The Five Most Powerful Americans...

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 9:08 AM on December 11, 2006.

Robert Reich: Guess who's on top?

The five most powerful people in America over the next eighteen months will be:

1. Dick Cheney, because he runs the executive branch and is the closest thing the Republicans have to an ideological rudder. Forget the Baker Commission. Forget Bush (if you haven’t already). Cheney will have more say over what happens in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, during the next eighteen months than any other single person. He will want to American troops to stay in Iraq until the civil war makes that impossible. He will also seek to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.