Dick Cheney Eats Kittens

Someone in my apartment complex has that bumper sticker on their car. It's almost as good as the shirt that says:

Palin
Guns
Babies
Jesus

Which is, of course, brilliant because you can wear the shirt if you love her or hate her. The Cheney sticker is almost as good and sounds similar to the stuff IMAO comes up with regarding Cheney. What he actually titled his memoir was In My Time, which, while less punchy, probably helped with people continuing to take him seriously. On the whole, it was a pretty good book, though I'm not usually one to read political memoirs.

I like what I know of him, for the most part. He's a terrible squish on social issues and I'd mark that down to him having the vague "spirituality" that passes for Episcopalian convictions nowadays. I don't know what he thinks about abortion, but I'd bet he's well to the left on that as he is on homosexual issues and the topic of women in the military.

On the other hand, very little of his political influence has had anything to do with those topics as far as I know and he's remarkably firm on holding the line in national security questions and military matters (always excepting his misguided "feminist" principles in that arena). He also sounds, from all accounts like an exceptional deputy or executive officer. He has no problems expressing his opinion and is willing to stand on principle, which means that when he can't support a decision he's more likely to honourably resign than to undercut you.

There wasn't a whole lot of new information in his book that isn't available in the earlier biography about him that I read by Stephen Hayes, but it is interesting to get his personal opinions on a few matters of import.

He's both complimentary of Colin Powell as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs as well as scathing in his criticism of his actions as Secretary of State. In a similar vein, he's able to express vehement disagreement with his president while being generally favourable in his estimation throughout the book. The general effect conveyed to me was one of honesty; that he will speak his mind, but give credit where it is due.

I'm not a huge fan of a lot of what Bush the Younger did during his time in office, but most of my quibbles arose from policy areas that were not within the purview of the vice president, so there isn't much to comment about in that regard in this book. There isn't much said about No Child Left Behind, for example, or "compassionate conservatism" generally. I do think Cheney was mistaken about the burning need for the TARP bailouts, which he defends at the end of the book, but on the larger issues Cheney was more intimately involved with, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and combating terrorist attacks, he was the right man in the right job.

The one big area where he breaks from what critics would call the party line is when he criticises the actions taken (or not taken) to stop nuclear proliferation by North Korea. He makes some devastating remarks about Condaleeza Rice and her failure to take a harder line with the Norks and, by implication, is quite critical of the president for his failure to do so as well. He is also clearly not a fan of Robert Gates and was disappointed about Rumsfeld being pushed out, but the bulk of critical material is reserved for the State Department and its various heads.

Cheney is, I think, an admirable man but one who ought to beware of the pitfalls of excessive loyalty. The book is a good one, but unless one has a penchant for political memoirs or an interest in the details of the administration of Bush the Younger or perhaps Dick Cheney particularly, it's not a book that one must not miss.