Matt Latimer, first-past-the-post WH Ustabee in the highly lucrative Wingnut Wurlitzer ‘Dubya was never really a True Conservative(tm)’ book race, provides a long, loving tonguebath via the Daily Beast to “The Cheney You Don’t Know”:
… [I]f those critics were hoping that Cheney would soon be departing the political scene, the former Veep is looking forward to disappointing them. This week Cheney—dozens of pounds lighter but in seeming good spirits, fresh from a period of healing sheltered from distractions by family and playing with the kids and grandkids—announced that he will soon be back on the campaign trail, back to issuing stern warnings about the failings of the Obama administration, and back to finalizing his long-awaited memoir that is likely to be published next year…
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Since his release from the Bush administration, Cheney has proven uncommonly, even joyfully, resistant to the standard rituals of Washington, where political rehabilitation comes from nursing your wounds quietly in a corner, offering a few timely mea culpas to re-establish your mainstream credibility, and then joining some charitable enterprise with a member of the opposite party… Instead Cheney seems to be taking his dark and dastardly image and running with it. When every PR agent in the world would tell him to avoid subjects like waterboarding and interrogation policies, Cheney proudly defends the administration’s record. He has gamely adopted the Darth Vader label as his own. Parting company with a sidelined (and quietly retooling) Bush, who feels he “owes” Obama his silence, Cheney has become the tart-tongued voice of the opposition. In the past year he has labeled President Obama a “one-term president,” taken Vice President Biden to task for the administration’s terrorism policies, claimed that Obama was politicizing the war in Afghanistan and projecting “weakness” to America’s enemies. For the Republican base it has worked wondered. It is Cheney, not his former boss, who seems more attuned with the current tenor of the GOP.
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To those who know [him], it is impossible to contemplate that Bush ever would have put himself in the position of handing decision making over to any other person. From the outset of the administration, moreover, Bush heard from a steady complement of competing voices, all of whom were less conservative, personally closer to the President, and more politically-preoccupied than Cheney. The strong-willed and ever present Texas contigent of Karen Hughes, Karl Rove, and Dan Bartlett would not have long stood for a vice president hogging face time with the boss. Condoleezza Rice, a longtime friend to the Bush family who is as close to the president as a sister, also was not one likely to be steamrolled. Chief speechwriter Michael Gerson, who once supported Jimmy Carter, was a key advocate of the administration’s signature policy known as “compassionate conservatism,” a confection of increased social spending and federal regulations that it is hard to imagine Cheney gleefully endorsing…
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Staffs can often be a reflection of their bosses. The Cheney team was insular and close-knit, not usually ones for gossip. Their recalcitrance lent them an aura of mystery and undoubtedly led to misunderstandings; aloofness can often be confused with arrogance. His staff included people of ideas who gave off a sense that they were in the White House for reasons bigger than simply winning…
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A President Cheney likely would have taken a tougher stance on Iran and North Korea, a more conservative line on climate change and perhaps illegal immigration, a firmer position on federal spending. One expects Cheney would have been more resistant to the creation of a new Medicare entitlement in 2006 or a government bailout as the economy collapsed in 2008.
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From the start, of course, the two men were contrasting personalities. On long trips, Cheney would always take with him a green duffle bag filled with books—nonfiction histories and biographies being his preference. The bag was “his version of the [nuclear] football” as a former aide put it. Cheney would be perfectly comfortable taking out a thick tome—now he can upload one on his kindle, a gift from his daughter—and read in blissful silence…
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Bush, by contrast, took advantage of long flights to walk the corridors of Air Force One, dressed in a T- shirt and running pants, amiably exchanging gossip, trading quips, or shooting the breeze with anyone who caught his attention. The former president enjoys having a retinue of aides and advisors around him; there is a large legacy-building operation currently in place. Cheney seems more comfortable with a small inner circle, dominated by his wife, Lynne, and their two daughters…
Now there’s a True Conservative(tm)… no mere glad-handing politician, but a philosopher-statesman, someone unmoved by the ephemeral vagrancies of public opinion and whining talk of globalistic ‘Rule of Law’! “Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover Dick Cheney again… “
And if there’s any question as to why such a quiveringly sensitive instrument of the Conventional Wisdom should abase himself before the Return of the Dark Lord and all his Nazgul, there’s always the example of Harry Whittington:
Nearly five years on, Harry Whittington still speaks with a slight flutter in his voice — a “warble,” he calls it, inadvertently choosing a bird metaphor. His easy East Texas drawl changed forever one day in February 2006 when a tiny lead pellet pierced his larynx. It’s still there…
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For Whittington, the accident was not just physically traumatic but introduced chaos into his orderly life. Reporters camped outside the hospital, where he spent a week in intensive care. Someone posed as a member of the hospital’s staff and tried to sneak into his room to take a photo, necessitating a security detail at his door. When he was released a week later, a battered and exhausted Whittington did the apologizing: “My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week.” …
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He acknowledged that his “apology” statement upon his release from the hospital could have confused the issue by suggesting he was admitting fault. “It really wasn’t that,” he says. “I didn’t intend it that way. It was more of a sense of disappointment that it happened at all. I’m sure it must have been difficult for Mr. Cheney and his family. I still feel the same way.”…
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Despite his scars, Whittington bears no ill will toward Cheney. He calls him “a very capable and honorable man” and adds, “He’s said some very kind things to me.”
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But did Cheney ever say in private what he didn’t say in public? Did he ever apologize?
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Whittington, who has been talking about his life and career for hours, suddenly draws silent. “I’m not going to go into that,” he says sharply after a short pause.
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Harry Whittington is too gracious to say it out loud, but he doesn’t dispute the notion, either.
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Nearly five years on, he’s still waiting for Dick Cheney to say he’s sorry.
kdaug
Am I correct in recalling that this man, literally, has NO HEART? That it’s a separate machine now that keeps the “blood” flowing though his veins?
At what point does this become a farce?
Yutsano
@kdaug: Not quite. He has a machine that monitors his blood flow, but the result is that his blood streams rather than pulses through his body. So his heart is still here, but he has literally no pulse.
Stuck in the Funhouse
Goddamn Dick Cheney’s shit filled soul to hell
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Basically then, he has a heart but doesn’t use it. Big shock. Alert the media.
mai naem
I wonder if Pat Sajak has a problem with Dick Cheney voting since he is a retired federal employee to whom government paid healthcare is important.
Let me say one more time – Dick Cheney is a piece of garbage.
kdaug
@Yutsano: Fucking close enough. No pulse==dead.
IronyAbounds
You really only needed to put this under the tag “Assholes.” Nothing further really needs to be said about Cheney, the Dick.
Omnes Omnibus
@kdaug: Undead in Cheney’s case.
Bnut
So he would have bombed Iran by now, cut off the EPA at the knees and had AZ style immigration laws nationwide. Sounds lovely.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus:
Vampires are fashionable at the moment. It’s the right time for Cheney to re-emerge.
fasteddie9318
It’s simple: Dick just wants us to keep blowing young browns to smithereens until we hit one who is a perfect genetic match so Dick can take the guy’s heart. Functioning internal organs are wasted on the browns, another of the Almighty’s cruel practical jokes on His true White Children.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: Do you think he sparkles in the sunlight? I think the man is old school, like Count Orlok.
fasteddie9318
@Bnut:
You forgot the “firmer position on federal spending” from Dick “deficits don’t matter” Cheney.
I can’t think of a single civilized nation on the planet where this vampire wouldn’t be living the rest of his hopefully very short life in a prison cell.
kdaug
@Omnes Omnibus: I mean, seriously – is America really at the point where we’ll go for the politics of a guy with a literal “dead heart”?
kdaug
@fasteddie9318: Would his fake-heart machine require a separate room?
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think only his Vader helmet has any shine to it. The rest of him vanishes under his cloak.
eemom
yeah, well, even devils can be delusional. IANAD, but AFAI can tell from the medical reports about his condition, that’s exactly what he is.
This is kind of what I meant by my evil comment on the earlier thread.
This fuckstain ain’t ready for what’s coming — in fact he’s scared shitless. He thinks he can just fuck over the Grim Reaper like he has everyone else who ever got in his way……but the Grim Reaper don’t like to be fucked by anybody except Mrs. Reaper.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@kdaug:
As I said in another thread:
“IMO Cheney is already dead, he’s just being kept from decay by artificial means. With the money he has I bet he is going to be tossing every penny he can towards keeping his corpse from rotting. “
He dead.
I can’t wait until his lungs start to fail and he pays to have a helmet and bodysuit made that keeps the heart and lungs powered up and pumping. Maybe he can have a air filters, a communication system and some other doodads fitted.
Wonder what color he’ll pick? For some reason I think black is a color that suits him very well.
The Republic of Stupidity
Well… I, for one, threw up in my mouth a little just reading the excerpt above… I’m afraid I would be ill… salmonella-ill at that… for several days if I read the entire piece…
(That little bit was more than enough…)
Jewish Steel
You can be damn sure that deficits still wouldn’t matter to a Cheney. administration
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Yutsano:
I watched MSNBC when they reported on the pump being installed. It runs at around 8,000 RPM and provides a smooth flow of blood, thus no pulse. There’s a mechanical linkage between the pump strapped to his chest and the fittings installed in his body.
He has a chest-pack that keeps him alive. A heart surgeon stated that this pump is usually used on heart transplant candidates when no heart is available (and you have lots of money!) and they need it to extend their life in the hope of an organ being located. The doc said that Cheney will not be getting a transplant thus is it only being used to extend his life.
As I said above, he dead.
Yutsano
@Odie Hugh Manatee: This is more true than you realize. CHF is just a long slow way to die. The blood pump he got is only forestalling the inevitable. He’ll be damn lucky to diss Obama at his second inauguration.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Isn’t there an episode of the Simpsons where in the future, Mr Burns has been reduced to a talking head in a jar?
Mnemosyne
Right about now Cheney is thinking, “Where’s Rosey Grier when I need him?”
kdaug
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Well-earned.
FlipYrWhig
I think that was also Saruman’s plan for Isengard.
Lesley
Time for Stewart to ressurect ‘You Don’t Know Dick’
Mark S.
Latimer has a lot of different ideas for why Cheney was ignored for most of Bush’s second term. The most obvious one doesn’t seem to occur to him.
Latimer also has an article called “The Ann Coulter You Don’t Know.” I would read both Bush’s and Cheney’s memoirs before I read that.
valdivia
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
OMFG. Yep, he dead.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Yutsano:
I wouldn’t put it past Cheney to have started a secret military program to keep him alive at all costs and that it’s still under way. They’re probably working on his replacement circulatory system as we speak. Once they have it ready then Cheney will have the docs turn off his pump and report him dead.
Three days later he will arise from the grave, new circulatory system in place, hailed as the second coming and proceed to destroy the world.
@The Republic of Stupidity:
If Cheney’s head ended up in a jar I would find it then eat a shitload of wings, chili, eggs and garlic, chase a box of ExLax down with a few quarts of prune juice, wait a bit and then go take a good dump in it.
suzanne
I realize that schadenfreude is an ugly, ugly thing, but… OH COME ON. When he dies, I might throw a party. If his demise is especially painful and/or humiliating, I’ll probably get arrested for disturbing the peace and/or indecent exposure.
BGinCHI
Too bad he isn’t out stumping for GOP and Teabagger candidates. He could really give voters a solid sense of where this country is headed if the GOP takes over the House and/or Senate.
Wait, has anyone ever seen Jane Hamsher and Cheney in the same room?
Oh, shit, I’m getting under the bed.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Well… I’m certainly glad I gave you the opening necessary to express THAT particular sentiment… or perhaps I should say ‘sediment’…
JWL
Cheney is a distilled Nixonian.
Recall that Bill Clinton eulogized Slippery Dick as someone who “taught me what it meant to be an American”, and there you have the two party system in a nutshell.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@The Republic of Stupidity:
And I do appreciate your giving me that chance.
Sediment indeed…lol!
Bob L
The zombie of Dick Cheney fighting the vampire corpse of Newt Gingrich for the 2012 GOP nomination. This is too funny. I mean come on, we went threw this in ’92 when they were saying Cheney is presidential timber: Cheney is gay.
Suck It Up!
back from the near dead just in time for some fear mongering before the mid-terms.
marcopolo
Well, I know this point has been made before by others in many locations but this undead man is the crop we’re reaping as a nation because the folks we elected decided to look forward instead of investigating what went on during W’s tenure. I’d like to believe that if a little time and effort had been put into stuff like looking at exactly how Cheney’s energy task force operated or the history of the separate (but equal, of course) Iraq WMD intel operation running out of the VP’s office in the run up to the Iraq war or any of a dozen other skeezy actions (did I hear torture memos or was that Scooter Libby) undertaken on his authority that some kind of stink would have stuck to him that would be enough to discredit him in the eyes of most of the general public. As it is, even though he left office with an approval rating in the high teens or low twenties (don’t remember ‘zactly), in another few years peeps like Tweety will be looking back fondly at his time as our nation’s sternest father-knows-best-Veep. Thank god for that fact-based piece about what really happened (and seriousness nature of the injury he caused) during his “hunting accident”. I can only wish for more information like this to trickle out over time so that his record is entirely besmirched–akin to Spiro Agnew, I am thinking.
John Bird
Personally, if I wasn’t long for this Earth, I probably wouldn’t be spending my time being nasty to other people.
Yeah, no, you go on somewhere else with that, I’m just gonna roll one up.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
That’s what I’m here for…
To help my fellow BalloonJuicicans realize their full potential…
CJ
I enjoyed Latimer’s book, actually.
Suffern ACE
All those hard lines get us what exactly?
Brian J
Why is any of this news? He hasn’t been heard from in a while, but it wasn’t as if he’s been silent since the start of the Obama presidency. He’s regularly implied, if not stated directly, that he believes Obama is putting the country at great risk and harming us economically. The latter, and the idea that he’d hold the line on spending, is particularly rich, since he and his party had the White House for eight years and did little besides increase spending and decrease revenues. It’s beyond insane that seemingly reasonable people allow this sort of shit to be printed.
Also, when GQ printed clips from his book, Laura Bush claimed it was kind of an unspoken truth that Lattimer was a Democrat. Doesn’t this article put a few holes in that argument?
Linkmeister
@fasteddie9318: I knew somebody would get there before I did, coming to this thread late. Good on yer, mate.
“a firmer position on federal spending”, my rosie red backside.
Mnemosyne
@Linkmeister:
What do you mean? Cheney has a very firm position on federal spending. He’s the originator of the phrase, “Deficits don’t matter.” As long as you’re spending on Halliburton, that is.
Nellcote
Harry’s sounding kinda annoyed. Maybe he can visit Darth with his shotgun.
asiangrrlMN
I had to skim the paragraphs giving Cheney tongue because I really don’t want to have to go postal with my cat sitting on my lap. I can’t even work up any snark because Cheney has just worn me down.
Ripley
Mistah Kurtz. Yeah: dead.
mclaren
Didn’t know they had work furloughs. Thought they only did straight time-served or parole.
geg6
This piece of shit, a stain on humanity, almost makes me wish I believed in a god and an afterlife. Unfortunately, it’s the existence of a “man” like this and the fact that he thrives (even while dead) and prospers that convinces me that there is no benevolent or loving higher power. Pure distilled evil. I hope he suffers in pain and with fear every second he has left.
The Grand Panjandrum
So, Dick Cheney, the beneficiary of excellent government healthcare, would deny it for other people’s children. Dick Cheney, the draft dodger, would have gladly sent other people’s children to die in even more wars. Lovely. But we already knew that.
I hope that the cameras are rolling the day that fucker keels over and drops dead so I replay the video every time I get a little down and need cheering up.
timb
@Bnut: I call bullshit on the illegal immigration. Cheney’s a corporate Westerner and a Texan; no one is closer to the true base of the republican Party, ie revanchist, neo-feudalists corporate billionaires than Cheney and THOSE people don’t want a change to immigration law.
See, that’s what a puff piece is. The author flatters the wingnut audience so they can mutter “he’s just like me only better!” Truth is Dick Cheney loves him some underpaid wage slave labor just as much as the next Halliburton CEO
timb
@Yutsano: Amen. Every part of him must swell everyday. I’m betting the reason he’s lost “dozens of pounds” has more to do with the industrial strength diuretics he is on than anything else.
timb
@The Republic of Stupidity: One of the Halloween episodes….
SpotWeld
You know it’s funny to compare Cheney to to Darth Vader, up until the point it sinks in that Vader committed genocide
Uloborus
Isn’t Cheney the least popular man in politics? With an approval rate below 10%? Why is the media the only society where he’s liked?
Glancing at Benen’s ‘Savvy’ thesis I see it’s because it allows them to prove how awesomely insightful they are by defying conventional wisdom. Also, thinking it’s important whether he was a good vice-president or if one word of this is true is for idealists, hippies, children, activists, and other undermensch.
Tim Connor
This is the Dick Cheney we don’t know all right. The reason we don’t know him is that he doesn’t exist.@Stuck in the Funhouse: Yep.
This is the Dick Cheney we don’t know all right. The reason we don’t know him is that he doesn’t exist.
kdaug
@timb: No, that fucker is from Wyoming, NOT Texas. We have enough idiots in this state. Don’t start attributing distilled evil to us, too.
Steaming Pile
@Stuck in the Funhouse: But after December 31st, when the estate tax goes back to Clintonian status.
Steaming Pile
@kdaug: No, he’s from Texas. He conveniently remembered he was from Wyoming to get around the Constitutional prohibition of two Texans running on the same Presidential ticket.
kdaug
@Steaming Pile: Wrong. Born in Nebraska, raised in Wyoming.
The Other Chuck
@suzanne:
When Cheney dies, that’ll just be the springboard for his evil spawn Liz to kick into overdrive.
I’m saving the good stuff for when Limbaugh kicks it.
Nutella
You probably meant vagaries but this is a very fine phrase.