Turning Up The Heat On Barack Obama

(AP)

Leave it to Dick Cheney to teach Tareq Salahi a thing or two about how to crash a big event.

On the eve of Barack Obama's most important address as president, Cheney managed to (temporarily) grab the spotlight when he told Politico that the commander in chief was weak and letting politics affect his military decisions. A sampler:

"Every time he delays, defers, debates, changes his position, it begins to raise questions: Is the commander in chief really behind what they've been asked to do?"

Or this gem:

"Here's a guy without much experience, who campaigned against much of what we put in place ... and who now travels around the world apologizing," Cheney said. "I think our adversaries -- especially when that's preceded by a deep bow ... -- see that as a sign of weakness."

Just why the ex-VP keeps popping off remains full-time fodder for the media, but Cheney's looking more partisan with each headline that he makes. James Fallows is spot on when he notes the contrast with President George W. Bush, who has "maintained a dignified distance from public controversies and let the new team have its chance. He has acted as if aware that there are national interests larger than his own possible interests in score-settling or reputational-repair."

I wonder how many of his former supporters would agree. The anger on the right seems deeper than anything expressed during the Clinton era. The timing was accidental but the former vice president's latest outburst coincided with a remarkable cri de coeur by Charles Johnson, the creator of the once conservative blog Little Green Footballs why he's parting with the right wing. Of course, when Johnson wrote that "the American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff," he had no way of knowing that Cheney was about to put his pacemaker into overdrive and let loose with another of the periodic salvos he's fired at the Obama administration since leaving the White House.

Johnson had to know he was going to spark a firestorm by breaching the right's narrative of the history of the last eight years. Conservatives, who are quick to complain about political correctness, turn out to be remarkably PC when it comes to their own sacred cows.

The reaction from Johnson's former ideological allies ranged from well, he's disturbed and confused, to the guy is simply thuggish and execrable.

Is he really all that horrid? I've read Johnson over the years and never found him to be that bad, even when I've disagreed with his positions. But chalk it up to the right's deepening anger at Mr. Obama's decision to break with the Bush-Cheney foreign - or domestic - policy. Commentary's Jennifer Rubin offered up a textbook example of what I mean with this masterpiece of fiction presented as an accurate representation of facts on the ground:

"It is December, and in less than a year Cheney now represents a good deal of mainstream thinking, both in the Beltway and among ordinary Americans. That's how far we've come. Meanwhile, Obama is increasingly seen as ideologically misguided and temperamentally at a loss to deal with the plethora of international challenges, which will only increase as a worldwide audience takes in his haphazard performance."

I don't know whether Cheney could have have put it any better.

[noloyalisti]

This guy is a complete failure and a chickenhawk. Why is this war criminal getting any press at all, he should be in jail. Not only did he fail to keep us safe, he destroyed our foreign policy, lied us into endless war and pushed the economy off the cliff, something we will never recover from.

[economicfreedom8591]

LOL! Hey, Coop! I don't see you writing about those constant pests who've been "popping off" for years and years at every opportunity: former pres Jimmy Carter, former pres Bill Clinton, and former vice pres Al Gore. Could it be, O Coop, that because they are lefty democrats you give them a pass, but because Cheney is on the right and GOP you suddenly take notice? Your post confirms all the books and studies that have come out in the last ten years or so claiming a leftist bias to the mainstream media.

[elfegobaca2]

Cooper and many of his readers have the worst form of partisan political memory.

Cooper and his mindnumbed looney leftwing robot readers seem to forget how former Vice President Gore, in an unprecedented way, tried to smear President Bush with his lying vitriolic charge that Bush lied to us about the war in Iraq.

Cooper and his mindnumbed looney leftwing robot readers seem to forget how Jimmy Carter also criticized Bush.

Don't forget Bill Clinton who at least, at first and uncharacteristically, told the truth and said that Bush did nothing wrong in Iraq. Nothing that he was not going to do. Then Clinton changed his tune.

It is funny how liberals like Cooper don't mind criticism and hate speech when it comes from other liberals only when it's directed at them.

It is funny how liberals who always talk about free speech don't seem to like it when it means criticizing their president.

Cooper you can dish it out but you can't take it.

[dolansprings]

Please, give your sourcs for Clinton's message about invading Iraq.

[2012EOD]

What is so funny about Cheney's comments is that they are all true.

Hard to fight the truth liberals...

[kenhamlett]

Obama's decision to engage the enemy in a manner to insure a quick and decisive conclusion is obviously going to irk Mr. Cheney.
The end result will be that Cheney and his corrupt machinations will be shown for what they are. Until Obama is finished undoing the mess Cheney made, why not just ignore the rants from Cheney and his "southern Republican style" police state ideological supporters.
No good comes from indulging his tantrums.

[justsane-2009]

this may be even less relevant than tiger woods' car crash...

[ubrew12]

Why isn't Cheney behind bars?

[rpbohman]

Cheney's latest comments are another sorry-a**ed exercize in self-justification from the man who was George W. Bush's equivent of Cardinal Richelieu, arguably the most dangerous man in America.

[nearl451]

If Cheney was upset earlier today, he must be apopletic after Obama's speech tonight.

Nearly nothing to comlpain about except.........a drawdown date.

I'd like to see Cheney have the class that McCain demonstrated tonight in his comments.

[imnho]

It appears that Dick Chaney is still upset about being out of power. People who do as bad as the Bush adminastration usually wind up getting fired. That is what happened in the last election. It seems that he is unable to come to terms with the fact that his policies were complete failures. He also thinks that throwing a monkey wrench into Obama's presidency will some how make things ok.