Cheney Follies

Our vice president is both a national joke and a national nightmare.

By Matthew Yglesias
Web Exclusive: 02.27.07

I'm not sure what part of it is that Nancy disagreed with. She accused me of questioning her patriotism. I didn't question her patriotism. I questioned her judgment. Al-Qaeda functions on the basis that they think they can break our will. That's their fundamental underlying strategy. My statement was that if we adopt the Pelosi policy, that we will validate the strategy of al-Qaeda. I said it, and I meant it. And I'm not backing down.
-- Vice President Dick Cheney, February 23, 2007

Having your judgment questioned by Cheney must be a bit like having your intelligence insulted by a sea cucumber. (Or, as Jonathan Zasloff observes, having your racial sensitivity questioned by a longtime congressional defender of apartheid.)

Cheney is a joke. An embarrassment the White House has struggled for years to keep out of sight and muzzled. The kind of guy you send on a trip to Australia, which used to be an actual criminal punishment before the invention of airplanes. The only element of Pelosi's judgment I would question at all was her initial response to Cheney's first attack. It was during an earlier ABC interview that Cheney claimed that "if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we'll do is validate the al-Qaeda strategy." All Pelosi needed to do in response was note that if Dick Cheney thinks she and Murtha are badly wrong, they must be on the right track.

This is "Twenty-Nine Percent Approval" Cheney we're talking about. There was no need to "hope the President will repudiate and distance himself from the Vice President's remarks." She should have just smeared Cheney's remarks all over the White House and driven home the point that, in opposing Democratic efforts to change the course in Iraq, Bush is once again taking Cheney's advice -- a strategic approach that works exactly never.

Remember, Cheney also "cited the recent push by Iraqi forces to crack down on insurgent activity in Baghdad" as a success. Only the interview in which he did that was conducted on May 30, 2005. The same one, famously, in which he explained that "they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

If I will!...

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