Dick Cheney Reconsidered

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@puddleglum

Ford was a professional politician and a member of the House leadership before being president. He is not the type to associate disagreement over issues with evil. He knows that there are unpleasant people who share your politics and very nice people who do not. Given that Cheney has been a player for 4 decades in a town built on personal relationships, it is unlikely that he is a disagreeable person. It is a sign of the immaturity of so much of our political discourse that so many people equate disagreement with their opinions with genuine evil.

What? Even most Republicans agree that Henry Kissinger (for example) was a complete asshole and it doesn’t seem to have hurt his career. Similarly, Joe McCarthy might have been President if he had known when to stop.

[gonzomax]

@Zoe

I’m glad to hear that Cheney accepted blame for the shooting. I didn’t watch him on Fox although I had heard that he had chosen to make an appearance there and nowhere else.

Did he also express his sympathy to the man he shot and to his family?

Kimstu, I agree that the friend who was shot was offering his sympathy for causing Cheney so much trouble. I just can’t read it any other way.

One thing that I didn’t like about Cheney was how he would say something and they lie about having said it. He would do this over and over. You would think that he would have known better than to do than on Meet the Press. Tim Russert always had the video of his saying it.

I’m not impressed by his criticism of Obama on those occasions when the criticism is so obviously shaped to fool the public.

Most of all, I don’t like war criminals. The torture of Guantanamo prisoners is just part of it.

There just doesn’t seem to be anything honorable about him.

I keep picturing Cheneys pal grabbing on to a ducks foot and holding it over his head saying" look at this Dick".

[Sailboat]

My theory is that the people who like Cheney like him specifically because he’s the way he is. Hard? Harsh? Merciless? Evil? Mean? Straight-talking? Aggressive? Takes no prisoners? They’re all ways of saying the same thing, really. People who admire him want someone in charge who’s not a nice guy, a little dangerous, determined to win at any cost.

Why they want this is a different topic. It may be related to the vague theories I’ve seen about conservative thinkers modeling on a strong father figure and liberal thinkers on a nurturing mother figure, or something else entirely. But the people I’ve talked to who like Cheney, when supporting him, always cite incidents in which Cheney has acted or spoken brashly, riskily, forcefully, angrily, even savagely. They might not be jerks themselves, but they LIKE him being a jerk. They’d be dismayed if he got soft.
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