I was watching MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews the other night, and a Democratic congresswoman made the claim that Cheney's criticisms of Obama's performance in office are unprecedented. No former Vice-President ever maligned the sitting president as has Dick Cheney maligned President Obama.
Well, I had to laugh at the shortness of the congresswoman's memory. Does she not remember former Vice-President Al Gore's famous rant against President George Bush in which he screamed into the microphone that:
"He betrayed this country! He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place."
Does she not recall this 2006 speech by Gore in which he all but accused the Bush administration of criminality:
Does she not remember any of Al Gore's other attacks on Bush archived here?
What Cheney is doing, obviously, is defending the Bush administration from the incessant aspersions the President levels against it in almost every speech he gives. Had the Obama administration not felt the need to disparage the Bush White House at every opportunity Cheney would have no doubt been content to remain in quiet retirement on his Wyoming ranch.
Liberals apparently believe that Mr. Obama should be free to slap his predecessors around as petulantly and unfairly as he likes and Bush and Cheney should just sit there and take it.
Well, that's not going to happen. If the Democrats don't like Cheney's outspokenness then they should just do what most other administrations have done, certainly what the Bush administration did, and refrain from taking cheap shots at the people they've succeeded.
RLC
