For the past several months I've been telling anyone who would listen (an audience made up mostly of house pets and young grandchildren) that I thought the best candidate the Republicans could offer for the presidency in 2008 is Dick Cheney. I know, I know, he doesn't want it. All the more reason to urge him to accept. As Plato writes in his Republic anyone who actually wants the job should be suspected of base motives. Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard agrees:
As professions of lack of interest in the presidency go, Cheney's is unusually strong. Yet there's every reason he should change his mind. He's not too old. President Reagan was 69 when he took office. Despite past heart trouble, Cheney hasn't had a serious health problem for years. Besides, his health has nothing to do with his refusal to consider running in 2008. He's an experienced candidate at the national level and an effective debater with a wry sense of humor.
But there's a larger reason Cheney should seek to succeed Bush. In all likelihood, the 2008 election, like last year's contest, will focus on foreign policy. The war on terror, national security, and the struggle for democracy will probably dominate American politics for a decade or more. Bush's legacy, or at least part of it, will be to have returned these issues to a position of paramount concern for future presidents. And who is best qualified to pursue that agenda as knowledgeably and aggressively as Bush? The answer is the person who helped Bush formulate it, namely Cheney.
Cheney should not commit to run, in our view, but the party should ask him, behind the scenes, to be its candidate in the event no one else of comparable consequence emerges. Right now, no one on the Republican horizon has the star power, expertise, credibility, and "gravitas" (forgive me) that Cheney has. He would be a shoo-in for the nomination, and perhaps best of all, a Cheney candidacy would drive the Left to stratospheric altitudes of hate-inspired insanity and heretofore unplumbed depths of political depravity. It would be great fun to watch.