Jules Witcover: Dumping Cheney?

Cheney is widely seen, correctly or not, as the Rasputin of the Bush administration, or the Edgar Bergen putting words in the mouth of the Charlie McCarthy in the Oval Office. The bold move would certainly send a stronger message of change than the recent rearranging of the deck chairs on our governmental Titanic.

But technically, the president doesn’t have the power to cashier the vice president, constitutionally elected in his own right. In practical terms, however, he has been joined at the hip with the presidential nominee at the ballot box since the 12th Amendment was ratified in 1804, to prevent a recurrence of the unhappy shotgun marriage of Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr in 1800.

To be sure, Bush could squeeze Cheney, and there can be little doubt that the vice president would yield, perhaps saying he had decided he wanted to spend more time with his family.

As recently as a month ago, however, asked about resignation, Cheney said on CBS News? “Face the Nation” that “I didn?t ask for this job. I didn?t campaign for it. I was drafted. I?ve now been elected to a second term. I?ll serve out my term.”

In any event, the president who can?t bring himself to can Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld isn?t likely to dump the man he literally did draft for the vice presidency in 2000, and the man he has given unprecedented responsibilities in the job. Remember the gag in early 2001, when Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, that if anything happened to him, Bush would become president?

And what would be accomplished by the move other than a short-term jolt to public opinion? For all the inflation of Cheney?s power, the buck still stops at the president?s desk. For all the awkwardness of Bush?s recent declaration that he is “the decider” who gets to make the big decisions, that?s the way it is.

It is, nevertheless, the measure of Cheney?s uncommon prominence in this administration that the thought would strike presumably thoughtful editorial writers that getting rid of the vice president would solve the multiple problems (to which he clearly has contributed mightily) of this lame-duck incumbency.

Sending Cheney over the side would not be the first time consideration had been given to getting rid of a sitting vice president by means other than dropping him from the ticket at reelection time. In 1832, John C. Calhoun, having suffered various humiliations in the job, resigned a few months before the end of his term, ran and was elected tothe Senate from South Carolina.

More recently, President Richard Nixon gave serious thought to persuading his vice president, Spiro Agnew, to resign in 1971 and later, so that he could nominate former Texas Gov. John Connally, the political apple of his eye at the time, as his vice president. It was Nixon?s idea thus to put Connally on a glide path to be elected as president in 1976, but multiple doses of fate intervened.

Among the fantasies that Nixon entertained to unload Agnew was to get some rich Republican to buy a television network or a cable outlet to enable him to continue his war against the news media as a private citizen. Another was to -? believe it or not ? appoint him to the Supreme Court. In the end, though, Nixon thought better of it.

In this case, destiny eventually came to the rescue when Agnew was confronted with Justice Department allegations of bribe-taking as Baltimore County Executive, Governor of Maryland and even in the vice presidency. He plea-bargained out of jail time by agreeing to resign.

If nothing else, the Los Angeles Times editorial calling on Bush to dump Cheney refutes the old definition of editorial writing — that it is like wetting your pants in a blue serge suit. It gives you a warm feeling all over and nobody notices.

Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.