Jon Meacham of Newsweek must really hate America to will this on us...
It would make some sense for Dick Cheney to keep popping up like a groundhog to make dire pronouncements for the groundwork to be laid for a Presidential bid.
I think it makes more sense to keep a profile and keep reminding folks who owe him fairly large for keeping political bodies buried to keep the heat off of his hand in the Administration's less than legal footwork, especially as trials are being moved forward, where evidence will have to be submitted, and boy howdy will there be some sparks flying then, but I can see how some would love to see Dick run.
It would be a referendum on the handling of foreign policy and economic policy. It would be a referendum on how America would face itself. It would also be an unmitigated disaster to my own party, and to America in general.
One point that Meacham makes, and then ignores in his op-ed:
Historically the country has tended to muddle through somewhere between the extremes of right and left. There is often much virtue in conducting public life by fits and starts. When things drift too far one way in ideological terms, Americans are pretty good about tugging them back to the middle.
Indeed, the country does tend to muddle through the middle, but we are NOT there yet. Not with Tea Parties screaming with Birthers and Flat Taxers and God's Party on one side, and a Centerist Democrat in the White House, and years of soaking in the worst of Voodoo Economics and what has been the worst looting of the American treasury, ever.
It would sell a lot of magazines though. And it would keep journalists running in circles and with experts paid for prognostication, and in an orgy of speculation. While he may not think that Palin nor Huckabee would pull Obama Right, in this case, he far more Right than a good many Democrats are comfortable with anyhow. And that the Rabid Right doesn't recognize that pragmatism--a virtue that they claim to admire until it happens to be a Democrat in office--is a damn shame.
We do need a far more Centerist approach in this nation. We need that middle of the road--and we have NOT had it for some time, so swinging from the Grover Norquist inspired orgy of Starving the Beast is a welcome change, and possibly getting our economy and our foreign policy back from the brink of teetering between gunboats and the bully pulpit is likewise welcome.
Putting Cheney into the mix would not sway anyone more middle of the road--Cheney embodies an approach to economic and foreign policy and to our Constitution that is not just Right, but downright dangerous to the health of the nation--and I doubt that he will swing Moderates to rejoin the party.
Which makes me wonder. Why does Jon Meacham hate my party and the country so to suggest this disastrous and ill-formed idea?
Originally posted on Mon Nov 30, 2009 at 02:51:00 AM EST at The Motley Moose
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