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Dick Cheney Shrugs Off Bush Administration Role In Economic Ills

Posted by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief in Economy, Politics.
Mar 15th, 2009 | Comments

CARI.Cheney.gif Former Vice President Dick Cheney gave his take on the country’s economic meltdown on CNN today — and gave further evidence of why Democrats, independents, and thoughtful Republicans should be thankful he is the former Vice President.

You can boil Cheney’s response down in two key points:

1. Don’t blame us. It was global forces and if you blame us it’s “interesting rhetoric.” So, Mr. Cheney, make sure you send out an email to economists all over the world who feel, yes, the Bush administration did play a key role in what happened. Also, Mr. Cheney, here’s a Google page where you can do some research to see that quite a few economists, voters and pundits think you had a teenie-weenie role in it.

2. “Stuff happens.” A literal quote.

Isn’t it time to bluntly say it? Dick Cheney was a blight on the office of the Vice Presidency — and not because of specific policies. Americans can and do differ on those.

But because seldom in the history of the United States have we seen a high elective office filled by someone who had such a patently anti-democratic view of public service — that he was above political polls, above elections and could do whatever he wanted because he held the power. Future historians will sift out precisely what his role was in the administration but here’s a prediction: it’ll be more extensive than how extensive it is already perceived to have been.

Perhaps it’s because Cheney’s political career was centered in a district where he didn’t really have to worry about winning elections (it was a given) so to hell with what pesky voters who disagree thought. But his attitude towards power was coupled with a dismissive concept of responsibility. True, he gave the country someone at the top who was preparing for worst case scenarios — and that was a useful role. But his contemptuous attitude towards the concept of responsibility to public opinion and responsibility for the results of his actions — or inactions — is one that hopefully Democrats, independents and Republicans will never ever again allow to be so close to America’s levers of power again.

On this Sunday here’s something to be truly thankful for: that Dick Cheney never became President.

Cartoon by Cox & Forkum

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Silhouette

"Future historians will sift out precisely what his role was in the administration."
***********

No no no. You've got it all wrong. Here's the correct sentence (pun intended):

"Current prosecutors will sift out precisely what his role was (is) in the administration."

There, that is more correct.

Either we prosecute him or we cease to exist as a democratic nation. It really is that pivotal. You can bet that right now as I write this, some other nefarious person or persons are sitting down and taking note of the audacity of his crimes and the freedom that he enjoys from culpablity and carving their own plans accordingly. Not everyone goes to church on Sunday. Those who are as ruthless as Cheney may, in the obvious and glaring lack of any consequences whatsoever, be setting their sights on usurping the United States via similar means.

There is no terrorist worse than the underminer. Did I mention that Bush is tight with the Bin Ladens and that arab families are tighter still amongst themselves?

It's time to do the math. We simply must. As painful, stunning and embarassing as it may be, we simply must.

D. E.Rodriguez

So?

or

http://themoderatevoice.com/18772/guest-voice-d...

dualdiagnosis

He's right-

“I think there’s no question but what the economic circumstances that he inherited are difficult ones,” Cheney said. "We said that before we left. I don’t think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of those circumstances. It’s a global financial problem.

“We had, in fact, tried to deal with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac some years before, with major reforms that were blocked by Democrats on the Hill – [House Financial Services Chairman] Barney Frank and [Senate Banking Chairman] Chris Dodd. So I think the notion that you can just sort of throw it off on the prior administration – that’s interesting rhetoric, but I don’t think anybody really cares a lot about that. What they care about is what’s going to work, and how we’re going to get out of these difficulties.”

StockBoySF

Why does anyone listen to Cheney any longer? We should shrug him off.

From the CNN website:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/15/cheney.i...

"But Cheney said he and Bush had to spend money to deal with the September 11, 2001 attacks, the resulting war in Afghanistan, the disaster of 2005's Hurricane Katrina, and the costly and unpopular war in Iraq, now nearly six years old.

"All of these things required us to spend money that we had not originally planned to spend, or weren't originally part of the budget," Cheney said. "Stuff happens. And the administration has to be able to respond to that, and we did."'

Cheney acts as though unforeseen circumstances are at the root of the problems. But he's been in high level government for years and knows that unforeseen events happen all the time.

The success of a government is dealing with problems and difficult circumstances thrown your way, changing your path to meet the needs. Clearly the Bush government failed in this. For starters Bush did not have to keep his tax cuts to the wealthy in place to respond to the crisis. But Bush and Cheney choose to do so for political gain, rather then make the hard decisions, which would have been more helpful for the country, but less popular to that small fraction of the population making more than $250,000 year.

If Cheney is blaming these unforeseen circumstances for the fact that he and Bush could not govern how they wanted, then I suppose we should be glad for those disasters. I shudder to think what other horrors Bush/Cheney would have wrought had they the chance.

StockBoySF

"On this Sunday here’s something to be truly thankful for: that Dick Cheney never became President."

There's always the possibility of Cheney/Palin 2012. He takes a year or two to do what he wants as prez and then turns the reins over to Palin.

Please don't jinx us with such statements! And Palin is just like Cheney temperamentally. She's not afraid to use the power of the office to get what she wants, including for personal gain (or retribution). So even if Cheney is out for good, there's always someone to take his place.

We need to be mindful of this when electing leaders.

Silhouette

Hard to be President when you're behind bars...

MuleFace

Such nonsense and paranoia. I'm always amazed at the fixation on Cheney. I'm not particularly defending the guy, just object to the obsessive beliefs so many seem to have about him. Partisan "blame" about the economy is silly and irrelevant. Are you telling me the Democrats were out there sounding the alarm about the housing/mortgage/financial bubble/crisis? In what meaningful way were their policies different or preventative of what happened? Let's face it - we got here together & we can only fix it together.

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