Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Final Insult in the Bush-Cheney Marriage
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/magazine/the-final-insult-in-the-bush-cheney-marriage.html?src=recg&pagewanted=all&_r=0<snip>
Now I am going to have to have the talk with the vice president, Bush said. That was the sort of unpleasant business that for eight years he had left to Cheney. It was the vice president who delivered the bad news, for instance, to Paul ONeill and Donald Rumsfeld when they were fired.
Not since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had two Americans in public office collaborated with such lasting effect as George Bush and Dick Cheney. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, they confidently steered America through its most traumatic years since Vietnam, erecting a national-security apparatus that their successors have largely adopted and prosecuting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that, members of the administration take pains to emphasize, toppled two brutal regimes. The continuing effects of their tenure are evident in some of the most vexing issues of today what to do with the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, how to balance the need for surveillance with the rights of private citizens and whether to use even a modest amount of force in Syria when the American public is tired of the costs of two long wars.
But if it was a partnership of enduring and controversial consequences, it was also one that was widely misunderstood. That their final hours together would be consumed by a private argument over the pardon of Scooter Libby underscores the distance the two men had traveled. Over the course of conducting hundreds of interviews with key players in the Bush White House, including Cheney, and examining thousands of pages of never-released notes, memos and other internal documents, I came to see a relationship that differs substantially from the commonly accepted narrative. Even in the early days, when a young, untested president relied on the advice of his seasoned No. 2, Cheney was hardly the puppeteer that critics imagined. To the extent that the vice president exerted outsize influence in the first term, he became more marginalized over the course of the second, as Bush sought new paths to right his troubled presidency.
Bush and Cheney were never quite friends. They did not see each other out of the workplace. Cheney did not spend social weekends at Camp David. On election night in 2000 and again in 2004, they watched the returns separately at first, coming together only late in the evening when they thought they could publicly claim victory. They werent personally close, said Ari Fleischer, the presidents first White House press secretary. Cheney didnt go jogging with George Bush. He was everything that Bush designed when he chose Dick Cheney to be counselor meaning a veteran Washington hand who would give him straight advice.
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
8 replies, 1252 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (4)
ReplyReply to this post
8 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
The Final Insult in the Bush-Cheney Marriage (Original Post)
malaise
Oct 2013
OP
Laelth
(32,017 posts)1. Interesting. Thanks for posting. k&r n/t
-Laelth
malaise
(269,211 posts)2. Long but very interesting
Well that was a complete waste of 3 minutes of my life
Journeyman
(15,042 posts)4. "Cheney didn’t go jogging with George Bush." Too bad. . .
he'd never have made it to the end of the driveway.
malaise
(269,211 posts)6. That would have been a blessing in disguise
Warpy
(111,367 posts)5. Cheney couldn't go jogging with Stupid, not the physical wreck he was
Cheney also had to realize just how limited an intellect Stupid represented, able to read speeches and parrot his mother's lies about everybody who wasn't them. I can't see them associating out of work, Cheney couldn't keep up with Stupid's exercise and Stupid couldn't keep up with Cheney's twisted intellect.
It's to his credit that he finally did realize that the PNAC crowd, of which he was not a member, had given him rotten foreign policy advice, especially regarding the Middle East.
It's too bad that by then, it was far too late.
jsr
(7,712 posts)7. Fuck them.
2001: Cheney bypasses Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and others in November, bringing a draft order establishing military tribunals and skirting the Geneva Conventions directly to Bush.
2003: In a meeting with aides in March, Bush is given intelligence regarding Saddam Husseins location. He orders everyone to leave but Cheney, who advises him to order the strike that starts the war.
malaise
(269,211 posts)8. Wish I could rec your post