'Frontline' hammering the same nail -- Dick Cheney
The PBS investigative series "Frontline" returns for a new season at 9 p.m. Tuesday on WTTW Channel 11, but if it were a network drama it would be accused of recycling the same old plots.
The season premiere, "Cheney's Law," is the 10th documentary on Bush-administration excesses producer Michael Kirk has done since Sept. 11, 2001, and it shows. Its argument, that Vice President Dick Cheney is trying to expand presidential powers, seems familiar from previous "Frontline" episodes like "The Dark Side," even if it's been given a new, constitutional framework.
That's not to say the program is at all bad or misguided. "Cheney's Law" has clearly been prepared in time to influence the congressional confirmation hearings on attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey -- and rightfully so. Given the expansionist impulses of the Bush administration, its attorney general has come to occupy a pivotal position. It's just that there's a boiler-plate feel to "Cheney's Law," of old material reheated to serve new needs.
Of course, that doesn't makes its conclusions any less chilling.
Cheney is described as "an absolute fanatic about presidential power," a product of his political environment in the '70s. He was there in the Nixon administration and saw that president brought down, then he was President Ford's chief of staff and experienced the diminished power of the presidency firsthand.
As such, he came to advocate increased executive power, so that even as a member of Congress in the mid-'80s he supported President Reagan's covert backing of the Contras in Nicaragua.
So no wonder, as vice president, he used Sept. 11 as an excuse to widen presidential power, most commonly under the argument that we need a strong executive branch to wage war.
This is all old hat. What's new is the way Kirk zeroes in on two specific issues -- torture and surveillance -- then connects it to the controversy of departed attorney general Alberto Gonzales.
As "Frontline" has reported before, John Yoo of the Office of Legal Counsel wrote an opinion in effect authorizing the use of torture on suspected terrorists and, eventually, captives in the war in Iraq. Reflecting discomfort in the U.S. electorate, Congress called the Bush administration out on that, most eloquently in Sen. John McCain's line: "This isn't about who they are. This is about who we are."
Yet the issue that got the Bush administration in trouble on constitutional grounds was the domestic surveillance the president authorized. Even a self-avowed patriot like Attorney General John Ashcroft objected to that, and "Frontline" goes into detail on the legendary confrontation between Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Ashcroft on his sickbed in which Ashcroft refused to sign off on it.
When Ashcroft left the administration, Gonzales was moved to attorney general specifically to allow the Bush administration a free hand by rubber-stamping such matters. And Congress was powerless to stop it, because even when it passed measures to halt torture and domestic surveillance, President Bush typically amended them with "signing statements" neutering their impact.
That, "Frontline" suggests, is what led to the controversy over Gonzales firing local U.S. attorneys. Congress was blocked by the Bush administration's claims of executive privilege from really getting the lowdown on torture or surveillance. Yet when Gonzales fired all those prosecutors, that was an issue Congress could seize on, and it used that as leverage to remove Gonzales.
That clarifies many of the issues on Mukasey's confirmation hearings scheduled to take place this week. Will he defend the Constitution or rubber-stamp the Bush administration's expanding powers?
So "Frontline" does serve an important purpose when it returns tonight with "Cheney's Law." But here's hoping it will move on to investigating something besides Dick Cheney in the weeks ahead.
In the air
Remotely interesting: Republican U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, of Idaho discusses his arrest and decision to try to stay in Congress on "Matt Lauer Reports" at 7 p.m. Tuesday on WMAQ Channel 5.
Sen. Barack Obama takes his Democratic presidential campaign to "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" at 10:35 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 5.
End of the dial: New Program Director Matt DuBiel has put his stamp on WERV 95.9-FM with a new weekday lineup starting with Geno Brien at 5 a.m., followed by Leslie Harris at 9 a.m., Scott Childers at 2 p.m. and DuBiel at 7 p.m.
Rob Sherman welcomes Bill Nye the former TV science guy to his show at 7 a.m. Wednesday on WJJG 1530-AM.
-- Ted Cox