President Cheney?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY IS adamant about not running for president in 2008. Asked by host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday if he might change his mind, Cheney answered with a firm no. "I've got my plans laid out," he said. "I'm going to serve this president for the next four years, and then I'm out of here. . . . In 2009, I'll be 68 years old. And I've still got a lot of rivers I'd like to fish and time I'd like to spend with my grandkids, and so this is my last tour. I don't plan to run for anything."

And that wasn't all. Cheney said a primary reason he has influence with Bush is that he has pledged not to run. His ability to serve the president, he said, "depends upon my ability not to have any agenda other than his agenda. I made it clear when I took the job that I had no aspirations to run for president myself, that I wanted to be part of the team. And it's worked very effectively." If he were running, he'd have to worry now "about what the precinct committeeman in Ottumwa, Iowa, is going to think about me in January of '08." Since that's not the case, Cheney said, he's free to "offer my advice based on what's best from the standpoint of the president and his program and what we're trying to achieve now."

But there's a larger reason Cheney should seek to succeed Bush. In all likelihood, the 2008 election, like last year's contest, will focus on foreign policy. The war on terror, national security, and the struggle for democracy will probably dominate American politics for a decade or more. Bush's legacy, or at least part of it, will be to have returned these issues to a position of paramount concern for future presidents. And who is best qualified to pursue that agenda as knowledgeably and aggressively as Bush? The answer is the person who helped Bush formulate it, namely Cheney.

There's one other person who has been as important as the vice president in helping the president shape that agenda, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She could be an attractive candidate, but she has shown no interest in running for public office. Rice was once introduced to Arnold Schwarzenegger as "the next governor of California." She declined to run, however, and of course he got the job in 2003. Last year, Rice had the opportunity to run for the U.S. Senate from California. Again, she declined. If she decided to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, she would face the distinct disadvantage of being a first-time candidate.

What about John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Bill Frist, and other Republicans who are thinking about running? They don't come close to Cheney in foreign policy know-how or decision-making experience. That's not to denigrate them. McCain has emphasized foreign and military affairs in his Senate career and is an able spokesman for a Bush-style foreign policy. Giuliani is no slouch on the subject of the terrorist threat. But who would generate the most public confidence as commander in chief? Cheney, for sure. On domestic issues as well--particularly taxes and energy--he can match any of the likely Republican candidates.

The main rap I've heard on Cheney is that he lacks the charisma to get elected. This is nonsense. So what if he can be characterized as Bush without the pizzazz? Cheney has what's far more important--gravitas. He's a man who's taken seriously as a national leader by everyone here and abroad. Voters aren't stupid. They know that gravitas trumps charisma in choosing a president in a foreign policy era.

The other question about Cheney as a presidential candidate is how he gets out of his vow not to run. That's easy. In the final two years of Bush's second term, the president will be a lame duck whose agenda has been exhausted. There will still be foreign policy issues on the table, true. But that will entail the playing out of policies that Bush, with Cheney's help, developed in his first term. So Bush will be in a position to anoint a successor. If

I don't know if Bush, two years from now, will actually want to choose a successor, someone to carry on his policies. It's possible his presidency and his signature issues may have soured by then. But I doubt it. So imagine Bush as a successful president looking to the future after he leaves office and wondering whether his accomplishments will be protected and expanded or reversed. It would be out of character for Bush to leave the selection of his successor to chance or to the whims of presidential primaries. If he says he'd like Cheney to run, my guess is Cheney would be hard-pressed to say no.

Yes, it does seem like we are in the endless do loop!

Should we have confronted communism, in the late 1940's and could we have defeated it? Probably. It might have saved us treasure in the long run, it would have cost more US lives in the short run and certainly would have saved Russian and Chinese lives in both the short and long run.

Could a politician have said in 1945, "let's keep our military intact, we have this huge threat, Stalin and Mao, we need to defeat them and secure 100 years of peace". Of course they could have, we do not disagree on those issues. The cost in the short term would have been very high, 1 million dead IMHO (Stalin had 400 divisions, many armored, how would you propose we "invade" Russia?). Maybe the right statesman could have made the case and led us to that objective.

My readings and understanding of the times is such that there was little real commitment to this idea, the people just did not want it. I am unable to see how a statesman could have changed the minds of the US people at that time. If you view that as possible, help me with some citations to that effect.

I am puzzled at your discarding the US military performance in the Korean War as being irrelevant. The bottom line is that within 5 years of the end of WWII, our forces were but a shadow of their former selves, when you have a citizen army, that's what happens.

Too many coulda, shoulda for my taste.

I thought that the five years after WWII were such that the sense of peace and demobilization had created a less than effective force IN KOREA. So there is that as far as the Army is concerned; and it has no relevance for the Navy and the Air Force and the Marines. The unpreparedness for Korea was largely a leadership failure and keeping the troops training level and morale from deteriorating would all that would have been needed. The notion of a peacetime military even though there was a cold war enslaving huge populations was the leadership failure. Chaing Kai Shek was still in China fighting Mao. We were the only ones with atomic bombs at the time. That could have been used more effectively than it was. Clearing out the Henry Wallace, Hopkins, Alger Hiss types out of the government in 1945-46 would have made a big difference--and may well have prevented that the atomic secrets would not have been betrayed.

Committement is developed. You don't need citations, you need thought as to how that committment could have been shaped and built. Of course there is no record of what was done--clearly it was not done and this is the point: Proper Leadership and vision couold have alerted the US to the danger of communisim from China and Russia.

To do that there would have had to be a rooting out of the Russian Commuinst sympatizers in the FDR administration which in thousands of ways were pushing in the direction desired by Stalin. This could have been done by HST l;argely presenting the ailing FDR as a victim rather than as part of it.

To do this there would have to have been a will and ability which HST did not manifest. But the point is that this could have been done. That there were infiltrators in our govt as virtual agents of the Stalin, would have been a revelation which would have galvinized popular support for a stronger confrontation of Stalin in the 1945-46 time period.

Please recall that Russia had no atomic weapons and the Red Army was munitioned and fed by the industrial and agricultural might of the USA. Without that support they would have lost to the Wehrmacht. Without that support they would not have been able to confront us in 1945-1947.

To construct the Chinese and hte Russians as military able at that juncture is a myth. Recall the importance to the Red Army of the convoys to Murmansk. The Russians and the Chinese had zero navies. 400 divisions need to be provisioned and suppliled. Without that support from the US, they would have been a paper tiger. All that was needed was leadership and vision.

I understand your arguments and do not necessarily disagree. My opinion is that the people were not ready for this confrontation, maybe they could have been coerced or convinced, it is moot.

With respect to forcing Russia out of eastern Europe, or even Germany for that matter, if the Russians resisted are you suggesting we should use atomic weapons against them in Leipzig, or Berlin or Warsaw or Budapest or Checkloslovakia? Would we have had to invade and liberate Russia?

Furthermore, what is the end game for Russia, pushing them to their original border? Beyond? Didn't the best army in the world (at that time (1939-42, the Wermacht) just try that with dismal failure? I would suggest that given the massive logistics issues we faced during the European campaign, along with the near destruction of the German infrastructure would make a US pushing of the Russians back to their borders or beyond a near impossibility. And to what end?

I grant you that the actual tactics that would be right back at that time would need to be thought out. Invasion of Russia would not necessariy have been needed. Obviously, you do know that the Russians would not have prevailed vs. the Wehrmacht without the "arsenal of democracy". The correct use of unilateral atomic power involves more the preservation of that unilateralism and less the actual use of the weapons. That we used them twice in Japan would have meant a lot, so long as this was accompanied by clear communication of what would not be tolerated.

There was an opportunity to use aggressive policy in the immediate post war world. That did not happen because of the leftist influence on our policy makers. Correction--the leftist spies and agents in the government. That was what diluted our ability to have had a good post war policy.

There are varying views about the value of the contribution we made to the defeat of the Wermacht in Russia, I think it was more than the naysayers, but probably less than others believe. Would the Russians have prevailed over the Wermacht, probably ultimately, simply because the Germans did not have the resources to sustain the effort needed to subdue Russia. An opinion, nothing more or less.

But uprooting and driving out the Russians from east Germany, Poland, etal is an entirely different subject than stopping the German invasion at Stalingrad, 2000 miles from Berlin. What if the Russians said, fine, drop your bombs on Berlin, we are not leaving. Would we have done it? I think not, and Stalin probably would have tested us, what did he have to lose?

How about dropping some big bombs in the oil fields in the Caucuses? ...or on Russian territory...Moscow for instance? We would need to know how devastated the USSR was at the end of the war. I beleive it was far worse than the unscatehed condition of our country. I understood that the Russians a lot of war manufacturing to the east--which was pretty tenuous. I would be very surprised if it were the case that they could have survived without our help. I believe that it was vital to them that they had all those post war years to rebuild.

The Germans came fairly close to beating the Russians. With those margins I can't see how they would have made it without us. My guess is that counterarguments are just posturing by the academic left--both soviet and western. There are a lot of pretty squirley american professors who are "expert" on the soviet union. Their motives and allegiances have to be suspected across the board. I am sorry, but I believe that is the only prudent measure given the attractions of marxism to the intellectual left--and esspecially those who made their life work to study the soviet union.

Ontos,

Finally we have gotten to my basic point, the posturing has ended, reality sinks in! I do not believe we had the mechanism to deliver an atomic warhead to Moscow, given that we likely had to start somewhere in Germany or to the south. Not sure what an atomic warhead in the Caucus would have accomplished. All this bluster about forcing the Russians out of eastern Europe after the end of WWII is just that, bluster. There was little desire to do it and there was insufficient capability to accomplish it.

Should we have confronted them, maybe, even yes. But the bottom line is we didn't have the gumption and the use of our WMD could not get it done.

Really, read a book by Alan Clark, "Barbarossa", it will enlighten you about the situation in the east during WWII. The Germans might have been able to achieve military control, but it is very unlikely they could have conquered the Russians, there were too many of them in a vast geography and just not enough Germans. There were 250,000 Russian partisans "loose" behind German lines, creating incredible havoc. Hitler made the fatal error, he thought he could do what Napoleon could not.

Was the US government and academia and other institutions infiltrated by Soviet spies and commies, of course, read the Venona Papers. But that just does not deal with the basic reality that HST, Marshall, Churchill and Ike faced with respect to the Soviets.

The allies (primarily the US) defeated 2 major world powers on 2 fronts, it is an accomplishment unparalleled in history, military history at least. Where we did go wrong IMHO, is not moving on Berlin. Investigate the end of the war and the way in which the decisions were made on where the allies would stop. The Elbe was this arbitrary choice, Roosevelt died, and there we were. It is the nature of man, flawed to the core.

the posturing has ended, reality sinks in!

Name calling is usually inaccurate and without class. Are you trying to say that I have been posturing? Go to hell.

1. You seem to ignore airpower and seapower. I have lost the inclination to spell things out for you. Look at a map.

2. Russia is pretty miserable as it is. Try it with huge interruptions of gas and oil.

3.Ever heard of a naval blockade?

4. You have confused me with someone who you think was blustering.

5. I was not talking about invading russia. You insist on creating your own sraw men. Then when I point that out to you, you act like a hyena.

6. Defeating their military would be enough--no need to invade the damn motherland. I have invited you to use imagination and you have resolutely refused.

7. After a number of exchanges, I have not found you to be worth the trouble. When I spend time and elaborate on ideas, I expect some development from the other person.

8. Go to bed.

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The obvious man for Bush to tap as his successor in 2008