I realize that trying to understand the Bush II administration isn’t everyone’s bag, but it’s mine, so I found this striking, from Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff, Lawrence Wilkerson:
“I can’t speak to the psychosomatic or the genetic problems with heart attacks or whatever, but I can speak to power. He wanted desperately to be president of the United States … he knew the Texas governor was not steeped in anything but baseball, so he knew he was going to be president and I think he got his dream. He was president for all practical purposes for the first term of the Bush administration.”
I would suspect that Wilkerson was mostly familiar with foreign policy and that Cheney might not have had as much control over domestic policy.
redshirt
Hasn’t Wilkerson long been lumped into the “LIEBRUL” pile? As such, whatever he says can be immediately discounted, yeah?
DFS
I suspect he only cared so much about domestic policy in any case, beyond a pretty simple menu of tax cuts and graft for his cronies. Iraq was where the real money was.
cleek
That was one of Bush’s implied selling points. Yeah, he’s a bit of a doofus, but he’ll be surrounded by all these GOP heavyweights. And they’ll keep him in line!
trollhattan
Yeah, and let’s heap some love on Cheney getting himself put in charge of picking a VP then picking…Dick Cheney for VP. Funny how all that worked out.
O/T Add PG&E to your list of Corporations
thatsorry, who kill.http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/30/3871185/ntsb-to-decide-cause-of-gas-pipeline.html
catclub
I keep pounding the point, that even with all the craptastic things he did, for the years 2005-2008 Bush was the ADULT in the white house keeping Cheney from bombing Iran.
And Cheney hated him for it.
BGinCHI
Great interview with Wilkerson by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now this morning.
Podcast it if you get a chance.
He pulled no punches in calling Cheney and others out, and was firm in his response to whether Cheney and others ought to be prosecuted for crimes: a definite yes.
Zifnab
I doubt Cheney was terribly concerned with domestic policy. He got his tax cuts and he got his Medicare Plan D. What more could a rich senior citizen ask for?
catclub
@BGinCHI: “prosecuted for crimes: a definite yes.”
So if a case ever develops, Wilkerson will be the only one who ever does times time for torture. Got it.
Svensker
@catclub:
Yeah, isn’t that weird? Dubya might have been dim but he was not the wackiest bulb in the WH chandelier.
Rosalita
@Zifnab:
gotta pay for that heart pump don’cha know!
Boots Day
Remember the very first words out of W.’s mouth when he addressed the nation on the evening of 9/11? “I have spoken with the vice-president.” He knew who was in charge.
shortstop
Well, he was, and that’s what renders his unloading of grievances so unfuckingbelievable. Have just followed bits and pieces of Cheney’s latest excrescence, but this guy who got perhaps 95 percent of what he wanted in foreign policy, resulting in incalculable and wholly needless damage to so many millions, has been sitting around for years steaming about the other 5 percent? To the extent that he thinks he needs to even the score with this book? There’s just no basement to this man.
vtr
Everyone surprised by this, please raise your hand.
LGRooney
There, fixed.
BarbCat
Wilkerson is willing to testify if someone “Pinochets” Cheney. It’s the new verb.
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/08/former-bush-official-promises-to-testify-if-someone-will-pinochet-cheney/
BGinCHI
@catclub: He readily acknowledged his role in forwarding bad intelligence and said he’d take whatever punishment he was due.
Compare this to Cheney and his ilk’s “we did everything right and if not it’s not our fault.”
Wilkerson is at least a stand-up guy.
Bullsmith
Cheney wasn’t in full control of domestic policy. Rove had a veto.
Rick Massimo
I’ve been saying for years that in about a century when all of today’s screeching, ref-working wingnuts have died off, history will look at Cheney’s record in office and role in the White House, then look backward at how Bush got to the White House, then look backward at how Cheney got on the ticket, and they will correctly conclude that it was as close as America likely to come to a coup d’etat.
catclub
Of course, this is just another case where the village is totally out to lunch. When shrub’s approval was at 27%, Cheney was at 9% – kind of 27% of 27%.
Yet the village keeps kowtowing to him as if he were some statesman.
Waingro
It would be nice if Colin Powell wasn’t such a pussy and publicly said this stuff himself. I’m sure Wilkerson is giving his own opinion, but he’s always been Powell’s public mouthpiece/leaker for the particularly biting criticism.
Lev
Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together. Bush didn’t willingly step aside and let Cheney give orders. It was more like Cheney knew Bush intimately and understood exactly where the man’s pressure points were, and he and Rumsfeld were very, very good at using their access and knowledge for their ends. There wasn’t anyone strong enough to even stand in their way–Condi Rice was inept, Andy Card wasn’t even a paper tiger, Powell was there for show, nothing more.
Eventually that changed. @catclub is I think right. I think Bush eventually was able to assert himself more, figure out what Cheney/Rumsfeld were doing and counter it by strengthening his own staff. I’m still fairly surprised he picked Bob Gates as Defense Secretary, that showed a far better judgment in character and ability than he’d ever shown before. A bit too late to change anything, though.
Chris
@shortstop:
Isn’t that the engine that powers the entire conservative movement, though? Having all you could ever want and being upset and affronted that someone somewhere is getting even a nickel?
EconWatcher
With this guy, I always wondered what his actual limits were. Let’s say we were in such a national crisis that he could operate with no limits at all. How far would he go?
EconWatcher
@Lev:
Don’t you think the Gates pick was the result of W finally listening to Poppy Bush, when finally even he could not miss what a mess he’d made of the country?
David Hunt
@catclub:
Yeah, but those polls don’t mean anything because they’re polling random people, not the Villagers who are the true reflections of what Real Americans actually feel. I’m sure that Cheney was much more popular with the people who actually counted.
I wish I could believe that what I wrote above was a hyperbolic expression of the way the insiders think in Washington.
Derf
I like to think that it was kinda like the depiction in the move “W.”. Where Bush would listen and pretty much do whatever Cheney said but if Cheney started to push too much Bush would look him in the eye and say “I’m the decider” in that lazy texas drawl of his.
I think that movie about Plame (Fair Game) depicts the vindictive and narrow minded side of Cheney looking in from the outside.
shortstop
@Rick Massimo: Doesn’t a coup imply action against the legitimate leader’s (I know, I know, but forget Florida 2000 for a sec) will? My impression has always been that Cheney exercised his overlarge influence with Dubya’s complete approbation. One reason the Scooter Libby pardon fight is such a gawked-at tale is that it was really unusual for Bush to put his foot down, but I don’t think that means that Cheney steamrolled him at every turn; pretty much all the evidence seems to be that Bush happily handed him the car keys during the transition and only very rarely took them back for a short while.
shortstop
@Chris: It surely is, but this guy wears it more blatantly than anyone we’ve seen. And his grudge-holding is breathtaking in light of what he did to everybody around him. He would be absolutely fascinating to study closely if doing so didn’t put the watcher in danger of carbon monoxide poisoning from being in the same room with him.
Napoleon
@shortstop:
For all Bush’s macho talk in reality he was very passive.
Dennis SGMM
This might be too meta but, I think that the lasting damage done by Bush/Cheney was to cement the idea that a Republican ticket is okay with one idiot as long as there’s someone “experienced” to balance out him or her.
Cat Lady
@David Hunt:
Liz Cheney is a Morning Ho favorite – she sends cupcakes to Mika, and my guess is they’ve got tiny puppy skulls baked into them, left over from Daddy’s personal blood supply.
Chris
@Lev:
It’s also possible, IMO, that he was fine and dandy with letting Cheney/Rumsfeld run the show until their policy started dragging him down, which happened soon after the 2004 election and culminated with the 2006 kick in the ass from the voters. At which point he realized that sticking with the Cheney/Rumsfeld gang wasn’t working out for him after all.
Like you said, too late to change anything, though.
nellcote
Well you know, aside from energy and epa. No biggies.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/
fucking amnesiacs
cleek
@Cat Lady:
i wonder… is he going to sew their hides into a nice tuxedo?
Chris
@Rick Massimo:
I think of it more as just officializing the return to the Gilded Age. Bush being the stereotypical politician who’s just there to make speeches and follow directions, Cheney the robber-baron boss who bought and paid for him and basically gets to write the policies “his” politician rubber-stamps.
The image of Mr. Potter bellowing “oh, tell the Congressman to wait!” with a member of Congress in his waiting room comes to mind.
Big Baby DougJ
@catclub:
I agree with you, though I think history may show that his work wife Condi is the one that convinced him to act like an adult here.
Lev
@EconWatcher: I always got the sense that Poppy recommending something would make Dubya less likely to do it. Politics is built on fucked up father-son dynamics, but that’s one seriously messed up. I could buy it, though.
@Chris: That’s certainly a possibility, though not a mutually exclusive one.
Big Baby DougJ
@nellcote:
Aside from those and some other things, I mean. I don’t if Medicare Part D, the gay-bashing stuff, NCLB, and so on were Cheney’s doing at all.
Calouste
@Dennis SGMM:
As oppossed to the Reagan/Bush and Bush/Quayle tickets? Although in those cases the Bush was the “experienced” one.
Villago Delenda Est
@David Hunt:
For example, the vile toady Timmeh Russert.
nellcote
@Big Baby DougJ:
EVERYTHING went through Cheney’s office:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/
nellcote
@Big Baby DougJ:
EVERYTHING went through Cheney’s office:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/
tBone
@EconWatcher:
Waterboarding the Dalai Lamai? Wearing capes made out of human skin? Sipping freshly-squeezed infant juice delivered by Karl Rove in a tuxedo and gimp mask? I really don’t think anything’s off the table here.
JGabriel
DougJ:
Yes, but neither did Bush. Seems like it was mostly Delay, Hastert, and McConnell controlling the domestic agenda in the first term.
.
Violet
@catclub:
Cheney knows things. He knows things about Villagers. They don’t fluff him, stuff gets out. Of course they treat him as a statesman. CYA is never stronger than in our media and pundit class.
JGabriel
@tBone:
We know the answer to that from history: Straight down to hide in his underground bunker. He was a coward at heart.
.
Xboxershorts
Cheney’s energy summit is a prime example of his influence on domestic policy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Task_Force
And we continue to pay for his shortsightedness dearly.
Turgidson
@Rick Massimo:
What leads you to believe they won’t be replaced by even louder, more braindead wingnuts? The Goldwater loons who did so much to kick this all off are dead or dying off right now and they look like sensible moderates compared to today’s rightwing morans.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chris:
I don’t follow that reasoning – why would the Master’s of the Universe want wars without end? All that does is raise the cost of doing buisness. That sounds more like a vanity project from Chenny to go play god in other countries.
My take on Chenny is the whole thing with Iraq, Iran and Syria was to compensate for his gimpy heart and play at being the ultimate alpha male. After all Cheny knows all the leaders there personally, unlike North Korea were he showed no interest.
Redshift
@Chris:
Yup. Bush never gave a rat’s ass about anyone but himself. Only once his approval started dropping did he think about doing anything differently. (Most presidents age in office because it’s a heavy burden to do well for the country, and for all of the ego necessary to run for the office, they do actually care. Bush didn’t go gray or start aging noticeably through 9/11 or Iraq, it only started when his approval ratings started seriously dropping. QED.)
Redshift
@Turgidson: Yeah, but they’re not spending much time defending Goldwater. The point is that once there isn’t anybody around who has a personal stake in the Bush Administration to keep trying to rewrite history, we’ll get an actual history of how awful it was rather than the celebrity-culture and pundit fapping versions.
Jay B.
Wilkerson is just the Fox News Democrat version of a Republican. When it counted he was invisible.
Derf
@Violet: Yawn…..here we go with the conspiracy theories. “Ooooo, he knows things”.
Are you the same person who wrote the conspiracy diary on that orange site the other day that the DC earthquake was man made? That diary went to the top of the rec list which pretty much says it all about how far down the rabbit hole that orange site has gone. But I digress.
MikeBoyScout
The French have a name for it, Coup d’état.
And I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to call everyone in the Bush administration Quislings.
God Bless America!
you stupid murdering bastards…
Turgidson
@Redshift:
Maybe. But maybe not. The right is still hard at work trying to change history to convince people that FDR made the Depression worse with his sockulism (and Hoot-Smalley if you ask a certain presidential candidate). And look how much Reagan’s legacy has been buffed since he staggered off the presidential stage.
And while you have to think there’s a “bottom” the wingnuts will eventually hit where they become so utterly stupid and divorced from reality that they simply can’t continue on as a constituency anyone still takes seriously, events of the last few years suggest that there’s a ways to go yet before they get there. And they’ll continue to be loud, screeching lunatics with an astonishing and terrifying amount of influence on our body politic for the foreseeable future at least.
edit: and those people will do what they can to whitewash Bush’s misrule as much as possible to make it seem, at the least, less horrible than it actually was, I suspect.
Violet
@Derf:
Don’t kid yourself. Cheney knows plenty. Our pundit class fluffs him out of fear. That says a lot more about our pundit class than it does about Cheney though. Cheney’s a coward. Our pundit class could do with a good dose of facing their fears, a la the MLK essay in the previous thread. They might find the emperor has no clothes, so to speak.
“The orange site”? I’m guessing you’re talking about Daily Kos? I don’t even think I’m an active member there, let alone someone who writes diaries. Not even sure I’ve visited it this week.
Dennis SGMM
@Calouste:
Sure those earlier combos advanced the idea of idiot+experienced. For that matter you could go back to Nixon/Agnew. My point was that it’s now acceptable, for Republicans more than Democrats, to present a “balanced” ticket. Going forward, it will be easy enough for, say, Perry to dredge up some middle of the road R to balance the ticket.
Chris
@Turgidson:
I don’t think there’s any question that they’ll eventually hit the bottom – nothing lasts forever – the question is when, and how much shit is going to go down in the meantime.
Are we America circa 1900, only a couple decades away from a major shift away from the right and towards sanity? Are we Spain circa 1700, a declining empire that’s going to be spiraling down and down for the next few hundred years and won’t get a sane and stable system in place until after being reduced to the European version of a third world country? Are we Rome circa 400, slowly descending into a thousand years or more of dark ages?
Hyperbolic, okay, but you see the point. Yeah, they’ll go down eventually… everyone does. But how long will it take, how much damage will they do in the meantime – and, what’ll come next?
B W Smith
I rarely say this about anyone, especially someone I don’t personally know, but I hate Dick Cheney. I have a visceral reaction to hearing his voice, he oozes pure evil. There is nothing I would enjoy more than knocking that self-satisfied smirk right off his face. Even though he has no pulse, this zombie and the machine that keeps him alive will be around long enough to complete the indoctrination of his equally vile daughter, Liz. If Perry should win, I would not be surprised to see her in his cabinet. About two years ago, one of my favorites on Twitter had this to say, “Cheney makes better sense if you add, ‘… , Clarice’ to the end of his sentences. ‘Torture worked, Clarice.'”
This from the Twitter account of pourmecoffee, always puts a smile on my face.
Emma
@catclub: You know, I’m starting to think this is true. The more you find out about what he wanted to do, the more you think… “ummm, and the Shrub wouldn’t let him.”
Elizabelle
@Jay B.:
I remember Wilkerson being out there condemning U.S. use of torture.
At the time. He’s been courageous and timely on numerous issues.
You apparently have your “Fox News Democrats” mixed up.
SiubhanDuinne
There are so many things to loathe about Dick “dick” Cheney that I hardly know where to start, so I won’t. (Others have done and are doing a fine job, anyhow.)
But I think the moment that fully brought home to me just what a detestable, petty-minded, vile excuse for a person he is, was January 20, 2009 when he came to the Inauguration in a wheelchair. Nothing will ever persuade me that he had really thrown his back out “lifting heavy boxes in the move out of the Naval Observatory” for fuck’s sake. You could show me X-rays of his spine shattered into a dozen pieces and I would still believe that he just plain wasn’t going to stand up for the Near.
Nasty nasty nasty. I will definitely not be sad to read his obituary.
Gravenstone
@Dennis SGMM:
Not disputing your argument. Only wanted to point out that 2008 shows they seem to be more comfortable with the idiot at the top of the ticket, rather than the undercard.
Brachiator
@Zifnab:
I seem to remember Cheney crafting oil and energy policy in secret. And he was behind the shameful BS that let the drug companies write the rules that still deny people a tax deduction for Canadian drugs.
Cheney was a piece of work as VP, and we are all still suffering for it.
jwb
OT: Noticed that a bunch of the posts here from earlier today have been scraped by some outfit known as gop-primaries.
celticragonchick
@Chris:
Think Poland circa 1750. Utterly dysfunctional legislature that could not pass anything at all, resulting in the dissolution of the country.
Kthug gives the history lesson here…
celticragonchick
@Chris:
Think Poland circa 1750. Utterly dysfunctional legislature that could not pass anything at all, resulting in the dissolution of the country.
Kthug gives the history lesson here…
Violet
@jwb:
What does that mean? Scraped?
Ken
@EconWatcher:
Funny coincidence, I was just reading The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross and the same question came up. The answer was “more terrible than you can possibly imagine.” Of course Stross is working from a Lovecraftian background, and the speculation was about a being called the Eater of Souls, but somehow it still works.
Jay B.
@Elizabelle:
He was instrumental in helping Powell develop the utterly fraudulent presentation to the U.N. And then spent the past eight years trying to blame everyone else for it but he and Powell. That Cheney is a criminal asshole doesn’t automatically make anything Wilkerson says gospel truth either. He bungle facts, he plays loose with the truth. He aided and abetted in one of the greatest frauds in the history of this country and, as is typical, he’s settling scores just as Cheney is. I’d trust him and his motives as far as I can puke.
He was part one of the most spectacularly corrupt, short-sighted and pure awful foreign policy team in history. Liberals should take everything he says with a grain of salt. If he’s against torture, great, but it took exactly zero courage to take that to the talk shows.
gnomedad
@SiubhanDuinne:
I wonder if he ever stopped to think that he’d be a dead ringer for Count Blofeld.
drkrick
@trollhattan:
But not without getting a look at detailed FBI dossiers of every rival he had in the GOP. A masterstroke that one was.
Mike in NC
@SiubhanDuinne:
Pretty sure his back injury was caused by lifting all those gold bars that he had trucked from Fort Knox to the basement of his residence.
Cheney definitely qualified as a Bond-style villain.
fasteddie9318
@Jay B.: Thanks for saying what I was thinking. My first reaction about any Bush officials who are out there criticizing and condemning what went on under Bush is, “where the fuck were you when it would have mattered?” Scotty McClellan is another one, but Powell is at the top of the list for ineffectual, after the fact bitching.
gbear
@SiubhanDuinne: Agreed. The only reason he was in that wheelchair was so that he didn’t have to stand in honor of the new president. It was a chickenshit move.
I will say that I did not hate him more after that incident. My level of hatred for Cheney was already to the point where the wheelchair seemed like just the kind of move he’d pull. It wasn’t even a surprise.
jwb
@Violet: Scraping = Copying content without attribution, often done to make a site look more extensive than it actually is and, once upon a time, it served to fool search engines into giving a higher rank to a site.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Lev:
My impression is that W came into office in 2001 carrying some heavy psychological baggage in terms of “Daddy issues” vs GHB and went out of his way to pick people whom his dad didn’t trust. But by about 2006 W had figured out that with respect to those folks his dad didn’t trust, there were as it turned out very sound reasons for that judgment. By then it was too late, but picking Gates to replace Rumsfeld (and the composition of the Iraq Study Group more generally) was a way of putting some adults in charge who would start the process of cleaning up the mess.
mark
Chenet, the worst American in history.
Fearmonger, Warmonger, and Warprofiteer just for a start
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Cat Lady:
Mmmmm… I bet there’s nothing like the cold charnel house odor wafting from Liz Cheney’s cupcakes to start Mika’s day!
Turgidson
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
It still sorta blows my mind that GWB even chose Gates.
I know that Gates’s Reagan-era record had skeletons (some shady Iran Contra stuff? I forget exactly), but the guy did a perfectly reasonable, and at times quite good, job as SecDef for two very different presidents with different visions. He’s OK in my book.
Frankensteinbeck
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Always remember that Cheney was a, perhaps THE Neocon. He believed in and helped author papers about how the US needed to and deserved to extend hegemony over the entire world. It wasn’t even in the traditional way of an empire. Cheney believed that conquering Iraq would lead to every other Middle Eastern country saying ‘That was wonderful! Please do the same for us!’ and turning into pro-American democracies.
It’s a demented viewpoint, and he still seems to believe it. Everything I’ve ever heard him say since 2008 was a variation on ‘Why can’t you people understand that I’m never wrong?’
Veritas78
Let’s not forget Cheney’s intense personal cowardice. Five deferments, the last one obtained only by banging Lynne Cheney for three days straight to qualify for the pregnant-wife deferment (you can do the math with any internet calendar). After he shot his friend in the face, he hid from the police for 24 hours until he had sobered up. Plus, he hid in a bunker of his own design while America was under attack.
Often, cowards are so ashamed of themselves that they become deranged with hatred for others and are prone to appallingly violent impulses. That’s our Dick!
Draylon Hogg
@49
Why would corporations crave war without end? Are you hopelessly naive? War makes for huge profits if you’re the one doing the catering or manufacturing guidance systems for smart bombs
Batocchio
Once again, if you want to understand Cheney and Bush, read Barton Gellman’s excellent book Angler if you haven’t. The Dark Side and some others are great, too, but for Cheney specifically, Angler/i> is invaluable.
pluege
I would suspect that Wilkerson was mostly familiar with foreign policy and that Cheney might not have had as much control over domestic policy.
cheney could have dominated domestic policy also if he wanted it. bush is a dolt in every way (including baseball); cheney is a vile indecent sadist that is power mad. cheney could easily manipulate bush in any area he felt like.
And Another Thing...
@Lev: Right on. Plus, Cheney had key people in the bureaucracy at senior levels who kept him informed, and he was always the last person to talk to Bush. What an abomination.
SiubhanDuinne
@gbear:
I thought my level of hatred was also at a point where nothing he did could surprise me. But you know, there was just something so grindingly and offensively insulting about that damned wheelchair trick. It got to me in a way that his many actual crimes didn’t. Which is probably the reaction that would most pleasure him. Fucking bastard.
randalms
Well, not the least problem I have with Cheney, is that
he did not even make the trains run on time.
dww44
@Elizabelle: I’m with you there. Wilkinson was out front and on the air being his bracingly blunt self for a lot of the Bush 2nd term. This take on Cheney’s ambitions to wield the power of the Presidency just seems so right. I find him (Wilkerson) to be probably the most admirable person to come out of the Bush years and the kind of real patriot that we need lots more of. He has the courage of his convictions.
dww44
@Turgidson: He’s more than OK. He’s been a laudable public servant to several Presidents. Like others, it would truly be interesting to know why GWB chose him to replace Rumsfeld. Was this mentioned in GWB’s memoir.
Yutsano
@mark: As bad as Cheney is, it’s still pretty hard to top the outrageousness of Aaron Burr.
DanielX
Always surprises me a bit to see and hear references to Cheney’s heart condition….I was under the impression that he had a lump of plutonium or something as opposed to, you know, an actual circulatory system.
DanielX
Always surprises me a bit to see and hear references to Cheney’s heart condition….I was under the impression that he had a lump of plutonium or something as opposed to, you know, an actual circulatory system.
Eykis
@SiubhanDuinne: @SiubhanDuinne:
The wheelchair was the final straw – having been a Cheney hater for 30 years, I took the most offense at the entire Dubya Evil Cabal disallowing the Obamas to stay at Blair House.
Every single member of the Dubya Cabal KNEW there was going to be a new president – so when they lost and Obama won, they decided to DEMEAN the man by saying “sorry, we did not realize you were coming, so we booked Blair House for other purposes”.
Nasty Haters, one and all.
Paul in KY
@Chris: I like the Enron analogy, myself. Bush Jr. was the front man, like Ken Lay. Cheney was Jeff Skilling et.al.
Paul in KY
@tBone: George R.R. Martin would have trouble coming up with some stuff (and I’ve read some sick shit in his books).
Paul in KY
@Draylon Hogg: Plus, the owners/workers in those companies are high paid & generally not of the DFH persuasion, thus lots of campaign contributions back to Repubs.
Paul in KY
@Yutsano: Burr was a piker compared to Cheney. If Cheney had been Burr, he’d have had his country. Don’t know how long he would have kept it, but he’d have had one.