Take Him Seriously

It didn't seem possible. Nonetheless, former Vice President Dick Cheney has somehow succeeded at turning himself into an even greater comic-book villain. Imagine any sane, mature individual stating a leadership and political preference for Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell, a sentiment Cheney gravely intoned on last week's Face The Nation. One would be hard-pressed to think that even a comedian in a Saturday Night Live sketch would go so far as to say, "If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh." The joke would be too lame and obvious, right. Wrong!

Cheney has to be taken very seriously, even though he is no longer the staunchly conservative but nonetheless serious man we saw earlier in his career. Yes, he is pushing even greater numbers of thinking, moderate Republicans toward Independent and Democratic status, like no voter-registration drive could ever do. And yes, he is an even greater embarrassment to the increasingly smaller numbers of Republicans remaining in the detritus of Karl Rove's "permanent GOP majority" and wrestling with their own demographic issues. (Make no mistake about it, though, the Republicans will recover if for no other reason than ours is not a one-party system. Cheney's craven antics will only delay the inevitable pendulum swing back to what one hopes will be a more humble, diverse, fair-minded and less-angry party.) Still, the media is covering him and the world is listening to him if for no other reason than unending lies, outrageous comments, and dark, sinister threats make good copy.

His inadvisable and painfully (self) destructive attacks on an Obama Administration attempting to pick up the pieces after eight years of Cheneyism could represent a stunningly calculated gamble. It almost seems as if Cheney is betting that the United States will again be victimized by some form of domestic terrorism, however large or small, and that he will have been the lone, accurate voice to have said, "I told you so." This is the customary game plan for so many prophets of doom. Yet, painfully, the odds make it quite possible that we will be attacked again over the next 3 1/2 or 7 1/2 years of an Obama Presidency. I know; it is hard to imagine that anyone could work this way. However, there is no other rational reason to explain Cheney's astonishing behavior. Oh yes, irrationality is always a possibility, too.

p.s. God bless Major Steven Hutchinson, the 60-year-old Vietnam War veteran who rejoined the Army in 2006 and was killed by an Iraq roadside bomb last week in Basra. He was the oldest veteran to serve in either Iraq or Afghanistan, falling victim to yet another Cheney folly. Throughout history, men like Cheney have used bluster and bombast coated in faux courage and patriotism to sentence other real patriots and truly courageous men and women to needless death.