In the past I have made quite clear my admiration for former Vice
President Dick Cheney. So it will come as no surprise that I
think his speech today at the American Enterprise Institute was
pitch perfect. But I will say something stronger: I think that if
somebody came to the subject fresh, with no preconceived notions,
and watched (as so many of us did) President Barack Obama and
Cheney back to back today, dueling across town, that open-minded
person would believe that Cheney made a far stronger case. And
oddly enough, Cheney's very lack of "style points" served only to
emphasize rather than detract from the simple, straightforward
weight of his message.
Obama looked and sounded like a politician posing for cameras
while self-consciously striving for the loftiest rhetoric and the
most subtle but hurtful denigrations of those who disagreed with
him. His "moral preening" factor, though, was patently obvious,
and a bit offensive.
Cheney looked and sounded like a man who is all business, all
seriousness -- and wise. He did not pause to emphasize applause
lines. He did not pose for the cameras. He did not raise or lower
his voice for effect. He just gave us his message straight and
unvarnished, and almost in a monotone. But the words were
powerful enough to overcome all that, and the meaning of the
words more powerful still.
Listen to Obama's speech, and you come away empty, as if you just
were given the intellectual equivalent of meringue. Listen to
Cheney, and you come away thinking you have just had the
intellectual equivalent of a full, stick-to-your-ribs,
meat-and-potatoes meal.
It really was a remarkable thing to be there at AEI. There was
palpable tension int eh room as Obama failed, and failed, and
failed for 28 whole minutes after his scheduled time to start his
comments -- clearly trying to upstage Cheney by waiting to speak
all the way until just beore Cheney himself was scheduled to
start. There was a sense of something momentous, of a real
challenge-and-response sort of situation. It was, if an AEI event
can be so described, exciting. And it became even more
of a mano-a-mano thing when Obama went on not for the
pre-advertised 35 minutes, but for 50 whole minutes, as if
deliberately trying to squeeze all life out of Cheney's own
address.
Obama's gambit didn't work. It merely served to ratchet up the
anticipation for Cheney's response. (Cheney was sort of funny
when he opened by quipping that Obama never would have survived
being in the House subject to its "five minute rule" for floor
speeches.) And it became all the more remarkable when Cheney
seemed to answer OBama point for point for point, often
responding to the exact language Obama used -- even though
Cheney's speech was handed out BEFORE Obama began talking, so it
clearly was not a spur-of-the-moment tit for tat. In sum, the
fact that Cheney so well anticipated Obama's screed served to
emphaszie how well Cheney had thought through what he wanted to
say.
And what Cheney wanted to say, and did say, was utterly superb.
Watch the whole speech for yourself,
here. (Do NOT read the speech if you can watch it. The text
on the page is as prepared, not as delivered. Cheney cut out one
gag paragraph at the beginning about heading a search for a new
trustee, but inserted an EXTREMLY important paragraph later. In
fact, here is his insertion, about the CIA people who did the
interrogations: They were "“especially prepared to apply
techniques within the boundaries of their training and the limits
of the law. Torture was never permitted, and the methods were
given careful, legal review before they were approved.
Interrogators had authoritative guidance on the line between
toughness and torture, and they knew to stay on the right side of
it.”
Finally, as an aside, I loved Cheney's shot at the NY Times,
here:
Our government prevented attacks and saved lives through the
Terrorist Surveillance Program, which let us intercept calls
and track contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and persons
inside the United States. The program was top secret, and for
good reason, until the editors of the New York Times got it and
put it on the front page. After 9/11, the Times had spent
months publishing the pictures and the stories of everyone
killed by al-Qaeda on 9/11. Now here was that same newspaper
publishing secrets in a way that could only help al-Qaeda. It
impressed the Pulitzer committee, but it damn sure didn't serve
the interests of our country, or the safety of our people.
Okay, that's enough for now. Hail to Richard Cheney, a great
American.
