Dick Cheney's interview with his hometown paper yesterday was a sad testament for those in power who are clearly intoxicated from it. Mr. Cheney has been in Washington and out of Wyoming for many years and has clearly added to the corrosiveness of American politics that we all unfortunately know too well. Cheney is one of the most unpopular elected officials of all time, yet he seems not to care, nor even knows why.
From RawStory:
There is nothing wrong with making decisions that go against the grain, leaders do do that from time to time. Yet they still lead with the consent of the governed and Cheney has made it consistently clear he has no regard for the citizens of this country. He proved it from the start of the Administration when he had secret policy meetings with big corporations and excluded advocacy groups, he proved it when he helped send soldiers to war where he literally profited as a beneficiary of Halliburton activities and he proved it when he promoted and condoned torture.
Vice President Dick Cheney, during an interview with the Casper Star-Tribune in his home state of Wyoming, defended his decisions during his two terms and dismissed the low poll numbers that have followed his administration with the continued occupation of Iraq and the tanking economy. He told his interviewer that a politician can't change his policy every time a new poll comes out.
"My experience has been over the years that if you govern based upon poll numbers, upon trying to improve your overall poll ratings, people I’ve encountered who do that are people who won’t make tough decisions," he said. "And the job the president has and those who advise him is to make those basic fundamental decisions for the nation that nobody else is authorized or able to make."
"My own experience has been," he added, "in the administrations I've served in, for example Gerald Ford, a man who made a very, very tough decision when he decided to pardon Nixon, something that was extremely unpopular, universally condemned, but 30 years later he was praised as having done the right thing. So I think you need to have that kind of approach to it rather than watch the polls on any given day."
"I think the facts are that we were faced with a unique set of circumstances in the aftermath of 9/11," he continued, "and we had to make some very tough decisions that not everybody agreed with. But I think they were the right decisions, especially in terms of defending the homeland.
Cheney's list of impeachable and lesser offenses goes on and on, but one thing that remains the same is the size of the deluded bubble that he rode into the Naval Observatory on.
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