Today’s Washington Post has the first in a series of articles profiling Vice President Dick Cheney. Here’s a snippet:
“Dan Quayle recalled the moment he learned how much his old job had changed. Cheney had just taken the oath of office, and Quayle paid a visit to offer advice from one vice president to another.
“‘I said, “Dick, you know, you’re going to be doing a lot of this international traveling, you’re going to be doing all this political fundraising … you’ll be going to the funerals,“‘ Quayle said in an interview earlier this year. ‘I mean, this is what vice presidents do. I said, “We’ve all done it.“‘
“Cheney ‘got that little smile,’ Quayle said, and replied, ‘I have a different understanding with the president.’”
So is the 46th Vice President of the United States a bold leader who’s done much to ensure our way of life or a power monger who’s hung us all out for years to come?
And before you go lecturing the DT staff about what’s appropriate on this site and how we shouldn’t talk politics, etc., remember that Cheney was secretary of DEFENSE under Bush the Father.
What do we think, dear DT readers?
(Photo courtesy NBC’s Meet the Press)
– Ward
I would forgive Richard Cheney for his amazingly effective machinations if they were actually effective at promoting our interests: eg, having captured bin Laden and not created a failed state in Iraq.
If he and his cronies actually understood the need for soft power and how to wield it right.
Rather, everything traced back to the Vice President’s office has proven to be a disaster. The enemy combatents declaration. Starting the Iraq war. etc etc etc.
The methods used are “bad”: they bend both law and tradition to the breaking point. But they could be forgiveable.
But the results are atrocious.
As an occasional student of Machiavelli, I would like to say that I admired Richard Cheney for his handling of the Bush scion and his manipulation of the Republic to achieve his ends. Would he had truly noble ambitions, he might have guaranteed the primacy of republican values, liberal thinking and American democracy. However, he has proven to be a fool unto himself. He is not a student of state craft, let alone a statesman. He is not a very apt student of governance, despite the face that he governs behind a wall of impenetrable secrecy (the very first sign of ineptitude). He is a merchant. Nothing more. It is only his cunning and the hubris of his capon, Addington, that have kept him in control of the apparati of our Republic. I wash my hands of the beast.
gee isn’t his creation of a new branch of the government, executive when it suits him, the senate when it suits him and above the oversight of anybody enough of an accomplishment. i don’t care if he actually had been effective and had osama’s head on a pike, he has acted as if he is above the law and was the prime mover in twisting intelligence about the war.
Yawn
Is this what passes for a post these days?
Ziv: the obvious question is ‘why on earth did you vote for them, then?’ I mean, it’s not as though they suddenly switched direction in 2005 after a stellar first term…
Ziv: I mean his internal political machinations have been AMAZINGLY effective.
This is a job which is “Not worth a bucket of Warm Spit” (John Nance Garner), traditionally a dumping ground for inconvenient polticial opponents (Theodore Roosevelt, John Garner) or outright incompetents (Quayle).
Yet he’s turned it into the center of power in the white house, and he and Karl Rove have had amazing electoral success dispite an ability to turn everything-they-touch-to-shit.
They even got you to vote for them a second time, after all they F#@)(*ed up (Medicare perscription coverage, Iraq, Guantanimo, Abu Ghirab, failing to finish the job in Afghanistan, failing to provide Osama’s head on a pike…) How is this NOT amazingly effective?
If only his skill extended beyond being Machiavellian politics.
And how much have his Halliburton options gone up?
Just askin’
“This is a job which is ‘Not worth a bucket of Warm Spit’ (John Nance Garner), traditionally a dumping ground for inconvenient polticial opponents (Theodore Roosevelt, John Garner) or outright incompetents (Quayle).“
Garner wasn’t VP under an empty suit. Under a competent president, Cheney would never have been able to build his shadow government.
I can kinda sorta understand somebody voting for Bush in 2000, and regretting it. But anybody who voted for him the second time is simply not competent to discuss public affairs. Leave aside all the many botches that were already obvious by ’04 — remember when Bush wouldn’t appear before the 9/11 investigation unless Cheney was at his side? Even as somebody who loathed Bush, I never expected such an abject and shameful display of weakness and incompetence. Anybody who voted for a weakling like that is living in an alternative reality.
Good Morning Folks,
Who cares?
V.P. Cheney is nothing more then a closing side show of an administration whom has already folded up it’s tent. The Circus is over and the last of the clowns is leaving the ring.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
More interesting, how much did the VP job change with Quayle. Not many recall that he was highly active in the US-USSR cooperation on the space station and related projects. That cooperation had a large role in the how things played out with the fall of the USSR.
Quayle helped redefine the VP’s role, and that will continue.