Remember when the press told us how Howard Dean had squirreled away from public view his Vermont Governor's papers?
It was a pretty big story.
Now remember when you learned that George W. Bush did the same, only he violated Texas law to do it? No? Me neither.
I do now, courtesy of John Dean, who recounts the story in his angry new book, "Worse than Watergate –The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush" (Little, Brown).
Having read a strongly negative review in the New York Times, I suspected the book might not be worth reading. I was wrong.
Dean is a lawyer. A proponent of open government. And he has some experience with the way politics can threaten our democratic Republic.
This gives him perspective on events. Take Vice President Cheney’s refusal to let the GAO know who was in the room when they talked oil policy. (Not what they said, just who was there.)
I assumed it was about politics; that Cheney didn’t want a spotlight on the presence of Enron and umpteen other energy companies and the absence of any environmentalists. Dean thinks not. The former counsel to Richard Nixon believes Cheney’s aim is to accure power to the Executive and take it from the Legislative. The Imperial Presidency is not dead.
I’m not quite halfway through "Worse than Watergate", but it’s already rewarded my attention, so I recommend it to you.