2 points:

1) Cheney's crimes are where the Constitution was shredded in the arenas of torture, domestic spying, DOJ manipulation, Valerie Plame exposure, destruction of official emails and other gov't records, and power-grabs.

2) Cheney's earlier history is well wrought in John Nichols' DICK: THE MAN WHO IS PRESIDENT (2004: The New Press). It was widely ignored, unfortunately.

"If Joe Biden came into the Obama presidency with similar powers, would anyone object? Let's say the Defense Department was trying to obstruct talks with Iran and North Korea and Biden intrigued with a small cabal of aides to ensure that they really took place. Would that be so terrible?"

Lousy example as in real life, the DoD is more likely to encourage talks without impossible preconditions they know don't apply than the beholden Biden and his putative ideological cabal would.

The problem with trying to figure just
how much Cheney has damaged America,
is that his uber-secrecy obscures MOST
of his behaviour (of course, criminals NEVER
want their activities exposed to the light of
day, and Cheney, similarly, has gone to
unprecedented lengths
[see "Worse Than Watergate" etc.,]
to keep the American people from knowing
what he and Bush have done).

Honestly, as the truth trickles out over the
next 2 or 3 years, we'll finally be able to
fully reckon all the damage done...
at this point the only grade we can give is
on the BEST of Cheney...the parts he WANTED
you to see!
(if 10% of America likes the Cheney we now know,
imagine what the percentage will be when what
he's--so far--successfully hidden comes to light!)

Also, I do suspect that Cheney must
have had some huge resevoir of black mail
stuff that he has used over the years-
I always seemded that that was the only thing
that explained how he got so many different
groups, people, agencies, ect to go along
with his schemes.

I used to joke that he inherited Hoovers closet
some how, but I suspect that tho it might not
have come from Hoover, that he does have some
large collection, or ability to collect.

-r

I think there are many examples of where Cheney's "crimes" are, as some have pointed out here, so I won't bother repeating them. But I do believe that if you want to look at one of the general aspects of why Cheney (and in general the entire Bush administration) is viewed as villainous it would have to be the elevation of ideology above country, conscience and reason and the manner in which it was implemented. And that got me to thinking -

If you look back over the past 8 years of the Bush presidency at the numerous epic failures and systemic breakdowns I think the one unifying element you would find in each example would be the placement of personal and policy based almost entirely on ideology. Decisions and appointments were made wholesale with complete disregard for ability, viability or repercussions (at least in terms of benefiting the nations rather than simply the party). In fact in most cases reality was intentionally hidden or ignored. The path they chose has proven to be disastrous - a result anyone with at least one foot in reality could have foreseen. I believe that politicians such as Cheney and Rumsfeld personify this myopic and misguided approach to governing a nation (that they personally know best) and as such should rightly be pointed to as being responsible for the dire state we find ourselves in. They deserve to be portrayed as villains because they are villains. Villains to reason. Villains to truth. Villains to the ideals upon which our nation was founded and must continue to aspire to. To view Dick Cheney's actions through such a narrow lens as a "simple political power play" and no worse than any politician in Washington is disingenuous to put it kindly. You need to weigh the entire body of work and how it was performed.

And on the related note - The last thing our nation needs is for Biden to take ANY notes from Cheney other than "what not to do and how not to do it". How one does something is at least as important as what it is one does. I understand that we are a nation of laws and governed by them. That being the case, all one needs to do is change the laws in order to do what one wants. I'm fine with this system if, and only if, those changes are driven by thought and reason and not ideology. And the process needs to be inclusive not divisive (which has been the central Republican strategy for years now) or you will get an inherently unjust and ultimately destructive result. These are extremely important differences and I believe the past 8 years have illustrated that quite clearly.

Mr Heilbrunn,

I read Steve Clemons article, and I beleive it was OBAMA that he was encouraging to take notes from TheCheney, not Biden.

I know Mr Gelman's book was a little more devastating than his self-review here.....but still I am disappointed in his review sounding so even handed and exculpatory of TheCheney. If you round off all the edges, and back away from the sharp and concise language....it makes TheCheney sound like some kind of Happy Warrior. Just doing LeChimp's bidding.
But I think we should call a spade a spade. What TheCheney did was criminal, unpatriotic, unamerican, traitorous, and crimes against the american people and humanity. And he did it all in OUR name.

Let's be precise, rather than vague and moderate and mollifying and conciliatory and trying to grease the rails.

I know Bush-era conservatives in Washington well enough to suspect that the ones Heilbrunn talked to were just making debating points. Everyone does it, goes the argument, so the fact that Cheney also does it only makes him like everyone else.

To say I am not impressed by this line of argument is putting it mildly, but the question of how, exactly, Cheney and the administration he served have been different from past administrations is one that bears close examination. The American government has been around for a very long time; its operations are guided by an almost incomprehensibly vast set of rules, procedures and precedents. Some of these are enshrined in the Constitution, some in statute law, still others in regulation. Many, many of them are not written down at all. There is nothing in writing that forbids an arrangement whereby the Vice President sees everything the National Security Adviser sees while the NSA is not read in to everything the Vice President sees, for example.

Collectively these rules support a system of government both durable and flexible, one that can survive and even prosper when some of them are bent, even when some are occasionally broken. When the system's rules are treated with contempt; when they are regarded as impediments to an existential struggle that somehow never ends; when they are routinely subordinated to the urgent needs of one official -- then the system itself begins to grind to a halt. Shortcuts through and detours around the rules, originally taken as means to make the system move faster, eventually end up making it impossible for the system to operate at all.

That is what is different about Bush's administration, and about Dick Cheney in particular. Look at Guantanamo; the near-collapse of Bush's Justice Department at the end of his first term; the sclerosis afflicting agencies charged with enforcing environmental laws; the long internal administration stalemate over whether and how to engage Iran and Syria. Cheney, deeply involved in all these matters, was willing to stop everyone else from doing what they thought wise if it was not what he thought wise. Not for him making the best case he could, being overridden if that's where the chips fell, and then moving on. It was his way or nothing. The whole administration -- including aspects of it in which Cheney was not involved -- has operated like that, which is a major reason most Americans are so relieved to see it coming to an end now.

Has Cheney ever been caught in a lie -- that is, the making of a statement of a fact* which he believed was untrue**?

The clearest example was the Habbush letter (don't know for a fact that Cheney was involved, but I'd bet money on it).