Cheney: "I Don't Have Any Idea" Why I'm Unpopular

Dick Cheney tells a Wyoming paper, via Think Progress, that he can't understand why people don't like him:

How do you explain your low approval rating?

"I don't have any idea. I don't follow the polls.

"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. 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.

"First and foremost among those is to defend the nation. If you're going to follow the polls, you are going to change your policy every week when the poll comes out. Secondly, I think you're adversely affected by the fact that you can get just about any result you want out of a poll.

"My own experience has been, 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."

Read the whole thing.

Comments

[sixx]

Cheney: "I Don't Have Any Idea" exactly.

[JeanPaulSatire]

Därth Cheney claims it's possible that "you can get just about any result you want out of a poll."

OK, then why can't Därth point to results that indicated he's popular?

[SparkyDash]

good one, JeanPaul!

[jazzofcourse08]

No, Really! Republicans are delusional

[TheAnti-Bush]

And why SHOULD he care??? This whole outgoing administration has gotten away with murder and hardly any of us citizens care enough to INSIST that something be done about it!!! It all boils down to accountibility, and, sadly we as a nation are not demanding accountibility for ANYTHING. Bush knows it, Rove knows it and Cheney knows it.. They will walk away from it all and get paid huge money on the speaking circuit or writing books, thumbing their noses at us and laughiing all the way...

[jeffrey678]

He knows! He just doesn't care! Ask him what type of shoe he likes?

[BroadwayBilly]

I'd pay to watch his stoning!

[TheAnti-Bush]

Nah, stoning's too good for them. Give them helmets and guns and parachute them onto the front line in Iraq---just make sure they're wearing Depends.....

[Ariadne]

Pakistan.

[neuron]

Good googly mooglies-
There were exactly 666 posts to this story when I logged on...
Not that I'm superstitious, but I think I'm gonna look for the Holy Water; if I can't find it, the Captain
Morgan will just have to do...

[haramagoti]

It's your refusal to take so much as a look into the mirror Mr. Cheney, a refusal to acknowledge truth on any level whatsoever.

[bby328]

"I don't have any idea. I don't follow the polls. . . sorry"

Tongue in pork chop cheek. . . Chip and Chineey

[radicalready]

He doesn't follow polls other than those he directs be taken.

this sob is evil.

i hope he can never walk the street again without looking over his shoulder.

bounty say i

[anastasiabeaverhousen]

Evi l, thy name is Cheney.

[keepemhonest]

The worst thing Ford did was pardon Nixon... Nixon was a criminal and the country was deprived sending a criminal to prison.

Cheney is also a criminal.

[winnie47]

The only way to stop criminal activity in government is to actually convict someone. Nixon was a criminal, and he walked. Rove was an intern in the Nixon administration. Cheney was chief of staff on the Ford White House, not to mention his days in the CIA. They learned their crooked behavior from the Nixon bunch, learned there was no punishment for government crooks, and applied for jobs in a new administration. How about we break the cycle of corrupt government? Jail to the (ex) Chief, and the puppet-master, Cheney!

[TheAnti-Bush]

Winnie, you are absolutely right.....it's just that nobody cares enuf to do the right thing.....

[preemptivelove]

i haven't heard about the universal praise thing regarding nixon.

[keepemhonest]

preemptivelove: The "universal praise thing regarding Nixon" exists ONLY in Di*ck*wad's mind ... right next to Sad*d*am's W*M*D's.

[anastasiabeaverhousen]

Right next to: "history will treat gwb as a good president"....instead of an abject fail ure, which he is and always will be.

[diogenes1967]

I think that what Cheney meant was that history now praises Ford for pardoning Nixon and sparing the country a long and divisive trial of RMN. And generally, he's Cheney is right abt. that.

What should give Cheney pause though (just in case he's angling for a preemptive pardon of his own) is that Ford researched the issue very carefully and thee was some quote he had to the effect that the mere acceptance of the pardon is an admission of guilt.

[ObjectiveRealist]

[
"I don't follow the polls. 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. 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."
]
A person with any respect for his own intellect could not have offered such a fatuous reply. I'm sure Cheney was a capable underling appointee to Nixon, Ford and Reagan, but absolutely he does not have what it takes to be a leader, as that attempt at fundamental evasion of his responsibility to his employer very concisely proves. What your employer considers a "good job" is not as fickle nor amorphous as the difference between Poll Results Week 1 and Poll Results Week 2. Claiming that equivalence is so dishonest, it's sub-humanly stupid.

[NotWaldo]

"Don't Like Our Policies ? Just call 1-800-Go- F**k-Yrself"

Your Vice-President