There was a trend under Bush for conservative media outlets (e.g. Fox News) to claim that it was “unprecedented” for formers Presidents to criticize sitting Presidents, or that any criticism of Bush by Carter or Clinton was a violation of an “unwritten rule.” They were making it up. There was plenty of precedent and no such rule.
Media Matters has pretty good piece on that whole issue. Brit Hume once had to make an on air retraction after making a claim that Bush Sr. had never criticized Clinton. The Mediamatters piece includes precedents. My favorite is Teddy Roosevelt calling Taft a “puzzlewit” and a “fathead.”
I’d have to do a search to confirm this, but in the spring of 2002 (nine months after 9/11) I wrote (and set) a short story that used the information that several officials (including Cheney, but extending to Warren Buffet, Rumsfeld and one or two others) were virtually assuring us of an imminent attack, on Manhattan in particular, but certainly an attack on U.S.soil. There were a spate of such assurances, none of which ever panned out, within a few weeks of each other, and that is what gave me the impetus for the story.
And they don’t seem to have a problem criticizing President Obama. Did they lose their patriotism?
Man, Cheney’s a big sack of shit. Hope he dies.
Hey – just checked on Google Earth, and the US Naval Observatory is no longer obscured! I don’t know if VP Biden is personally responsible, but it’s a nice change.
Why can’t anybody ever get that Machiavelli reference right?
If you can’t be both loved and feared, it’s better to be feared than loved. But whatever you do, make sure you’re not hated, cuz that’s just asking for trouble.
That’s…err…paraphrased a bit. But ol’ Machi is quite adamant about the ‘not hated’ bit.
My favorite example was the story of Andrew Jackson criticizing Polk’s appointment of James Buchanan as Secretary of State. Asked why he himself had appointed Buchanan as minister to Russia, he replied that Russia was the most distant place he knew of to send him, and if they’d had a ministry at the North Pole he would have sent Buchanan there.
Never was sure why it was obscured, its not like he was ever there. Or, maybe, that was the undisclosed location?
Once upon a time, the Republican party and its leaders had values. They were not values I always agreed with, but at least they had some. Now, they let the fucking Penguin continue to speak for the party long after his relevance has disappeared. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t continue to pollute political discourse. Anything, anything at all, happens that can be remotely connected to a terrorist act, and these fuckers will shit themselves in excitement.
So Cheney happens to agree with Vice-Plagiarist Biden:
“Mark my words, it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy,” Mr Biden said on the campaign trail, “The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America… Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”