Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen – Sat Feb 13, 3:09 pm ET
Former Vice President Cheney will appear on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, and it’s a safe bet what he will say: President Barack Obama projects weakness to terrorists and puts American lives at risk.
It’s the kind of brutal charge — nuance-free and politically explosive — that has become a Cheney specialty since he left office 13 months ago.
Cheney’s broadsides on Afghanistan policy, detention and surveillance policies, and Obama’s general philosophy about the U.S. role in a dangerous world inevitably dominate the news. No other figure in Republican politics has equal ability to drive debate on national security, rally Obama critics and force the administration to respond. On Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden will be countering Cheney on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
But the backlashes to Cheney have become every bit as vicious as his own attacks. Some nonpartisan national security analysts have called Cheney’s critiques distorted and even demagogic. Some prominent liberal commentators have called them unpatriotic, and possibly mentally unbalanced. Even a conservative Republican senator respected on foreign policy issues recently called Cheney’s criticism of Obama unfair.
The former vice president’s success in driving the Obama debate has prompted a secondary debate of its own: Why does Cheney do it?
Cheney associates say he abandoned plans for a sedate post-Bush administration retirement of fly-fishing and memoir writing because he is genuinely concerned that Obama is a weak leader who is responding to political pressures in modifying war and terror policies that Cheney himself was instrumental in crafting.
Cheney believes his own words apply opposite pressures that can either force Obama to think twice or hold him accountable if he doesn’t.
“You’ve seen the national-security debate shift, both because of the facts and the specifics that he has been able to marshal and speak about, but also because he’s given strength and support to others who are speaking out,” said a source close to Cheney who declined to be named.
“You’ve seen the American people have a much better understanding of what the different policy choices are and were than they would have if he hadn’t been speaking out. It’s forced the Obama administration to be much more rigorous in defending its own policy decisions and choices,” this adviser added.
But Cheney’s decision to stay as pugilist in the political ring has a cost. The kind of elder-statesman aura that sometimes falls around high officials once out of office won’t soon be enjoyed by Cheney.
This may not matter much to a politician who seems indifferent to the indignation of editorial boards and relishes offending liberal pieties. His natural temperament is goaded by his influential adviser, daughter Liz Cheney, who in television appearances is even more combative than her father in taking on Obama.
