The thrice rejected Dick Cheney

BOSTON — It is curious that former Vice President Dick Cheney should emerge as the No. 1 attack dog of the Republican Party, biting the leg of President Barack Obama again and again in speeches. It is curious because long before the 2008 elections, when Americans decidedly turned the page on the Bush-Cheney era, it was fellow Republicans who rejected Cheney and the worldview he represents.

True, Cheney emerged in the beginning of this decade as the most powerful vice president this country has ever seen. Because the newly elected president, George W. Bush, was inexperienced and intellectually lazy, it seemed a good thing that such a longtime public servant as Cheney, who had served three Republican presidents, would be in place to look after “the kid,” as GOP insiders often called the younger Bush.

Cheney had enormous influence after 9/11, and the neo-conservatives were ready with their plan for American world dominance and reliance on military force to promote democracy — a doctrine that the wise George H.W. Bush had rejected, but that the younger Bush adopted.

In those early years, Cheney had what almost amounted to a shadow cabinet, with his own staff and his own people attending national security meetings. It amounted to a separate power center with operatives seemingly more loyal to the vice president than to the White House.

From these heights, and because George W. Bush was a careless president who would make pronouncements, but then fail to follow up, Cheney was able to shoot down initiatives that the State Department, under Colin Powell, had made. Cheney was aided in this endeavor by his former mentor, Donald Rumsfeld, in the key position of secretary of defense.

Cheney and Rumsfeld were able to hinder and pull back initiatives on North Korea and the Middle East, undermine Colin Powell and make end runs around the administration.

But in Bush’s second term it became obvious that Cheney was being more and more marginalized and ignored and Donald Rumsfeld was fired. Condoleezza Rice, after a long somnolence as national security adviser, came awake as secretary of state and began to push back against Cheney. Unlike Powell, she had the president’s ear.

The Bush administration was already moving away from torture, the use of which Cheney now so adamantly advocates, and was looking for ways to shut down Guantanamo, which was beginning to resemble a Dick Cheney theme park in the public imagination.

It was highly symbolic of the new day when Bush refused to pardon Cheney’s henchman, I. Lewis “ Scooter” Libby, who had been convicted of lying and obstruction of justice in the outing of CIA’s Valerie Plame.

Thus, as Colin Powell has pointed out, when Cheney rails against Obama, “he’s disagreeing with President Bush’s policies,” at least the policies of Bush’s second term.

Cheney is also attacking what the GOP advocated in the last election. The Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, not only promised to shut down Guantanamo, but was adamantly against the use of torture, which Cheney now defends. Had the Republicans won the last election, Cheney’s views would be as rightfully rejected as they are now by Obama.

McCain contends that he would have had a plan for where to put terrorist detainees before he announced the closure of Guantanamo, and that Obama should have had one too. Given the trouble Obama is having, even with his own party, concerning where to move the prisoners, it’s hard to disagree with McCain on this point. But one would hope that McCain would now join Colin Powell in speaking out against Cheney’s worldview, to join the battle for the Republican Party’s soul.

When Cheney wonders aloud whether Colin Powell is even to be considered a Republican anymore, Powell counters by saying: “There is another version of the Republican Party ready to emerge once again.”

We are about to be inundated with self-serving books by former Bush administration officials. Cheney, Rice, Karl Rove, Rumsfeld, et al are scribbling away, and we will have time to regret at leisure what we elected in haste nine years ago.

But the real horror in listening to Cheney defend torture is the realization that this is the old siren-song of totalitarianism: These are dangerous times and we are afraid, and therefore we have the right to take away your most basic liberties. The real horror is that someone like Cheney should come so close to the presidency.

The only comfort is that Cheney’s views have been thrice rejected.

More dispatches from columnist HDS Greenway:

National security vs. public’s right to know

Rory Stewart discusses why what worked in Iraq might not in Afghanistan

The Arab world needs to stop banning books and movies about Jews