Mr. Cheney? Meet Caesar’s wife …

In classical Roman culture, the wife was consider the head of the household’s honor. On one occasion, rumors circulated to Julius Caesar that a man had slipped into his house during the Bona Dea celebrations, which were for women only (even the husband could not attend). Even though the charges could not be proven, Caesar divorced his wife, noting that it wasn’t enough that there was no evidence — his wife must be beyond even reproach. If she conducted herself in such a fashion that folks would even entertain the idea of such charges, she was not doing her job as head of the household’s honor.

Over the weekend, VP Cheney was on the attack, claiming that the White House must stand on the principle of Executive Privilege and decline to identify what parts of the administration’s energy policy came from talks with which executives from Enron. His take on it was that to do so would damage the President’s ability (or his own) to have confidential meetings, and thus would inhibit individuals, firms, or organizations from being able to speak frankly with him.

Okay, there’s a certain measure of sense there, but …

The Enron case is not normal. Indeed, the whole relationship between the energy industry and the Bush Administration is not normal. And while there is a reasonable principle here for Cheney to keep mum on the subject, the idea that the American people therefore think the administration was in cahoots with Enron (or with Big Oil) means Cheney is failing the Caesar’s Wife test. He is not above seeming to be corrupt, or unduly influenced, or to have been discussing matters that the American public would not approve of. Regardless of whether any of that is true, that the public perceives it as possible should be of much greater concern to the White House, and should lead to at least some measure of waiver of Executive Privilege.

After all, based on the philosophy of the administration’s Attorney General, those who aren’t guilty have nothing to hide, right?

On that same note, I was more than a little irked that Cheney seemed so willing to play the War Card in this.

He suggested the GAO’s actions were overblown during wartime.

“After all of these years,” he said in the Fox interview, “can you imagine an FDR or Teddy Roosevelt, in the midst of a grave national crisis, dealing with the problems we’re having to deal with now, over here on the side as a matter of political expediency, trading away a very important fundamental principle of the presidency?”

In other words, “Don’t bother us, don’t question us, don’t debate over any aspect of administration policy, regardless of whether it has to do with Afghanistan or Terrorism or not, because, dagnabbit, we’re at war.”

Would that have been a reasonable card for Nixon to play during Watergate? Or Clinton during our involvement in Bosnia? I suspect not, and it’s not clear that this is any more of a distraction than it should be, nor that disclosure here would weaken the war effort, or give aid and comfort to terrorists.

Is it necessarily fair that the administration be tarred with the brush of failed Enron? Maybe, maybe not, though that old adage about lying down with dogs seems to apply. But that it is being so tarred should not be met by actions that further encourage accusations of stonewalling or collusion. The White House should be going out of its way to demonstrate that Enron got no special treatment, that Enron’s advice on energy policy was treated as simply another input, and that everything in the Enron/White House relationship was on the up-and-up.

Otherwise, the administration might find itself playing Caesar’s wife in more than one sense.