It turns out that Dick Cheney doesn't really care how you pronounce his name, Chain-ee or Chee-nee, either one is okay. I'd been wondering about this lately, because Chris Matthews has taken to pronouncing Cheney's name "Chee-nee" in a very deliberate, sort of bossy way, as if he knew something we didn't. But apparently it doesn't matter how you say it.
As long as you go on saying it.
Dick Cheney won't go away. It's hard to adjust to life out of the spotlight, and apparently he can't. "If I don't speak out, then where do we find ourselves?" he says. This guy is not going to lick his wounds and slink off to his kennel, no way. It's just like the old days: George Bush was busy relaxing, so somebody had to do the job.
Cheney is speaking up to remind us:
- what things were like after 9/11
- that waterboarding works
- that the Republican Party is not really in trouble
He's here, he says, lest we forget.
To which I say, amen.
In some fabulous way, Cheney's ubiquity is an ongoing reminder of the eight years he was the key man in the administration; given the short attention span of most Americans, we must salute him for sticking around. He's a living memorial to the Bush years. He gives new meaning to the words "Never Again."
Sunday on Face the Nation, he did his thing: he feinted, he evaded, he alluded, he lied. He insisted there was proof that waterboarding worked in those famous files he can't quite produce. He said he would be glad to say this to Congress, although not necessarily under oath. He was asked if George Bush knew what Cheney knew about the decision to authorize torture, and he answered, "Um, I certainly, um, yeah, I have every reason to believe he knew, uh, he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. This was a presidential-level decision and the decision went to the President and he signed off on it."
Would he choose Rush Limbaugh or Colin Powell be the face of the Republican Party? Rush Limbaugh, he said. After all, Powell had endorsed Obama.
Classic Cheney. He is becoming practically Nixonian in his inability to be anything but his own charming self.
At the top of the show Sunday, Cheney made clear that he was on the show because he'd been asked, and added, "It's nice to know you're still loved." He was no doubt making what passes in his circle for a joke; but as we know, there are no jokes. Cheney wants to be loved. That's okay with me. You gotta love the guy.