TPM Reader DB on Cheney …
Why doesn’t a prominent Democrat come out and basically repeat your post on Cheney? Why can’t a Democrat on a Sunday morning talk show scream, “Cheney is a moron! He has no idea what the hell he is doing. He is an outright disaster. He should resign effective immediately and the country will be a lot better off.” There really is no downside to this (of course the press may disapprove of the lack of civility but they’ll get over it) if whoever says it stands by it and all the other Dems back them up. Cheney is incredibly unpopular, his policies suck and he is so far removed from reality he is a parody. The only reason he remains afloat is because he is a bully. Well it is about time someone called the bully’s bluff.
So true.
Maybe not precisely those words that DB advises. But pretty damn close. In the sometimes hothouse world of blogging we go off on tears and lose sight of the fact that not everyone believes what we see as obvious. But Dick Cheney’s an exceptional case. He stands on his own unique ground of ridiculousness. And because of that he’s not simply a bully but a glass bully. Outside of the very hard right wing of American politics, pretty much everyone now sees that Dick Cheney is a screw-up and a moron of historic proportions. If you know more of the ins and outs of the administration’s history you know that the hugest blunders were Cheney policies and the policies which weren’t totally stupid were ones he fought tooth and nail. The best place to see the change even among DC establishment journalists, who used to revere him (Broder probably still does, but I think he’s emeritus now) are in the set piece interviews. Each one is now followed by a Kabuki journo debrief in which half-smiling/half-awkward-looking reporters pick apart which statements seem incorrect, which are outright lies and which seem to come from a guy who’s simply lost his mind.
He’s the crazy uncle of American politics at this point.
You don’t even have to be snide. Treat him like the joke that he is and a look of recognition and agreement will come over most people’s faces.
