Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:45 pm
The New York Times is reporting that the ol’ gang from the Bush administration is getting together for a reunion and a brainstorming session for the George W. Bush Policy Institute, but the one person who won’t be there is former VP Dick Cheney who is still upset that W. wouldn’t pardon his best boy, Scooter Libby.
Over 20 former Bush administration officials are getting together for the reunion, and brainstorming session, but according to the NYT, “Not coming to next week’s session is former Vice President Dick Cheney, who in the final days of the administration argued with Mr. Bush about his failure to pardon Mr. Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was convicted of perjury and other counts for his role in the leak of Valerie Wilson’s employment with the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Cheney later went on television to air his grievances with Mr. Bush, while also accusing Mr. Obama of endangering the country.”
The grudge that Cheney seems to be holding against Bush is obvious. Both men have taken a different approach to discussing the Obama administration. Bush has taken the high road by saying that Obama deserves his silence, but Cheney has been in the media criticizing Obama in every interview that he has given. The post administration rift between the president and vice president is not an uncommon occurrence. Things are still frosty between Bill Clinton and Al Gore, because for a long time Gore thought that Clinton’s Monica scandal cost him the 2000 election.
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Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush weren’t exactly a buddy movie waiting to happen, and JFK and LBJ flat out did not like each other. What makes the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney situation unique is that Cheney’s anger is based on expectation that the president would violate his own principles, and use the presidential pardon. Even worse, Cheney wanted a pardon for a crime that brought shame to the president’s administration. If Bush would have granted the pardon of Libby, it would have been a final abuse of his power while he was on his way out the door.
Can you imagine what this brain storming session is going to sound like for the George W. Bush Policy Institute? He is getting together a group of people who ran out of ideas in 2002, so they spent the next six years recycling the same four ideas that they came in to office with.
Is the Bush foreign policy institute going to hold seminars on the Constitution and how to violate it? Maybe they hold working groups on disaster preparedness? How about putting out position papers with titles like Preemptive War, It’s not as easy as You Think. Dick Cheney needs to get over it, and President Bush should go buy another baseball team, and for the sake of the nation, stay as far away from politics as possible
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
