. As Masden concludes in the September issue of 
What the Selection of Dick Cheney
BORED BY BUSH BAMBOOZLES?