Cheney and The Dark Side
Certain commentators seem stumped as to why Dick Cheney is taking such a high public profile against the Obama Administration. Even his own Republican partisans question his judgement.
"Generally speaking Dick's voice is probably not going to move the ball forward," one prominent Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said.
But one must remember that Dick Cheney's political crucible was Watergate. He was Rumsfeld's hatchet man in gutting the Great Society Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon and then fled to the investment banking business as Nixon's presidency began to unravel in scandal.
In 1973, while Nixon was self-destructing, Cheney, then thirty-two, got a job at the investment firm of Bradley, Woods and Company. "Dick needed to make some money," Bruce Bradley explained. "He and Lynne and their girls lived in a modest house, and he drove a used Volkswagen Beetle." Both Bradley and Cheney were Republicans, but they differed on Watergate. Bradley recognized that Nixon had violated fundamental American values; Cheney saw Watergate as a power struggle. They even debated each other, in a forum arranged for Bradley's clients."He claimed it was just a political ploy by the president's enemies," says Bradley. "Cheney saw politics as a game where you never stop pushing. He said the presidency was like one of those giant medicine balls. If you get ahold of it, what you do is, you keep pushing that ball and you never let the other team push back."
What Dick Cheney is truly afraid of is that he might find himself in front of a Congressional committee raising his right hand and swearing to tell "the truth, the whole truth" about America's descent into the torture chamber. Because if Pat Leahy is this era's Sam Ervin, Cheney won't arrive in the dock until Jay Bybee and John Yoo have shown that David Addington (Cheney's Counsel) was calling the tune (you know the secret email chain requesting revisions in the torture memos is devastating). And then Addington will have to put the responsibility at the foot of the Vice President.
Even though Cheney is out of office, he still has the lesson of Watergate in his head. If Nixon had pushed back harder at the outset, he never would have had to leave office. Cheney and his allies at the Wall Street Journal like Peggy Noonan will spin the following line.
Hearings, especially, would likely tear up the country as we descended into opposing camps. They would damage or burden America's intelligence services, and likely result in the abuse of those who acted from high motives, having been advised their actions were legal. As for the memo writers, some of whose constitutional theories were apparently tilted to the extreme in favor of the executive, it is hard to see how it would help future administrations, or this one, to have such advice, however incorrectly formulated, criminalized.
This is nonsense, and as my colleague Larry Gross has pointed out, Noonan had no such reservations hauling Bill Clinton into the Impeachment Dock, even though she acknowledged it would split the country. She thought those hearings would be healthy.
So Dick Cheney is on a mission to cut the investigations off before they ever get started. But it's a mission that will fail and within a year we will see Mr. Cheney reluctantly raising his right hand and swearing to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." That will be healthy for our democracy.
When Noonan says this:
Hearings, especially, would likely tear up the country as we descended into opposing camps.
I say, excellent. The sooner the better.
Camp Alpha, if you like, will be pro-torture. And Camp Bravo - I like that - will be anti-torture. Suits me absolutely fine.
Now look, I'm not saying division and lack of comity is a good thing per se, but some 150-odd years ago, we drew lines over slavery*, and some 50 years ago we picked sides over civil rights. That's what it came down to.
Sometimes bitter division is the only concievable way of ending a national disgrace. That's how I'm coming to see it with torture, and that's why I am all for bitter division.
*Yes, of course, amongst other things.
April 27, 2009 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I completely agree. Noonan and others may be right that the hearing may tear the country apart, but she fails to note that when we emerge on the other side - and we will emerge on the other side eventually - we will be a better country for having purged the sickness within us.
April 27, 2009 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly. Cheney and his friends tortured people to get them to confirm Wolfowitz's insane idea that Al Qaeda was mixed up with Stalinist Iraq, whereas in the plainly obvious truth, there is nothing the brutal dictator tolerated less than terrorists. Saddam would have executed Bin Laden and every associate of Bin Laden's, and any elementary look at the facts shows that. But why deal with the obvious truth when you can get torturers to beat out confessions that confirm crazed fairy tales? Especially when there are *NO CONSEQUENCES*!
Now these people have the likes of David Broder saying, whoa, shit happens, we don't need to take such a close look at how we got there. But I'm with you: ENOUGH.
April 28, 2009 1:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course, when the country devolves into two warring camps, it will be 80% of the American people in Camp Bravo and 20% in Camp Alpha, so I don't see it as *war* so much as *purge*
April 28, 2009 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
The chance of this, or the 112th Congress for that matter, conducting meaningful hearings, let alone true investigations into the OVP and torture, approach zero! Also I wouldn't count on Addington turning sissy and crying his heart out against Cheney. Finally, comparing Leahy to Sam Irvin could only be via faint praise! Leahy is a paper tiger with no back bone or follow through.
April 27, 2009 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
They apparently can't tell Dick to just shut up, and now are bending over backwards to justify Bush/Cheney policies.
Are Bush and Cheney popular? No.
So why continue to support the old 'junta'?
Take your pick
1) cowardice
2) stupidity
3) only fanatics are left in the GOP
April 27, 2009 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
4) Party is rudderless
April 28, 2009 1:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think the "medicine ball" story captures the essence here very nicely. Cheney sees only antagonism in politics, and that spills over into everything. But politics is a blend of competition (where some antagonism is acceptable) and cooperation (where alliance and community goods are important), so his view misses the whole picture (probably on purpose). Then Noonan comes along and talks about divisiveness which might come from looking into what Cheney in fact brought to life in the first place.
Ideas affect reality to the extent that the ideologue acts on those ideas in[to] the world. Cheney has brought more division to the world from his vision of the world combined with the power he wielded.
April 27, 2009 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
On a related note...does anybody else smell a Cheney Pentagon rat as the source for the brilliant idea of an AF-1 flyover of NY.
April 27, 2009 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think Cheney is worried about hearings. With his rusty old ticker, he probably doesn't think he's going to make it that far. He's fighting for his legacy.
Just look at the cartoon. And that's only one of innumerable recent lampoons and talk show jests of a similar nature on the same theme. He sees the sun setting on his life and grasps that he is about to go down in history as some kind of combination of Darth Vadar, Torquemada and and Rasputin. At this rate, future Broadway producers will be staging revivals of The Producers with "Springtime for Cheney" dance numbers. Even for a nasty old cuss like Cheney, this has got to hurt. That's why his daughter is out there defending him, too. This isn't just political anymore; it's very personal.
The more his old Republican buddies like Lindsay Graham abandon him and tell him to shut up, the more he'll keep speaking up on his own.
April 27, 2009 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd perhaps have 3 separate theories as to why Cheney is still out there defending his decisions.
1) He can't help himself (and you can hardly begrudge anyone the luxury of a ball-cupping Hannity interview)
2) He sees serious legal difficulties ahead, and he thinks this is a way to head them off.
3) He has Nathan Jessep syndrome ("And my existence, while grotesque to you, saves lives."). Deep down, he wants to be out there explaining why he did what he did.
I lean towards 3, mainly because this attitude seems consistent with the no-shame attitude documented in his minority report on Iran-contra.
3 is aligned with the legacy argument you mention, but I would not angle it on the legacy issue as such - Cheney, like Bush, believes that history will ultimately vindicate him - and more that he wants to embellish his record as the "hard man" who defended America. And he despises people who object to his methods.
April 28, 2009 7:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Three rang true for me as well. The A Few Good Menquote is a perfect analogy.
April 28, 2009 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
You know you're a $hitty party when Lindsey Graham is one of your Top 5 prominent members. What a toolbox!
April 27, 2009 10:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cheney could resurect "They Can't Lick Our Dick" bumperstickers. They actually existed. I saw one in a box of old stuff from my honey's ex. He saved it because he thought it was a hoot.
April 28, 2009 8:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think its not so much the torture issue that is leading the Republican/Bush/Cheney gang charge against investigations, I think its what else might come out regarding what this gang was up to for the 8 years they had control.
One thing I've always suspected; on the night two Bush cretins, Gonzalez and I think Andy Card went to the hospital to get Ashcroft to sign a re authorization for wiretapping I think many insiders knew they were wiretapping Democrats and this is why anumber of high placed officials, including FBI Director Mueller threatened to resign.
April 28, 2009 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink