Richard B. Cheney and the Rise of the Imperial Vice Presidency
Bruce P. Montgomery
0-313-35620-3/978-0-313-35620-9
Description
On taking office in 2001, Dick Cheney crowned himself the first imperial vice president in the nation's history, transforming a traditionally inconsequential office into a de facto fourth branch of government. Taking a less journalistic and personal approach to Cheney than previous biographers, this critical new biography shows exactly how Cheney engineered his arrogation of vast executive powers—and the dire consequences his power grab has had and will long continue to have for the office of the vice presidency, the balance of powers, the Constitution, geopolitics, and America's security, strength, and prestige.Taking advantage of the administration's global war on terrorism, a president inexperienced in matters of war and peace, and a Republican Congress that rated party power above institutional prerogatives, Vice President Cheney moved with astonishing speed and energy to assume a dominant role on the national and international stage as the effective president-in-proxy of the United States. Cheney asserted that all constitutional checks and balances and all individual liberties under the Bill of Rights are subservient to the president's powers as commander-in-chief in confronting international terrorism. Although former administrations had made power grabs in the past in times of national crisis, no president-and certainly no vice president-has ever exerted such sweeping claims of executive power on so many fronts in violation of the bedrock principles of the Constitution.
About the Author
Bruce P. Montgomery
is Associate Professor and Faculty Director of Archives at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the founding director of the UCB Human Rights Initiative and a founding member of the International Federation of Human Rights Centers and Archives. He has served as an analyst of classified documents for the US government. He is the author of Praeger's
The Bush-Cheney Administration's Assault on Open Government
and
Subverting Open Government: White House Materials and Executive Branch Politics
. Articles by Montgomery on the aggrandizement of the executive branch have appeared in many journals and newspapers, including
Presidential Studies Quarterly
,
Political Science Quarterly
, and the
Washington Post
.
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0-313-35620-3
978-0-313-35620-9
Richard B. Cheney and the Rise of the Imperial Vice Presidency
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