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For the umpteenth time, George Bush felt compelled to remind the press that he is in charge by declaring, "I am the decision maker." I would have thought that being the President of the United States and the Commander in Chief and all would have settled the matter, but apparently this President feels he needs to say it again lest we (or his own VP) forget.

We should at least put the President's mind at ease on this point: I am reasonably certain that no other person could have made the decisions to select and tolerate the likes of Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, Don Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove, Tony Snow and dozens of other miscreants and still believe he and the country were being well served. No one but George W. Bush would have made such awful choices nor such catastrophic policy decisions nor defended them all for so long without the slightest sign of regrets. Mr. President, be assured: the American people know exactly whom to hold responsible for six years of awful decisions.

So why is the President reminding us? Part of the stimulus for this week's decider reminder arose from the efforts of Congress to send a clear message to our President that they and the country range from deeply skeptical to firmly opposed to ready to buy pitchforks regarding Mr. Bush's troop surge plans. The national discussion about the merits of escalation is separating the civil from the uncivil. We have the gentlemanly Senator Warner worried about not offending the President, while telling him in oh-so-polite terms that his escalation plan is nuts; others are less worried about hurting Mr. Bush's feelings and far more concerned about needlessly putting more US troops in harms way in the middle of a sectarian civil war -- or worse, a war against civilians.

Still, it seems the President may agree to some resolution with a link to "benchmarks," if it does not tie his hands in implementing his proposed escalation. We've learned never to trust the Republicans to rein in their own President, so watch the wording on that one. After all, we wouldn't want a resolution to embolden the enemy.

But I suspect the President's deeper identity problem stems in large part from the fact that his Vice President keeps saying and doing things that make it look like Dick Cheney is the decider, or if not, that he remains so completely out of control and out of bounds as to make the President appear foolish, weak and a helpless victim of his Vice President's never ending excesses.

This week we got repeated reminders of how much trouble a dishonest and arrogant Vice President can create for an Administration. Official Washington and its media are being reawakened once again by the Libby trial, in which the ever loyal Scooter is on trial for lying, but in which the defendent in waiting may well be Mr. Cheney himself. By the end of the week, government witnesses were detailing Mr. Cheney's and/or his trusted deputy's guilty knowledge of Ms. Plame's identy and status, while Ms. Martin, a trusted member of Mr. Cheney's own communications staff, described under oath how fixated Mr. Cheney had become about anyone who might reveal how badly he and the Administration had spun the facts to gin up a pretext for going to war.

Lying a country into a tragic war in which 25,000 of your troops become casualties is not a good thing, but it seems that in Mr. Cheney's view, the greater offense is to be publically called out for lying your country into that tragic war. But the underlying deed is not just tragically immoral; it's an impeachable offense. With interest in the Libby trial exploding, official Washington is taking note and the MSM are starting to realize that the country may need to be primed to watch the Vice President's credibility and potential legal culpability come under serious scrutiny. And we've only just begun.

The same theme was repeated on Thursday when Senator Rockefeller (D W.Va) charged that Mr. Cheney put "constant pressure" on Pat Roberts, then the Republican Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to stall the Committee's investigations into exactly the same issue: whether the White House (and the Vice President) misused intelligence and misled the country into war. It's not clear how much pressure was needed, given that Mr. Roberts always seemed more than happy to oblige the Administration's efforts to avoid serious oversight on the Administration's misuse of intelligence. (h/t SilentPatriot, at C&L) Describing the pressure put on Roberts,

"It was just constant," Rockefeller said of Cheney's alleged interference. He added that he knew that the vice president attended regular policy meetings in which he conveyed White House directions to Republican staffers.

Republicans "just had to go along with the administration," he said.

There is hardly anyone left to defend the Vice President, beyond his or Robert's immediate staff, who quickly issued denials of Rockefeller's charges. The VP was merely encouraging the Republican Chair not to succumb to Democratic efforts to politicize the investigation -- that's their story and they're sticking to it. But what can they say to Senator John McCain, the President's faithful friend and war supporter, who struck the lowest Cheney blow of the week.

With his presidential hopes tied to an administration whose Iraq policy he supports but cannot control, John McCain for the first time blamed Vice President Cheney for what McCain calls the "witch's brew" of a "terribly mishandled" war in which U.S. forces are on the verge of defeat.

McCain also for the first time opened the door to the possibility of a U.S. troop pullback to the borders of Iraq should the president's planned troop surge fail.

Although McCain had once lavished praise on the vice president, he said in an interview in his Senate office: "The president listened too much to the Vice President . . . Of course, the president bears the ultimate responsibility, but he was very badly served by both the Vice President and, most of all, the Secretary of Defense."

In any other regime, a Vice President in this much trouble with the party's potential Presidential candidate, the country, the Congress and perhaps the law would be looking forward to retirement and the unspoken promise of Presidential pardon. Or as Paul Begala put it, "If he had any decency, he'd simply resign." h/t perris). But as we've learned to deep regret, in the Bush regime, none of the rules that lead to well-deserved firings or honorable resignations for the good of the country apply, so we are stuck with the man until folks start reading their Constitution and realize the Founding Fathers actually gave us a solution for exactly this sort of thing. In the meantime, one wonders what he'll say or do next.