Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.
Unfortunately, Cheney's health issues made him unacceptable, and that's before you consider the high-tech lynching he would have received from those spreading the Cheney-Halliburton-Cabal memes. The JournoList folks would have had a field day.
Learning From Our Mistakes
The more appropriate complaint is that Cheney was not replaced in the mid-term to groom a replacement in 2008. Considering Cheney's health issues and the fact that Bush knew he could not be a contender in 2008 for that reason, the Republicans once again showed their daftness at succession-planning-politics by not replacing him. Republicans are soft on throwing a good guy under a bus, but until we're willing to play hardball, we're doomed to lose.
Cheney is a good man, no doubt, but he is physically damaged. The vicious attacks of him were completely without merit. If Bush had replaced him in 2004 with anyone besides Dan Quayle, we'd be whining about infinitesimal overreach and continuing to giggle at show-boat ignoramuses such as Cindy Sheehan, all the while watching our government run by competent grown-ups with a less than optimal, but a still too-large Federal budget. Instead, we are watching our country dissolve into the abyss in the fascist-overthrow of our system of government by the Obama Administration.
Cheney, if he was half the man we want him to be, should have removed himself. Since he didn't, he isn't. Even Spiro Agnew had the decency to resign for the sake of the country.
Cheney's found his place and is good in his new role: the ex-administration's attack dog, allowing the polite and gentlemanly George Bush to maintain the dignity of the Presidency and fade into the history textbooks awaiting the writing of his amazing legacy. That is something that Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter never had the character or decency to do, nor the contrain of ego to accomplish.
h/t Instapundit.
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