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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Victor Volsky
The rogues' gallery of the far left is enormously spacious, and it doesn't
take much to be eligible for inclusion; any conservative worth his or her
salt automatically qualifies. But with the possible exception of that
eternal bogeyman, Richard Nixon, nobody is hated by the left with such
abandon; nobody is more vilified; nobody is targeted with such volcanic
eruptions of insane hatred and vitriol as former Vice President Dick Cheney.
But why? What did Cheney do to deserve such vicious scorn?
Contrary to the Marxist "working class" myth, the left has always been a
movement largely of and by intellectuals. Their strong suit is propaganda,
and they owe their undeniable successes in propaganda warfare to acting in a
highly disciplined fashion and strictly hewing to their own rules of the
game. The most important of these precepts religiously followed by the left
are rules 10 and 13 of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals." Rule 10
proclaims that "[t]he major premise for tactics is the development of
operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."
Rule 13 prescribes to "pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and
polarize it." In a nutshell, pin a face on the opposition, demonize the
target, and do it without letup.
Throughout much of his long and distinguished career, Cheney, even though a
solid, dependable conservative, had been treated by the press pretty more or
less even-handedly, at least to the extent conservatives can receive
favorable coverage from the so-called mainstream media. And then, all of a
sudden, the press made a U-turn and came down on Cheney like a ton of bricks
. Overnight, he turned into the poster child of mean-spiritedness, the
epitome of evil, the devil incarnate, the Prince of Darkness, the Darth
Vader of the right. Could it be that this mild-mannered, imperturbable man,
the opposite of a typical bombastic politico, fell victim to a mistaken
identity? Not at all. He was deliberately chosen as the spear-catcher.
After the electoral debacle of 2000, when Al Gore's attempt at a coup
brought about an acute political crisis, the left developed an opposition
strategy built around the notion of George W. Bush's illegitimacy. "
Remember Florida 2000" was the new rallying cry. Bush was to be portrayed
as a "selected," not elected, president; a total nonentity; a dumb cowboy
from deep in the heart of Texas; a barely literate, tongue-tied moron -- a
tactic all the more effective considering the conscious decision taken by
Bush not to respond to slander (which Bush's chief advisor, Karl Rove, has
recently admitted was a bad mistake). So Bush chose to turn the other cheek
, much to the delight of his enemies, who never tired of slapping the
inviting target as hard as they could.
But the strategy had an inherent flaw in that it clashed with the reality of
a functioning government. If the president was little more than an ape,
how come his administration hummed along, policies were being developed and
pursued, things were being done, bills were being paid? The obvious answer
to the conundrum was to find some power behind the throne, a person strong
enough to hold the administration together while its titular head was
swinging on his tail, eating bananas. That man behind the curtain was
slated to be the evil genius of the administration.
In principle, any of the president's close advisors could fill that role,
but in practice, there were some limitations. Colin Powell, a man of
enormous stature widely perceived to have done Bush a favor by agreeing to
serve as secretary of state in his administration, was off-limits; as a
black, he was untouchable. Same for Condoleezza Rice -- also black, too
nice a person, and not influential enough. Karl Rove -- great to lead Bush
to the bathroom, wipe his nose, and plot all sorts of minor mischief (like
steering Hurricane Katrina toward New Orleans), but still carrying
insufficient political weight. Donald Rumsfeld -- a great, tailor-made
candidate, but a bit too far removed from the Oval Office to be a believable
Wizard of Oz. And then there was Vice President Dick Cheney -- an ideal
figure to serve the left's purpose: a man of unquestioned competence, an
obvious adult with solid credentials. Nobody could fit the bill better.
And so the vice president was consciously chosen as the bête noire of the
Bush administration. In short order, a veritable storm engulfed the media.
Cheney was the one responsible for the administration policies -- the bad,
the ugly, and the unspeakable. Well, so was Bush, of course, but the
president was too dim to understand what his minder told him to do. Not
only Cheney himself, but everybody and everything he was associated with
were tarred with a broad brush. Whatever he touched or even came close to
became an object of derision and vilification. A good example is the
company he once headed but cut off all ties to when coming on board the Bush
administration. Halliburton was quickly turned into the bugaboo of the
left, the symbol of all that's evil about capitalism, a name rabid leftists
use to scare their children.
The left's fury was further stoked by Cheney's "intransigent" behavior.
Rather than listen to Karl Rove's advice, Cheney refused to oblige the left
and follow the rope-a-dope strategy of his boss. From time to time, he
would strike back hard -- always to the point, never mincing words. After
Obama's electoral triumph and the complete rout of the Republicans, the
former vice president took it upon himself to defend the record and honor of
the Bush administration. There was nobody else, the thoroughly cowed
opposition scattered into the weeds. True to his sense of duty and in spite
of his grave health problems, Dick Cheney, like a lone knight challenging
the all-powerful dragon, threw down the gauntlet to the radical zeitgeist.
And a strange thing happened. The more relentlessly did Cheney point out
the foibles and lies of the Obama administration, the more darkly did he
warn of the dangers besetting America and of the grave consequences of Obama
's feckless policies, the more weight his words carried, and the more
attentively people listened. His stature steadily grew; his presence became
ever more commanding. And by the time he published his hard-hitting memoir
, In My Time, even his enemies were forced to give him their grudging
respect.
George W. Bush says that a dispassionate judgment of his record will have to
wait half a century, until history sorts things out and separates the wheat
from the chaff. Nobody knows the ultimate grades history will hand down to
the movers and shakers of the early 21st century. But one thing is certain
sound and fury of partisan strife, it will be Dick Cheney. Clio, the muse
of history, is sure to be generous toward this man of enormous integrity and
rare dignity -- one of the few genuine heroes of our time. |
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