Damn, another NWA editorial and this one in the NWA Edition of the Dem Gaz takes Cheney to task. This is the second Friday morning editorialist based in NWA who can no longer hold their nose when it comes to Dick Cheney.

The Cheney irony

“The irony with the Cheney crowd pushing the envelope on presidential power is that the president has now ended up with lesser powers than he would have had if they had made less extravagant monarchical claims,” Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan, told the Post.

There’s the rub of democratic government. Sure, the act of building consensus often requires sacrificing some of your most preferred policies. But such consensus-building actually persuades the public, the bureaucracy and legislators of the necessity to act and reduces the chances they’ll turn their back on the whole effort. The Cheney method instead creates a blowback that hobbles your efforts in the long run far more than compromise does.