Here’s one thing I’m curious about. Steven Hayes’ new Cheney book seems to be getting a decent amount of criticism. But why is it exactly that anyone thinks it’s an example of some sort of warrior’s ethic or hardcore-osity that the vice president appears to suffer from a fairly extreme if not precisely clinical sort of paranoia? Or frightened of various wildly improbable fantasies.
One of the things a leader must have is the power of discrimination and judgment. There are literally limitless numbers of conceivable threats to consider. Some are very real and dangerous while others are merely notional. And a person in a position of authority really needs to be able to discriminate between the two. But if we accept what’s written about Cheney in these insider-access accounts, he seems to lack any such capability.
Meanwhile, what his supporters want us to see as a kind of inspired vigilance looks a lot more like at least the threshold of clinical paranoia.
His supporters want us to believe that only Cheney has the guts and gumption perseverate on these fears while the rest of us are lulled into a calm of our own inner frivolity. But setting aside the misdirection, straw men and general bamboozlement, even the praise of Cheney’s acolytes and footmen strikes me as quite damning.
