Methinks He Doth Protest Too Much

On Sunday former Vice President Dick Cheney gave an interview to CNN.  Here are some highlights.

On Lewis Libby, of the infamous "Plamegate" witchhunt:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says his ex-chief of staff, "Scooter" Libby, was left hanging in the wind because George W. Bush didn't pardon him.

Cheney says the issue of pardoning Libby was a source of deep disagreement with Bush as his presidency came to a close. Cheney declines to describe just how heated those differences became.

Cheney does say flatly that Libby is an innocent man who deserves a pardon.

On Rush Limbaugh:

A debate between President Barack Obama and Rush Limbaugh? If it ever happens, Dick Cheney will be in line for a ticket.

"I'd pay to see that," the former vice president said Sunday....

In an interview Sunday on CNN's State of the Nation, Cheney said he disagrees with former Bush Administration speechwriter David Frum's assessment that Limbaugh is "kryptonite" because he drives voters away from the GOP.

"Rush is a good friend. I love him. I think he does great work and has for years," Cheney said. "I think Rush is a good man and serves a very important purpose."

On the Little President's sounding full-scale retreat in the War on Terror:

President Barack Obama has made Americans more vulnerable to attack, former vice president Dick Cheney said Sunday in a trenchant defense of his own....prosecution of the [W'ar on [T]error.

Asked by CNN if Obama had made the nation less safe by dismantling former President George W. Bush's anti-terror policies, Cheney said bluntly: "I do."

In his first television interview since leaving office, Bush's number two blasted Obama's decision to close down the Guantanano Bay prison camp, end harsh interrogations and shutter secret CIA detention sites abroad.

In his latest reversal of Bush policies, Obama Friday dropped the "enemy combatant" designation for terror suspects and vowed to draw on international law for his administration's detention policy at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11," Cheney said.

"I think that's a great success story. It was done legally. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles," he said....

"President Obama campaigned against it all across the country. And now he is making some choices that in my mind will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack."

I think most people would agree that while you cannot deny the track record of success that the Bush Administration posted in preventing any sequels to 9/11.  I think most people would also agree that that record is not something to which the running-mouths of the current administration would want to attract any more attention than they could possibly help given their marked departure from the policies that achieved it.  The war isn't like the economy; it never did, and doesn't to this day, lend itself to the sort of gutter demogoguery that buoyed Red Barry on that rhetorical thermal updraft that lifted him all the way to the White House despite being light-years out of the political mainstream and unqualified to serve as a dog-catcher, much less Commander-in-Chief.

We noted earlier today the not-very-subtle shift of the Obamunists from offense to defense on the economy, an implicit concession that, in the wake of Hogzilla and the 9,000-earmark omnibus swine, they now own it and cannot credibly keep blaming everything on the man who is now happily digging postholes in Crawford, Texas.  It's also a tacit admission of fear that the expectations they raised into outer space during the campaign are boomeraging back to bite them in places that will cause them a whole new kind of PR pain.

Still, you know that old deodorant commercial slogan: "Never let 'em see you sweat."  Competent administrations don't turn the other cheek to the point of catatonia (like the Bushies) but they do understand that public criticism goes with the territory and don't get bogged down with refuting every single opposition barb.  Confident administrations realize that they've got the wind at their backs, the momentum behind them, and disregard the recriminations of has-beens as the irrelevancies they should be considered as.

Where, then, does that leave the Hussein Junta?:

The Obama administration issued a scathing response on Monday to criticism from former Vice President Dick Cheney, calling him part of a "Republican cabal" and saying his economic advice should be ignored.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs used his daily briefing to ridicule Cheney, who said in a CNN interview that President Barack Obama's revamped policies on terrorism suspects would make the United States more vulnerable to attack.

"I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy so they trotted out the next most popular member of the Republican cabal," Gibbs said in a sarcastic tone, referring to the conservative radio talk-show host whom Obama's fellow Democrats have depicted as the new leader of the Republicans.

That would be the Rush Limbaugh that is more popular, and whose audience is now bigger, than ever, thanks to Gibb's boss; and now Gibbs himself.  I don't know who plots their day-to-day media strategy, but suffice it to say, La Clinton Nostra they're not.

The first question that pops to my fertile cerebellum is why is Gibbs being so hyper-defensive?  If he really believes his anti-Big Time trash talk, why respond to Cheney at all?  Isn't he old news?  Didn't the voters reject him and his boss and his party and everything they stand for?  Hasn't the country turned the page to worship the Twelfth Imam of Liberalism?  Surely nothing that the ex-Veep has to say matters anymore, right?  Anybody tuned into that interview would have shaken their heads, heaved a sigh of relief that Cheney's out of power, gone into their Barack The Lord shrine, tooted a few lines of incense, and passed out face-down before Lucifer's graven image.  At least in Robert Gibbs' twisted mind.

Yet there Gibbs was, hysteriating and hyperventilating like Cheney had pissed in his soup.  The latest Gibbs nadir in a whole series of them that make him a prime candidate for Worst White House Press Secretary Of All Time.

If I didn't know better, I'd suggest that the Little President was being monumentally ill-served by this dolt and either call Gibbs into the Oval Office to tell him the facts of politicomedia life at rafter-rattling volume or fire his ass and replace him with somebody who can at least fake the competence this administration so garishly lacks.  But I do know better; at least sufficiently that I have no doubt Gibbs is speaking and behaving precisely as his boss wants him to.  Because he's the sock puppet that says what Red Barry dares not say for himself.

Yep, just the tempermant we need in the individual with prime say over the nuclear command codes.  Now imagine B.O. in a real national security crisis - brought about by his blind ideological flight from Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism policies - and ponder if this is "change you can believe in."

Ya gotta love Gibbs' flip answer to this follow-up question (doubtless from a reporter taken aback by the spectre of a White House official scrawling verbal graffiti):

Asked whether his caustic tone in responding to Cheney was proper, Gibbs said, "Sometimes I ask forgiveness rather than for permission ... I hope my sarcasm didn't mask the seriousness of the answer."

Fear not, Gibbsy; your sarcasm had no seriousness to mask.  A mea culpa you might want to consider making before your boss's pacifist idiocy bloodily vindicates Dick Cheney in, well, spades.

UPDATE: Is this a presidential crisis of confidence?  Already?