Below The Beltway

The former Vice-President is back in the news:

During an interview with Dick Cheney this morning, CNN host John King asked the former vice president why “we should listen to you” for economic advice.

(…)

“So what would you say to someone out there watching this who’s saying why should they listen to you?” King asked. Cheney responded that there’s “all kinds of arguments that could be made,” but he emphasized that there is “something more important than” the specific numbers King cited — namely, 9/11.

Here’s what Cheney said specifically:

All of these things required us to spend money that we had not originally planned to spend or weren’t originally part of the budget. Stuff happens. And the administration has to be able to respond to that, and we did.

The problem with Cheney’s logic, of course, is that most of the increases in spending under the Bush Administration had nothing to do with Katrina and the war on terror. Additionally, the fiscal irresponsibility lied in the fact that they increased spending without cutting elsewhere or raising revenue — thus leading us to a situation where the National Debt increase between 2001 and 2009 was nearly equal to the increased between 1789 and 2001.

So, nice try Mr. (thankfully former) Vice-President, but not even close.

Cheney’s most laughable comment, though, came later in the interview:

Vice President Cheney charged Sunday morning on CNN that President Obama is using the recession “to try to justify” what is probably the largest expansion of federal authority “in the history of the Republic.”

“I worry a lot that they’re using the current set of economic difficulties to try to justify a massive expansion in the government, and much more authority for the government over the private sector,” Cheney said in his first television interview since leaving office. “I don’t think that’s good. I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem.”

You mean like how the Bush Administration used the 9/11 attacks to justify a massive expansion of the surveillance state ? How you made secrecy a way of life in Washington ? How you justified torture despite no evidence whatsoever that it actually deters or prevents terrorists attacks ?

And don’t even get me started on how you guys sent us careening down the road to serfdom.

Joe Gandelman does a fairly decent job of summing up how I feel:

[S]eldom in the history of the United States have we seen a high elective office filled by someone who had such a patently anti-democratic view of public service — that he was above political polls, above elections and could do whatever he wanted because he held the power. Future historians will sift out precisely what his role was in the administration but here’s a prediction: it’ll be more extensive than how extensive it is already perceived to have been.

Perhaps it’s because Cheney’s political career was centered in a district where he didn’t really have to worry about winning elections (it was a given) so to hell with what pesky voters who disagree thought. But his attitude towards power was coupled with a dismissive concept of responsibility. True, he gave the country someone at the top who was preparing for worst case scenarios — and that was a useful role. But his contemptuous attitude towards the concept of responsibility to public opinion and responsibility for the results of his actions — or inactions — is one that hopefully Democrats, independents and Republicans will never ever again allow to be so close to America’s levers of power again.

On this Sunday here’s something to be truly thankful for: that Dick Cheney never became President.

Indeed.

It used to be considered polite for former Presidents and Vice-Presidents to keep their mouths shut, at least for the first year or so of a new Administration. Cheney would do well to follow that advice.