Cheney Chucked His Chance

Now that we have a new administration in charge, it seems former Vice President Dick Cheney is able to take some time away from his undisclosed location to appear on every FOX-TV show except Family Guy to point out all of President Obama's mistakes. And the conservatives have been singing his praises for it, which is weird, since truth be told, Cheney pretty much shot the Republican Party in the face and now has them apologizing to him for it (which is how it usually works with Cheney).

His big complaint is over Obama's reversals of many Bush/Cheney policies such as stem-cell research funding and keeping the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay open and his handling of the war on Terror. Yes, he'll sit there before any number of pontificators and tell us just how wrong the President is and that these decisions are making us less safe than we were under the Bush/Cheney team (which, we will recall, kept us safe from every terrorist threat, except one). Wow, pretty damning stuff.

It's just too darn bad that the former Vice President of the United States was powerless to stop this Obama guy from becoming president. There was no way for him to somehow continue these policies he helped put into effect. There's absolutely nothing he could have done; except maybe run for the office of president as the incumbent vice-president. Yeah, like, when has that ever worked?

Seriously, Dick Cheney sabotaged his own party from day one of the Bush administration. Actually, from before day one. He was placed in charge of George W. Bush's search team to find a vice presidential candidate. And after looking high and low, Dick Cheney found the perfect man looking out from his mirror. He inserted himself into the V.P. slot and the GOP cheered because he brought "gravis" and "maturity" to the Republican ticket. And it seemed to work, depending on which chads you counted. But then, during Bush's first term, Dick Cheney announces that he wouldn't consider running for president in 2008. He took a pledge not to run, so he could fully concentrate on serving President Bush and not have Bush worry that Cheney had his own agenda. Right, because backstabbing your boss is the surest way of advancing to the big desk (well, maybe at Halliburton) or having a president succeed could really screw up your plans as V.P. should you decide to run for the highest office yourself (and really, you pick yourself as vice president and then have to prove you don't have your own agenda?).

And with that pledge, he turned his President into the lamest of ducks. He could have picked up the baton and continued the race. Instead, Cheney stepped aside, let his party flounder and lose and now he's going to sit around and complain about the Democrats doing things differently than he did (which is pretty much what the Democrats had vowed to do). At the time, Cheney told the press that he wasn't running because he planned to spend his time fishing and being with his grandkids. He didn't mention anything about appearing on news cycles and lambasting the current leaders. The cynic in me thinks that maybe he knew there was an expiration date on his concept of governing and figured he'd do eight and out. It's easier to make plans when you have an exit strategy, I mean, deadline. Ask the producers of "Lost" vs. the producers of "Prison Break."

Sure, people like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly or Jon Steward can rail against the powers-that-be but we know they are only entertainers with nothing on the line and they have no more control over the situation than we do. It's their job description, after all. But to see Dick Cheney bellyache about the way things are when he actually had a chance to do something about it, well, that's just whining for whining's sake. Maybe next time, Dick.