Beyond the Dome

Sure, Joe Biden would bring decades of valuable expertise to a Barack Obama administration. But here’s a thought to ponder: Does he have so much experience that he might just become a Democratic version of Dick Cheney?

The question has nothing to do with their political views, which are pretty much polar opposites. But it is an issue of what happens when you pair up a vice president with years of Washington experience with a president who doesn’t have it. After all, don’t forget that Cheney was also a veteran Washington hand who served with a relatively inexperienced president.

The vice presidency has been steadily growing in power and influence, ever since Walter Mondale made it a more equal partnership in the 1970s. But with Cheney, the power of the vice presidency reached new heights. So it would seem to be natural for both Obama and John McCain to consider whether they really want to repeat that experience. So far, Obama and Biden’s aides haven’t been able to tell me whether that was a consideration in the vetting process this time around.

But here’s what we do know: Biden, it appears, is no Cheney, at least in terms of his views of the limits of executive power. During his own aborted presidential campaign, Biden rejected nearly all of Cheney’s expansive views in his answers to a December survey by the Boston Globe.

And at an Iowa campaign rally in July 2007, Biden declared that “the House of Representatives could, if it chose, find reasonable grounds to bring articles of impeachment” against Cheney. He also predicted that “in order to get elected president of the United States, the American public is going to demand that both a Democrat, as well as a Republican nominee, that he shed or she shed that authority.”

A vice president doesn’t necessarily have to have the same views of executive power to have a strong influence over the president. Still, Joel K. Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University and an expert on the vice presidency, doubts that Biden would become another Cheney figure. It took more than just an imbalance of experience, Goldstein said, for Cheney to have as much power as he has had under President Bush.

Cheney’s power, he said, was also a function of Bush’s willingness to delegate large amounts of authority to his vice president and Cheney’s willingness to use it. Biden could become another significant vice president in the mold of Mondale or Al Gore — both of whom also had more Washington experience than the presidents they served — but he’s unlikely to become another Cheney, Goldstein said.

That’s also the view of former Sen. Bob Graham, who said Cheney’s power came from the combination of experience, “his sort of aggressive nature,” and Bush’s willingness to delegate authority. “Obama’s not going to let that happen,” said Graham.

And, of course, Obama’s people insist there is no Cheney sequel in the works. “We can assure you, we won’t have another Dick Cheney, in Joe Biden,” Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro told me. “Obama-Biden are committed to respecting the system of checks and balances enshrined in our Constitution and are committed to setting a new direction for this country, unlike John McCain, who wants to continue the same failed policies of the last eight years.”

So at most, Biden might just be another Mondale or Gore — but that’s enough to guarantee him plenty of influence. After all, Obama is known as a good listener, and Biden loves to talk.