Let me respond to the first of Bart's posts from yesterday.

First: I agree with the vice president that Bart has "done his homework." In fact, he has done a remarkable job of research.

Second: Bart asks, "is there any doubt that the government's reaction to [the] threat [announced on 9/11] did more than the attacks themselves to change the nation and the world?" But this isn't quite the claim he makes in Angler. As I read him, Bart compares the impact of the administration's response to 9/11 with the impact of the threat announced by 9/11, not just the events that occurred that day. ("A familiar threat announced itself that day with frightening new proximity and ambition. But decisions made in the White House, in response, had incomparably greater impact on American interests and society.") (page 132)

Framed this way, Bart is still correct -- as things stand, the decisions made in response to 9/11 have had a greater impact than terrorism itself. But this comparison (though more reasonable than comparing our reaction only to what occurred on 9/11) still stacks the deck against Cheney and the administration. For it may be precisely the decisions made by the administration that thwarted the heightened terrorist threat that announced itself on 9/11. Bart does not explore this possibility, and I don't blame him because doing so would have required too much speculation. But it is still a key part of the equation.

Third: I take Bart at his word when he says his personal views are mixed, and inconsistent with my characterization that, for Bart, the Cheney vice presidency changed things "very much for the worse." But I don't find the mixture in Angler.

Here is a partial list of what Bart takes to be the negative side of the Cheney ledger: Bart finds that Cheney spearheaded a "revisionist view" of the American plan of government that is inconsistent with the Constitution's system of checks and balances (96-97). He finds that Cheney's insistence on this extreme view, coupled with the methods he used to promote it, produced a backlash that nearly brought down President Bush and that may well end up weakening the presidency.

Bart finds that, thanks to Cheney, "the government collected information on a scale that potentially touched every American" (page 146). In a chapter called "Dark Side," he finds that the U.S. flouted "the negotiating history, and decades of practice under U.S. leadership" when, under Cheney's direction, we looked for "loopholes" to the Geneva Convention that would enable us to say accused terrorists have no Geneva rights (page 169). Bart asks, rhetorically, whether "Americans were prepared to be a nation that did this sort of thing, torture or not-quite torture, if it worked. Did we feel that frightened; that ruthless?" (page 179).

Bart finds that Cheney's policies environmental policies ran contrary to law and science (page 200) and harmed the environment ("no one filed an environment impact statement on the vice president," page 198). He suggests a number of times that, with respect to the war on terrorism, the overall policy Cheney pushed for and implemented produced something akin to "1967" (the beginning of the end in Vietnam), not "1947" (the beginning of a successful approach to the Cold War).

Against this (and more) what does Bart put on the positive side of the Cheney ledger? At the risk of "failing" a Rorschach test, I found almost nothing. Maybe this is because so much of what Cheney accomplished consisted of preventing things that didn't happen - e.g., a deep recession after 9/11 and additional terrorist attacks on the homeland. But I just don't think that Angler reflects Bart's mixed view of Cheney's accomplishments.

Let me close by looking at Bart's closing assessment of Cheney. He states that "the Bush-Cheney strategy after September 11, with its claims of White House supremacy and its sharp tilt from civil liberty to state command, estranged even proponents of a unitary executive and a strong national security state" (page 394). He then cites with apparent approval (and certainly no mention of differing opinions) Dick Armey's view that Iraq "very likely [is] the biggest foreign policy blunder of modern times" (page 394). He also argues that because "history" doesn't reassess wars, Cheney's expectation that history will vindicate him is probably misplaced.

In my view, history's verdict on the Iraq war is far from sealed because the outcome of the war itself (never mind its effect if any on subsequent events) is not known. My present purpose, though, isn't to argue about Iraq. My argument now is simply that, rightly or wrongly, Angler does not present a "mixed" view of the vice president's impact on America or of his legacy.