John Dean now enjoys a regard I could not have imagined during and shortly after the Watergate hearings. Any ranking officer of the Bush administration who’ll be wanting reputation rehabilitation needs to start ruminating immediately.

The annual legislative branch appropriations act (see, for example, Public Law 108–83) and the annual transportation-treasury appropriations act (see, for example, Public Law 108–199) provide funds
for the Vice President to hire employees to assist him in carrying out his legislative and executive functions. Executive branch employees also may be assigned or detailed to the Vice President (see 3 U.S.C. 112) and the Vice President may employ consultants (see 3 U.S.C. 106(a)). The Office of the Vice President (OVP) consists of the aggregation of Vice Presidential employees whose salary is disbursed by the Secretary of the Senate from the Vice President’s legislative appropriation, Vice Presidential employees employed with the Vice President’s executive appropriation, employees assigned or detailed to the Vice President, and consultants engaged by the Vice President.

The numbers, titles and salaries of OVP personnel change with some frequency. The salaries of Vice Presidential employees whose salary is disbursed by the Secretary of the Senate from the Vice President’s legislative appropriation cannot exceed a maximum specified by law (see 2 U.S.C. 60a–1). The salaries of Vice Presidential employees whose salary comes from the Vice President’s executive appropriation also cannot exceed a maximum specified by law (see 3 U.S.C. 106). The authority to appoint, administratively determine the pay of, and discharge Vice Presidential employees rests with the Vice President.

No where else do job descriptions appear for “consultants” to the Vice President. No where in law are these “consultants” codified. No where in legislation is provision made for paying these “consultants” to the VP.

I bet these “consultants” are probably of the ’security coordinator’ variety. Ones that are very good in the study, use and manipulation of kneecaps.

That may be good for an election, where letting others know what you’re thinking, even who you’re thinking it with, is a vulnerability in the Rovian world of no-rules dirty tricks in which everybody and everything is “fair” game. But it’s a liability in government, where most advisers are expected to step up to the plate in a packed stadium, tickets for which the public paid a high price, and take the balls and strikes as they’re thrown.

The good news is that Obama is infinitely more subtle and supple than Bush, more yoga instructor than truck driver. With his intellect and eloquence, changing course when conditions require it ought to be routine. The bad news is that Obama will win in a game whose rules he knows and can now take advantage of. He’s not likely to want to change much of what needs to be exposed and reformed.

I agree that Sunstein wants the permanent seat on the Court, not the hurly burly management and political exposure that comes with the more fragile seat of power at the DOJ. He’s a heavy-weight intellectual, but his greatest gift seems to be as synthesizer and packager of others’ ideas, which would fit his ambitions for the Court. But he’s to the right of even on Obama on his behavioral economics and the rights he would accord government and corporations rather than individuals and “the public”.

We need a better counterbalance for the Court’s heavy conservative majority, especially since it’s the members of the liberal wing that will be the first to go.

Unless Sunstein and Obama are perfectly fine with a country filled with zombies with their pedals to the metal and heads in the coulds.

Cass Sunstein is not one of the foreign policy alterkockers that Obama has gathered to himself to make himself look serious. Obama has known him well from the U of C for some time and is likely to take his advice seriously even if he doesn’t follow it in the end. I will have to look up how much non-professorial experience he has before I know if we have any danger of having him as AG, in which case there would indeed be few prosecutions.

And to whoever supplied the tidbit that “Obama worked for Sunstein” while a Senior Lecturer at U Chi Law. That’s fiction. He worked for the University of Chicago as did Sunstein until Susnstein became engaged to his girlfrfend Samantha Power and moved to Harvard Law as a result.