An independent group has formed, attempting to draft former Vice President Dick Cheney to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.
The argument is that Cheney has the experience, the knowledge, and commitment to conservative values needed to lead this country, and that he far outshadows any other GOP potential nominee for the White House.
In a purely realistic sense, the group is actually correct. There is no one with the background and expertise that Cheney gained in eight years in the White House, intimately involved in many of the Bush Presidency decisions, and believed by many to be either an informal “co President”, or even wielding presidential power at several points of the Bush term.
Also, Cheney had great experience and skills gained from being Secretary of Defense under the first President Bush, being a leader of the GOP in the House, and being a very young Chief of Staff to President Ford.
It is not an issue of qualification or ability to do the job that is the center of the matter.
Rather, very much like Richard Nixon, it is a question of who would want a person of Cheney’s personality and manner to be our President. Like with Nixon with many people, the thought of a Cheney Presidency is terrifying!
Cheney represents all the worst instincts a leader could have: no concern about domestic affairs except for the interests of the wealthy upper class; a confrontational attitude in foreign and military policy committed to war overseas; an arrogant, secretive personality who does not care about the media or public opinion; a willingness to violate civil liberties and promote torture and crack down on any social progressivism; and an alliance with the most right wing extremist movements that exist in the nation, and are right now attempting to make impossible any success for the Obama Administration.
Dick Cheney is a mean, grouchy, nasty leader who has no concern about how he is perceived, and a Cheney Presidency would be the ultimate abuse of power, and with a GOP Congressional majority possibility, would be a regression back to the Gilded Age and the 1920s!
God forbid such a scenario could emerge! 🙁
The 1920s were far better than the new deal era. In fact, the new deal prolonged the depression for about eight years, according to recent economic scholars. But Milton freeman unearth this fact years ago.
What you are forgetting, and conservative scholars overlook, is that the Great Depression was caused by the Republican policies of the 1920s, which led to the Great Crash on Wall Street and the 25 percent unemployment rate of 1933. While the New Deal did not end the Great Depression, unemployment went down considerably, and only went back up in 1937-38 when FDR gave in to conservative attacks and lowered federal spending on jobs programs. There was nothing good about the 1920s promoting the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and the middle class being squeezed. Does that remind you of the Reagan 1980s and the Bush Two 2000s? It should, as the same failed policies of the 1920s were repeated under Reagan and Bush 2, and added SEVEN TRILLION to the national debt, a lot of it due to too much military spending and BIG tax cuts to the wealthy, while squeezing the middle class and ignoring the millions of poor people in this country. Now Obama has to fix the mess as FDR had to do, and it cannot be solved overnight, thanks to the GOP!
Amen! And thank you, Ronald, for correcting misconceptions about the Depression and the current economic crisis by using historical “fact” instead of “fiction.”
I have an even worse nightmare for your readers to contemplate: a Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin ticket in 2012. The combination of Cheney’s amoral values (OK, let’s call a spade a spade: “immoral” values) and Palin’s apocalyptic foreign policy would make us all wake up screaming.
I encourage and hope that Cheney runs for president in 2012 as it will make it easier for the Democrats to hold onto the presidency.
David, are his approval ratings still as low as they used to be?
Probably not as people tend to forget all of his shortcomings very quickly. However, they would be brought up during a presidential campaign. People will say, “Oh yeah! I remember that he was that crook who was vice president for Bush!” lol. “Didn’t he also shoot somebody, too!”
Yep, he shot his hunting companion, Texas attorney Harry Whittington, and tried to cover it up, it seems. It became a scandal for a while: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11312757/. Some even asserted that it was intentional, a signal to keep his mouth shut about something.