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One wonders why articles such as this one from Sunday's Boston Globe are always written well after they are of any use to anyone.

Political junkies have long known the truth about Cheney's odd views on presidential power. After all, how many congressmen go on record suggesting that it is the president, and not congress, that holds all the power in the relationship? But for the rest of the world, articles like this would be far more useful before the man actually secured a place for himself in the White House.

Nevertheless, a great read. One small highlight:

For all major overseas wars from 1789 to 1950, presidents obeyed the constitutional provision giving Congress alone the power to declare war. But in Korea and Vietnam, Presidents Truman, Johnson, and Nixon defied this constraint. They asserted that the commander-in-chief had "inherent" power to take the country to war on his own.

Seeking to restore its constitutional role, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973, requiring presidents to consult Congress when sending troops into battle.

After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Bush sent 500,000 US troops to Saudi Arabia. As they prepared to attack the Iraqi forces, Cheney told Bush that it was unnecessary and too risky to seek a vote in Congress.

"I was not enthusiastic about going to Congress for an additional grant of authority," Cheney recalled in a 1996 PBS "Frontline" documentary. "I was concerned that they might well vote 'no' and that would make life more difficult for us."

I've always found it deeply ironic that a man who spent his life fighting the communist menace believes to his core that it is a small group of enlightened leaders, and not the masses of people they are sent to DC to "represent," who should lead both the nation and the world. Like Lenin, Cheney believes he and his cohorts know what is best for all of us. Like Stalin, he believes that it is only a strong executive, and not that pesky "people's assembly," that can lead the people to the promised land. And like both men he is so unwittingly imitating, his philosophies and his policies have been an unmitigated disaster for us all.