Uh, oh. Brace yourself for the outrage machine to perhaps go into full gear — or will it be (rightfully) distracted by truly significant, substantive events now unfolding in Iran? CIA Chief Leon Panetta this weekend said what some writers and analysts have hinted at over the past few months: from former Vice President Dick Cheney’s comments about Obama administration security versus the Bush administration security it almost seems as if Cheney was hoping for an attack so he could deliever a big, fat “I told you so.”
US World & News reports’ always-must-read “Washington Whispers” sums up the comment (which would be big media and weblog fodder if a teeney event like the Iranian elections had not intervened) nicely this way:
CIA Director Leon Panetta’s remarks on former Vice President Dick Cheney made in a nearly 7,600-word interview with The New Yorker generated some media attention last night and this morning. Calling them “tough words,” ABC World News reported briefly that Panetta said of Cheney, who “has repeatedly, of course, criticized the Obama Administration’s approach to terrorism,” that “it’s almost as if he is wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point.'” Panetta, the New Yorker (6/22, Mayer) reports, was responding to a speech the former vice president made at the American Enterprise Institute, where he accused the Administration of making “the American people less safe” by banning brutal CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects that had been sanctioned by the Bush Administration. With “surprising candor,” the magazine reports Panetta said, “I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue. It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics.”
Current Vice President Joe Biden was a bit more diplomatic in his reaction:
Also reporting the remarks, the AP reports Vice President Joe Biden was asked during an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if he agreed. The current vice president, however, said “he wouldn’t question the motive behind Cheney’s criticism.” Said Biden, “I think Dick Cheney’s judgment about how to secure America is faulty. I think our judgment is correct.”
So will the outrage machine be in full play this week? Will there be demands that Panetta apologize or resign? Part of American politics has evolved into a new form of political correctness where if someone dares to say something that a good chunk of people may feel or genuinely believe there is a demand that the vocal person obliterate his/her prouncement or plead for someone’s forgiveness. If that happens here (unlikely given how huge the Iranian story is) it’s unlikely to succeed.
Several analysts over the past few months on cable, radio, and on the Internet have speculated that Cheney is laying the groundwork of an “I told you so” but it’a also part of his legacy battle with his former bosss George W. Bush: the administration is reported to have abandoned much of the Cheney-advocated approach during the last years of the administration as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s influence ascended and Cheney’s started to somewhat wane.
Also: Panetta may be CIA chief now, but before that he was a prominent Democratic centrist, not a push-over in the political world, and considered solid on policy matters both when he was in Congress and in his work running his nonpartisan center for the study of public policy, The Panetta Institute. He’s not a career bureaucrat or a political hack.
But whether Panetta repeated a question “out there” or not, did he put his foot in it? MSNBC’s First Read thinks he may well have:
Here’s our final question of the day: Why did CIA Director Leon Panetta engage Dick Cheney? It’s not everyday the head of the CIA gives an on-the-record interview to the New Yorker in which he says the former VP is rooting for a terrorist attack….All in all, this has the makings of a made-for-cable fight, and probably something the White House wishes the CIA director didn’t ignite.
UPDATE: Sen. John McCain has demanded that Panetta issue a retraction.
“I hope my old friend Leon was misquoted,” Cheney said, in a written statement to FOX News. “The important thing is whether the Obama administration will continue the policies that have kept us safe for the past eight years.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.