Home > Cheney Smugs for the Camera
by Matthew Rothschild
A hero to the conservatives at the Republican Convention, Dick Cheney could not have found a more sympathetic crowd, except perhaps at the annual meeting of the Halliburton corporation.
He soaked up the applause, and then, in his smug monotone, began his case, oddly invoking the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who stood for everything Cheney opposes.
After the obligatory autobiographical bow to the promise of America, Cheney spent less than 10 percent of his time racing through Bush’s domestic achievements. Granted, he did not have much to deal with there.
On the economy, he said, "President Bush delivered the greatest tax reduction in a generation, and the results are clear to see."
Indeed, they are: A net loss of one million jobs, stagnant wages, the stock market in the doldrums, and consumer confidence on the decline.
On health care, he said, "President Bush is making it more affordable and accessible to all Americans."
What’s he talking about? A new government report just came out showing that 45 million Americans are without health care—more than ever before. And the cost of health care, for those who have it, keeps rising, with Americans having to shell out more for deductibles and premiums.
Cheney also praised No Child Left Behind, which is a disaster for school systems around the country.
That was it. He said nothing more about what Bush did domestically.
Then Cheney lavished all of 27 words about what Bush will do domestically in the next four years.
Here they are: "And there is more to do. Under this President’s leadership, we will reform medical liability so the system serves patients and good doctors, not personal injury lawyers."
For all the rest of the speech, Cheney contented himself with reformulating insults about Kerry being too indecisive.
By contrast, he praised Bush’s leadership qualities, including Bush’s "wisdom and humility," both of which have been in short supply.
At first, playing good cop to the Swift Boat bad cops, Cheney tried to act magnanimously toward Kerry, which is difficult for him: "The President’s opponent is an experienced Senator," Cheney said. "He speaks often of his service in Vietnam, and we honor him for it."
It is said that mafia godfathers, after ordering a hit, sometimes pay for the victim’s funeral, and that’s what Cheney’s gesture was like.
But he couldn’t help himself from joining the hit squad.
He suggested, slanderously, that Kerry is more concerned about our allies than our security.
And he claimed, spuriously, that Kerry vowed to defend America only after it’s attacked again, adding: "My fellow Americans, we have already been attacked."
No joke! We were attacked—while Bush and Cheney and Ashcroft and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Rice and their FBI and CIA were asleep at the wheel.
And now, as a result of Bush’s reckless Iraq War, the likelihood that the United States will be attacked has increased, as the war and occupation have swelled the ranks of America’s enemies.
But Cheney defended the way Bush went to war, praising him for not "submitting to the objections of a few."
Never mind that those few were among America’s chief allies in the world.
Never mind that by disregarding their objections, as expressed at the U.N. Security Council, Bush was violating the U.N. Charter, and in the process, Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution, which says that treaties are the supreme law of the land.
Cheney justified the Iraq War by saying Saddam Hussein posed "a gathering threat."
But it was Cheney himself, who, in the days leading up to the war, said Saddam was much more menacing than that. It was Cheney, after all, who falsely announced that Saddam had "reconstituted nuclear weapons."
Like other speakers before him, Cheney again blurred the line between 9/11 and Baghdad. Referring to "the killers of September 11th," Cheney said Bush "made clear that the terrorists would be dealt with." He then gave the requisite two sentences on Afghanistan before moving directly to Iraq.
Like other speakers before him, Cheney compared the threat we face today to the threat we faced from "the Nazis during World War II and the Soviets during the Cold War."
But those threats are not comparable. The Nazis could have conquered America; the Soviets could have annihilated America. Al Qaeda, which must be vanquished, can do neither.
But fear is Cheney’s trump card. And he plays it at every turn.