Stay with me on this one.
So, what to make of the Dick Cheney “Obamanator” Tour? Including, of course, that virtual mano a mano duel with President Obama recently. Overlapping agendas, it would appear.
First, for an ideologically marginalized entity labeled the “Party of No” amid unprecedented, multiple crises, Cheney is — if not GOP manna — certainly most welcome. A higher power than Palin is obviously needed, even if not acknowledged. These are troubled times for the incredible shrinking tent that is today’s Republican Party.
Cheney’s obvious appeal is national security. Its catastrophic breach, hardly inconceivable, trumps all other issues. After all, who — really, really, down deep — doesn’t want to do everything possible — including the ethically and morally problematic — to prevent a 9/11 sequel? Ticking time bomb and all that. Who would truly care, goes a certain line of theoretical reasoning, about post-apocalyptic consolation prizes — such as the still fluttering flag of ACLU principles amid chaos and carnage?
Love him or loathe him, Cheney’s the avatar of national security. If this country gets hit again — big time — then industry bailouts, protectionism, abortion, national debt, stimulus scenarios, energy policy and health-care reform will be rendered instantaneously moot.
Cheney, the embodiment of the GOP’s uber talking point, is ostensibly a reminder that your churlish, old uncle who carries a big (waterboard, rendition, warrant-less wire tap) stick would be better in a zero-sum, security punch out than a less experienced sort better known for charisma, eloquence and vision. You betcha.
And Cheney is hardly shy in framing the GOP position on the basis that America hasn’t been hit again since 9/11. “You think that would have happened under a Gore Administration?!” goes his all-but-asked rhetorical question.
Cheney is his own best advocate because he’s the ultimate neocon. He believes it all.
Having said that.
It was, after all, on the Bush-Cheney watch that 9/11 actually HAPPENED. Cheney was pre-eminent among those who had dismissed the warnings of national security guru Richard Clarke as the rantings of a Clinton-era Cassandra. Recall that it was Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush who allowed Osama bin Laden to avoid a Tora Bora capture or cave-in by shifting America’s military priorities to their war of choice, Iraq.
And then there’s the strategy, per se, of al-Qaeda.
To be sure, fundamentalist killers were disrupted in their communications and money laundering by steps taken by the Bush Administration. But al-Qaeda had already made its point that America was not untouchable.
David Kilcullen, the Australian counterinsurgency expert who wrote The Accidental Guerrilla, quotes bin Laden (from 2004) on al-Qaeda’s post-9/11 tactics: “All we have to do is send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a cloth on which is written ‘al-Qaeda,’ in order to make the (U.S.) generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses…so we are continuing this policy of bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”
Moreover, why risk re-ceding the moral high ground that was accorded the U.S. immediately after 9/11 by most of the world?
And then there’s the more personal level.
It’s altogether plausible that Cheney was tired of having been a second banana to a junior executive for so long. He was smart enough to be a puppet master but not providential enough to be president.
Grabbing the bully pulpit on national security was a way of addressing that accident of history. Now was certainly not the time to emulate the classy code of partisan silence being invoked by former President George W. Bush and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
And going public was also a way of guaranteeing the highest possible bid for the memoir Cheney is known to be shopping around.