ABC: Is Cheney too powerful?

David Edwards and Nick Juliano

Published: Tuesday June 26, 2007 Print This Email This

ABC News examined the stunning extent of Vice President Dick Cheney's grab for power over the last six years in a sometimes sardonic yet serious segment on Good Morning America Tuesday morning.

Reporter David Wright says Cheney is refusing to play by the rules that govern everyone else who works at the White House.

"So almighty and elusive is this vice president, the New Yorker once ran a cartoon in which theologians debated the existence of Cheney," Wright said.

Noting a proposal in Congress to cut funding for the Vice President's office, Wright said a Cheney spokeswoman called the proposal political, but she wouldn't say "because the size of the vice president's staff is apparently classified."

Chief Washington Correspondent George Stephanopoulos examined the controversy surrounding Cheney and pronounced the current vice president the most powerful person to occupy the office in history. Stephanopoulos predicted the next president will pick as his running mate "the anti-Cheney."

NBC News reported on Monday (link) that "Dick Cheney is back in a very uncomfortable place for him: the headlines."

"Has the vice-president gone too far?" asked NBC, adding that "the National Archives thinks so," because Cheney alone in the executive branch has refused to file required reports or permit inspections of his office's handling of classified material.

The following video is from ABC's Good Morning America, broadcast on June 26.



