Cheney's Legacy Created Trump's Imperial Presidency.

8 hours ago7 min read9 comments

The death of former Vice President Dick Cheney this week has prompted a necessary, if uncomfortable, reassessment of his political legacy, a legacy that finds its most potent and paradoxical expression in the very man Cheney ultimately rejected: Donald Trump. Cheney’s final, principled stand—his endorsement of Kamala Harris over Trump, warning the nation that Trump ‘can never be trusted with power again’—was indeed admirable, a rare act of party-defying patriotism.Yet, the bitter irony is that the imperial presidency Trump now wields, a presidency that operates with a perceived immunity from congressional and legal constraint, is in many ways the realization of a constitutional vision Cheney spent half a century meticulously constructing. The intellectual and legal architecture for this powerful executive was laid not by Trump’s populist movement, but by the sober, determined efforts of a Washington insider who believed that a strong, unitary executive was essential for national security and effective governance.Cheney’s career, from his time as President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff through his immensely influential vice presidency under George W. Bush, was a masterclass in expanding presidential authority, often at the direct expense of the legislative branch he briefly served in.His core philosophy, articulated in a 1980 meeting with Reagan’s future chief of staff James Baker, was to ‘Restore power & auth to Exec Branch’ and to ‘Get rid of War Powers Act. ’ He viewed Congress, as he argued while a member of it, as a body ‘swayed by the public opinion of the moment,’ ill-equipped for the swift, decisive action required in foreign affairs.This conviction fueled his championing of the ‘unitary executive’ theory, a doctrine asserting that all executive power must reside solely in the president, free from internal dissent or external check. As vice president, this manifested in the notorious ‘stovepiping’ of raw, unvetted intelligence on Iraqi weapons directly to his office, bypassing professional analysts to cherry-pick data—like the fabricated Niger yellowcake documents—that supported the case for war.He saw the vast machinery of the federal government, from the Justice Department to the intelligence agencies, not as independent institutions with professional standards, but as instruments of the president’s will. This Cheney-esque worldview has now been sanctified by the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority.The Court’s landmark decision in *Trump v. United States*, granting the president sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, reads like a posthumous vindication of Cheney’s life’s work.The ruling’s rationale—that a president must be free to take ‘bold and unhesitating action’ without fear of legal retribution—is a direct echo of Cheney’s decades-old arguments. Similarly, recent rulings empowering presidents to fire virtually any federal official, stripping away civil service protections enacted by Congress, further cement the principle of absolute presidential control over the executive branch that Cheney so fervently advocated.So, while Cheney rightly recognized the profound danger of placing such concentrated power in the hands of a demagogic figure like Donald Trump, he cannot be absolved of his role as its primary architect. He helped build the very weapon he warned us about, crafting a legal and philosophical framework for a presidency he believed would be led by sober-minded patriots, only to see it fall into the hands of a man he deemed a threat to the Republic. His final act was one of warning, but his life’s work was one of enablement, creating a constitutional monster that now stalks the very democratic institutions he claimed to uphold.

#Dick Cheney

#Donald Trump

#imperial presidency

#unitary executive

#presidential power

#Supreme Court

#featured

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