Governmental Role Quotes
Gore had lost the 2000 Presidential race to George W. Bush by Supreme Court controversial decision regarding the counting of the Florida ballots. Gore had won ½ million more votes. Most pundits assumed that Gore again would be a candidate and the press was already describing it as a potential sports championship rematch. Bush had a high approval rating but was most vulnerable regarding the economy and some other domestic issues. In the midst of the War on Terrorism and a potential Iraq war, Gore believed that the sporting rematch concept would detract from a public campaign that could focus only on issues—what he believed he and the Democratic Party needed to win.
After his presidency, Adams returned to Massachusetts where some of his neighbors approached him about running for Congress. Some were concerned that, having served in the highest office of the land, he might be degraded by becoming a congressman:. Adams was elected and served many years in Congress—the only American President to do so.
The Supreme Court had decided to hear an important case on gun rights. Cheney discovered that Solicitor General, the Administration’s chief lawyer before the Supreme Court, Paul Clement planned to file a brief that was very different from Cheney’s own personal views. In protest, he signed his name to a much stronger brief filed by 55 pro-gun senators and 250 members of the House of Representatives. The President’s Chief of Staff called Cheney on the carpet for doing something that was unforgivable—the Vice President had publicly criticized the position that the President’s (and the Vice President’s) chief lawyer was taking. This was Cheney’s excuse—ie that he was not protesting as the Vice President but as President of the Senate, the only other Constitutional Role of the Vice President. Bolton let the vice president know that if he ever tried something like this again, he would be frozen out of most government activities. See {633772} . In Bush’s second term Cheney had less and less influence, in part because of his unethical behavior like this.
