Replies

Here is a post from back in April dealing with Cheney's emergence as a spokesman in defense of administration policy after the administration had been so unaccountably silent in the face of outrageous attacks by Democrats. The observation that Obama might not have won if Bush had defended his administration stands and to it I would add the observation that health care insurance reform almost certainly would not have passed because the damage in the Senate would have been far less if people like Al Franken had not been elected. The observation that Bush might be indicted, of course, does not stand but we have seen the Obama administration pursue those who interrogated the prisoners.

Here is the April reply:

Cheney Unleashed

I have long pondered the seeming incomprehensibility of the failure of the Bush administration to defend itself even as it was dying of a thousand cuts. It is not necessary here to rehearse the rope a dope strategy which brought Bush down into the depths of approval ratings and left his administration toothless.

One primary example of this inexplicable taciturnity was brought to light in a remarkable press interview of Carl Rove which I saw on CNN international . Rove commented that perhaps the biggest mistake of the Bush administration was its failure to defend itself against the mantra, "Bush lied and people died" in the wake of the failure to find WMDs in Iraq. Rove said he went to President Bush and explained to him that the slander that Bush lied was gaining coinage in the absence of the administration telling its side of the story. Who could blame the electorate? President Bush forbade Rove from campaigning in public or otherwise to defend the administration, saying that there were other more important issues and political capital should not be wasted on this issue. I believe Bush said that he would be content to have history judge the matter. Unfortunately, the rest is history.

I believe that this mindless policy is responsible in some unmeasurable way for putting the Manchurian Marxist in the White House. We know what happens to history when Marxists make it and when Marxists write it. In any event, Barak Obama is even today running against George Bush. Republicans cannot defend the record because of Bush's massive unpopularity. George Bush has left the party in a lose -lose situation.

While I was railing against this in post after post I could not understand where Dick Cheney stood in this affair. I think his role is now becoming clearer. Although always a relatively taciturn man, Dick Cheney is no pushover and he is certainly not bashful about speaking out on behalf of policies he believes in especially a policy that he so dearly believes in like national security. Cheney was clearly a dutiful vice president and felt obliged to follow the wishes of his chief executive. There is reason now to believe that Cheney considers the circumstances to have changed.

First, there was Cheney's offhand remark that he speaks to the president "occasionally" indicating that their once very intimate relationship might have cooled. I believe that it cooled dramatically in the last days of the administration when Bush rebuffed Cheney's pleas for a full pardon for Scooter Libby. Bush's passivity, indeed his pusillanimity especially during the early stages of the Valery Plame affair, stand as a morality lesson in irony for his entire administration. It is entirely possible that President Bush will be indicted because the Liberals acquired a blood taste for prosecutions that resulted in travesty done to Scooter Libby. The parallels to Katrina are also obvious.

Second, Cheney is no longer serving his commander in chief and therefore he is more free to speak out.

Thirdly, obviously Cheney is greatly exercised about what he regards to be the security lapses being committed by this administration and what Cheney yesterday acknowledged to be Obama's attempts to "socialize the American economy."

I believe Dick Cheney is a passionate patriot but one who never loses his cool. I believe he is profoundly motivated to speak out now, not in defense of the administration, but in defense of his country.