The Former Vice President Won’t Shut Up

Do you notice that the guy who couldn’t shoot straight, won’t shut up and maybe needs to have an indictment stuck in his big fat mouth?
by Charlie Leck

Vice Presidents normally just survive the terms of office of their Presidents. They generally keep quiet and it’s almost always the best policy to do that. Vice President Joe Biden may have learned that lesson this week – a mere 100 days into his boss’s term at the helm. Biden’s comments about the current virus scare were very absurd and very incorrect. Joe still has some egg on his face that won’t seem to wash off.

But, take the case of Dick Cheney. He’s been babbling and making noise and splashing egg on his face for decades upon decades. I’m not a great student of U.S. History, but a pretty good one; and I don’t remember any other Vice Presidents shooting one of their hunting partners in the face and not feeling a mote of embarrassment about it.

Dick Cheney scowled at the press all during his tenure as Vice President; yet he fed them plenty of information and fire that could come back to haunt him.

Now, far removed from office, he has not followed the established precedent that former Vice Presidents go silently into the night and keep their traps shut.

He’s still thundering!

Even though his favorability rating is racing toward zero (or the toilet –whichever way you’d like to look at it), Cheney continues to speak out against the current President. The guy who, on paper, was his boss is keeping his mouth tightly shut. Republicans at the top wish Dick Cheney would do the same.

I think I know a sure-fire way to shut the former Vice President down. Shove an indictment in his big, fat trap. Then let’s hear him explain away his violations of the law regarding torture and illegal detainment of prisoners who had been charged with nothing at all.

The former Vice President should bear in mind that there is a very large number of people who are of the opinion that this should happen; that is, that he should be indicted. They are also of the belief that the former Vice President needs to spend some time in prison himself. If you don’t believe the movement to indict and take Cheney to trial is more than a small faction, just spend some time on one of the best alternative news sources in the nation – AlterNet.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, as fine a presidential historian as we’ve ever come upon, feels that Cheney is fighting for his legacy. He is not going to run for office. He’s freed from politics.

“His main constituency right now,” Goodwin says, “is history.”

Well, I say, a good federal trial regarding his malfeasance in office will provide us with plenty of information with which we can then establish where he belongs in history.

Some one, perhaps his lawyers, should advise this fellow to slink away and be quiet. That, I suppose, is like telling the proverbial tree not to make any noise when it falls in the forest, which perhaps it doesn’t when there is no one around to hear. Is this point too subtle for Mr. Cheney?

Then, again, perhaps the former Vice President would look good in stripes!