Does Cheney Think He Is Churchill?
The Cheney-Churchill comparison has not yet been made. But it is coming. Sooner or later every conservative thinks he is the next Churchill.
Dick Cheney is on TV every day. Even calls in to a radio talk show in North Dakota. Not only is it out of character for him, it is against the conventions of American politics for a former VP to criticize a new President so soon after the election. Perhaps Cheney is scared that he will be indicted for war crimes and is offering a pre-emptive defense.Torture is not just any war crime: it carries the death penalty. Maybe it is not his own indictment that he fears but that of his former aides like Addington. Or he is drumming up publicity for his book. He could just be bored after his retirement. Is Lynne Cheney making him mow the lawn, if he stays home?
But I think it is something else. In his own mind, Cheney is the Winston Churchill of our time. Before he became Prime Minister, Churchill was out of favor for a long time. He was too uncompromising and old fashioned. His ideas were unpopular. The Conservative Party all but abandoned him. He warned about the dangers posed by Hitler. But only after War broke out did the British turn to him for leadership.
Cheney must think that if he sticks to his story, America will turn to him in its hour of need. In fact, he seems to be preparing himself for a political comeback, almost gleefully predicting another terrorist attack on American soil.
Churchill was a great orator, one of the best writers of his generation. Even when his political views were out of favor, he was admired for his command of history and his razor-sharp wit. With his dour disposition and the sideways smile, Cheney is unable to charm anyone.
Churchill did not just exhort his country to go to war. He served honorably in the military himself. Cheney had other priorities. In his youth Churchill fought in the Boer war in South Africa, where he learned the importance of basing strategy on reality. He was a big supporter of the intelligence services.
Cheney on the other hand, bullied the CIA into producing fake evidence of the Iraqi nuclear program. He refused to believe what the best informed people-the UN weapons inspectors- were saying. It is not just that he used fake intelligence to deceive the country into an un-necessary war: he was duped by it himself. Churchill was good at presenting a defeat as a victory to rally the public during war (Dunkirk) but never allowed himself to be fooled.
It does appear that more than defensiveness is motivating Cheney. He seems to think of himself as a man of destiny, a lone voice warning the country of the dangers of its ways. If, God forbid, there is a terrorist attack on the US, he will claim that he predicted it.
Choice Churchill Put downs
From “I’ll Be Sober In the Morning”by Chris Lamb
The conservative Winston Churchill was often at odds with Clement Attlee, leader of the Labor Party, which advocated a greater role for government in economic policy. Churchill once entered a men’s room to find Attlee standing at the urinal. Churchill took a position at the other end of the trough.
“Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?” Attlee asked.
“That’s right,” Churchill responded. “Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it.”
Playwright George Bernard Shaw invited Winston Churchill to the first night of his newest play, enclosing two tickets: “One for yourself and one for a friend – if you have one.”
Churchill wrote back, saying he couldn’t make it, but could he have tickets for the second night – “if there is one.”
Winston Churchill had been drinking heavily at a party when he bumped into Bessie Braddock, a Socialist Member of Parliament.
“Mr. Churchill, you are drunk,” Braddock said harshly.
Churchill paused and said, “And Bessie, you are ugly. You are very ugly. I’ll be sober in the morning.”
Lady Astor once shouted at Churchill, “If you were my husband, I’d put poison in your coffee.”
His response: “If I were your husband, I’d drink it.”
Cheney’s best line:
When told that 70% of the public disapproves of the war in Iraq, Cheney asked
So..?
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