Dick Cheney: the Only Person in the World Who Doesn't Know Why He's Unpopular

Vice President Dick Cheney has just told a Wyoming newspaper that he doesn't know why he's unpopular. His exact phrase was, "I don't have any idea. I don't follow the polls."

Well, okay, first of all, knowing why you're unpopular has nothing to do with following the polls. The polls don't ask "why" you dislike Dick Cheney, just whether you dislike Dick Cheney. And then all they do is just report that your approval is only 15%. Knowing why you're unpopular is easy. It simply requires following the news. Or having a honest sense of your strengths and weaknesses. Doing both of these things would seem to be a great quality to possess for being a good vice president of the United States. Not having them risks getting you 15% in popularity.

Further...of course Dick Cheney follows the polls. Politicians follow polls more readily than pigs follow a trail of garbage. That doesn't mean they all act on what the poll says. But sure as the sun rises, politicians follow polls. And this administration, perhaps more than any in U.S. history, has made polls its lifeblood and followed them in order to appeal to its base and find issues to divide the country.

Of course, the biggest proof that Mr. Cheney was lying and that he actually does follow polls is that he answered the question. When asked to explain his low approval rating, he didn't respond, "What??! I'm unpopular?? Really?!!!! No way. You're serious. No way. Yipes, I had no idea." No, instead, he answered the question. And acknowledged that he knew he was, indeed, unpopular.

He just said he didn't know why.

Of course, two weeks ago, he did have an answer. (Okay, I'm not saying he had the right answer. Or even a plausible one. Just "an" answer.) Mr. Cheney explained to Chris Wallace on Fox, ""Eventually you wear out your welcome in this business." Forgetting for a moment that he made himself and the Bush administration sound like the last season of the sitcom, "Mr. Belvedere," it disingenuously ignores the reality that Bill Clinton left office with his approval rating at 65%. And that's after he had been impeached. Dick Cheney is leaving with his approval wallowing at 15%. Multiply that by four, and he's still below Bill Clinton.

So, maybe Dick Cheney really doesn't know why he's so unpopular.

Since it's the end of the year, and since I believe in public service and being a good, honorable fellow, I will provide a kindness for Vice President Dick Cheney. I will explain to him why he's unpopular.

Here are 25 reasons to begin with. I trust he's taking notes for the next time he's asked.


1. You pressured the CIA into falsifying information that got the nation involved in the Iraq War.

2. You admitted to approving torture.

3. You promoted spying on American citizens.

4. You repeatedly suggested that America would be greeted as liberators in Iraq and then after that lie became an embarrassment, lied and said you never said that.

5. You pressured the CIA into falsifying information that got the nation involved in the Iraq War. I know I said that before, but you can never say that one enough. Even if all the other reasons didn't exist, it would be enough. It's a really good one.

6. You lead the search team for finding a vice president for George Bush, and named yourself, ushering in an era of selfishness and political manipulation.

7. Your involving America in the Iraq War has cost the country $583 billion dollars. Well, for starters. This is money that could have been used for a good cause: like bailing out Wall Street CEOs.

8. You show a scorn of the U.S. Constitution by suggesting that you are not a part of the Executive Branch of government, nor a part of the Senate, but an island unto yourself.

9. Your involving the nation in the Iraq War has gotten 4,200 Americans killed.

10. You showed a heartless scorn and frozen coldness towards the American public and those 4,200 dead by responding "So what?" when informed that two-thirds of Americans opposed the Iraq War.

11. You held a secret meeting with the heads of oil companies for determining America's energy policies. And you didn't even include America's top expert on energy, Sarah Palin.

12. You helped oversee the collapse of the American economy.

13. You have helped oversee the collapse of America's high-standing around the world.

14. You come across as really mean. Also, snarly, angry and vicious, all qualities contrary to a public who elected your boss pretty much because they think he seemed like the kind of guy they could have a beer with. You seem like the kind of guy who would hit them on the head with a beer bottle. When they weren't looking. After they'd bought you the beer.

15. You began the plan to out a CIA operative who was protecting America by working on counter-intelligence, simply because you didn't like an accurate report her husband wrote.

16. You support the illegal detention of prisoners, eradicating the 1,000-year humanitarian tradition of habeas corpus.

17. Your saying that you don't know why you are unpopular is why you are unpopular. It shows you to be either so cut off from reality as to be near-inhuman, or such a bald-faced liar as would make Pinocchio seem honorable. Saying you don't know why you're unpopular is like the person who punches someone in the eye and goes, "What??! What did I do?!"

18. Your abrasiveness, highlighted by crude swearing at opponents on the "gentleman's club" of the Senate floor, is seen as a leading cause of the breakdown of decency and bi-partisanship in government.

19. You went into hiding and stayed in your undisclosed bunker at the very time America needed transparency and leadership.

20. You seem like you're the real-life equivalent of Darth Vader. Just to be clear, this is different from coming across as "really mean." Grade school principals are "really mean." But after-class detention is different from trying to annihilate human life forms by sucking them into a universal Black Hole.

21. Your Administration ignored a briefing, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S.," and the U.S. got attacked by Bin Laden.

22. You ignore that the U.S. got attacked and that 3,000 people got killed under your Administration's watch, while lying that you kept America safe.

23. You took a proud, honored nation and crushed it so badly that 81% of Americans say the country is seriously off-track. I particularly mention this since you say you don't follow polls.

24. You have retained stock options and deferred salary to Halliburton, of which you were CEO, despite insisting you severed all ties to the company that has received several billion in government contracts from the Iraq War.

25. You shot your 78-year-old friend Harry Whittington in the face, didn't rush with him to the hospital, didn't instantly apologize, and got him to accept responsibility. Sort of like what you've tried to do to the United States.

Anyway, now you know. In case it comes up again. Like at your war crimes trial. Or at lunch.

Happy New Year, though.

Same to America. And a happy one it finally is......

Comments

[tuttlemsm]

"Further...of course Dick Cheney follows the polls"

Furthermore than that, of course Dick Cheney knows why he's unpopular.

He just doesn't care.

[appleknocker]

As much as I despise Cheney, I grudgingly have to admire his contempt for public opinion. To paraphrase Grouch Marx, how can one respect a public which elects people like Cheney?

[PayingAttention]

I'm surprised that you are surprised Mr. Elisberg. For Mr. Cheney all intelligence worth knowing already resides in his head. Any information that conflicts with the absolute truth that only Mr. Cheney is privy to is hardly worth considering. Obviously if you disagree you are wrong.
Were Mr. Cheney to deign to actually read your post he'd scoff at your feeble attempt to use mere facts as an argument to disprove his ultimate truth.
Just because Mr. Cheney has completely contradicted himself on several occasions does not mean he was ever wrong.
So please, give up on the idea that logic can have any hope of disproving "the ultimate truth".

[jnik]

He knows; he just doesn't give a s#!t.

[Bmantra]

Thanks for this article, it is well written and right on the money. I'm glad Darth Cheney, and Emperor Rove are all but gone. They have done more damage to this country,which I love, than any terrorist could dream of.

[flhu]

I am more concerned how, after all this, 15% still approve. Haven't they been paying attention, or is this the percentage that own Halliburton stock?

[scottymac11]

no. 26 You presented your self as an experienced adviser to our president. You were ,in fact, a reverse barometer of world conditions. You advised yourself into a greater fortune while America's withered.

[Taan]

Folks, stop, take a deep breath and go look in the mirror. Half of We The People put Bush and Cheney in the White House, TWICE, albeit with the connivance of the Supremes. Their true colors were well known before the first term was up. Granted, the Democrats threw up a weak candidate but would the ensuing tsunami of events have unfolded as they have with the Bush Administration in the catbird seat? We brag that ours is a democracy of, by and for the people. Not so, with the majority asleep in their ignorance of the world around them.

[Annemariefay]

With all due respect, Taan, Bush/Cheney did not win the 2000 pres. election.
The Supreme Court stopped the vote counting, and gave it to Bush.
There is also more than ample hard evidence that the 2004 election was
rigged, widely. I used to feel like you do--that the American people were
stupid in 2004. I now believe that a majority voted against Bush, but that
dropped rolls, election fraud, and caging changed the outcome.

[smags72]

I am not part of the WE the People you are referencing. Half of us did NOT want to put them in the White House!

[SeriousBlack]

"Their true colors were well known before the first term was up."

I don't really think that is correct. We were just beginning to suspect/realize.

Consider that the 2004 presidential campaigns got under way only less than a year after the Iraq war started, and even by Nov 4 2004, yes things had started to sour but had not gone completely south yet. And, much of the secrecy of the Bush administration had not really been penetrated yet. Add the Faux "News" channel spewing their 24-7 propaganda, a weak Dem candidate (Kerry), the election fraud noted by another poster, and the natural tendency of the American people to WANT to trust their president during a time of war (and don't forget that we were all still in a fair degree of shock from 9/11 - only about 3 years down the road from it on Nov 4 2004), even though we NOW know that trusting Bush/Cheney was a huge mistake...

It isn't really all that hard to see why Bush won in 2004. It is too convenient a talking point to just say "nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah, the American people are ignorant and got what they deserved". Like everything in life, it was way more complicated than that.

[Annemariefay]

Cheney simply doesn't care. Why should he? He's wealthy beyond reach or measure;
he's still alive after multiple heart attacks; he hates the little people (the rest of us) anyway
and thinks we're morons. "Frozen coldness" says it all.

[lunchlady]

He won't care either, unless he spends enough time in court and loses all his money. I would like to see Cheney, Madoff, and many others living in a barracks and digging ditches for the rest of their lives. But it won't happen. They'll keep eating fancy food and playing golf at fabulous resorts and sleeping in fancy beds and so on.

[dogman44]

Their type winds up eating fancy food, playing golf and sleeping in fancy beds even
if they go to prison. They don't go to the same prisons the rest of us do. These are
very special people who need to be protected from the rest of us. Even the lesser
criminals.

[JohnHKennedy]

WILL Rep. KUCINICH Finish What He Started, The Impeachment of Dick Cheney.

The voters who contributed to Kucinich's presidential and re-election campaigns
Want Dennis to File Another Impeachment Resolution
On The First Day Of The Next Session of the House.

Cheney especially. Both B&C is ok.

WEXLER And ALL THE OTHER CO-SPONSORS
Of Kucinich's earlier impeachment resolutions

NEED TO STEP UP & File Their Own Single Article Impeach Resolution one the First Day!

YOU NEED TO FOLLOW THROUGH - GET THIS DONE B4 January 20th.

Your Supporters Need To Know That Your Support For Impeachment
Wasn't Just "Trolling For Donations".

Thank you for you earlier efforts, but Stand UP NOW for the Constitution
and Separation Of Powers.

[TrooAmerican]

ohhh, he knows. c'mon, its just 1 more talking point to hand out to his agenda supporters to pretend ignorance and keep the flow of BS coming for the future trials he'll be in.

[RobertHenryEller]

Dear Mr. Elisberg:

Your first mistake: Your source.

Dick Cheney said, "I don't know." Dick Cheney also said (words to the effect), "There were, and are, WMDs," and "Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11." Dick Cheney is a serial liar. Why give Cheney's "I don't know." and credibility? To write an article re-minding us of his wrongdoing, and listing them. Fair enough. Cheney's crimes cannot be recounted often enough.

What Cheney probably meant by "I don't know," is "I don't really care."

In other words, "So?"

[haramagoti]

Little did we know these points were all on Cheney's "to-do" list.

[markg1956]

What does he care? By default he's been the unelected President for 8 years.

[Stevealmi]

Pull his passport now.

[TLV]

He's probably already gone. Anyone checked?