Posted on 03/22/2005 7:18:40 AM PST by The Great Yazoo
With a smile, following our interview on CNBC last week, Vice President Dick Cheney said, “That was a trick question.” I responded, also with a smile, “That’s why I asked it, sir.”
What was the question? Simply this: “If the president asked you, would you reconsider your door closing on a race in 2008?”
Here’s Cheney’s answer:
I've made it very clear, Larry, that my tour here is tied to [George W. Bush]. I agree[d] to come back to government. I’ve had a great 25-year career. He persuaded me to come back after eight years in the private sector. I’ve loved it — hadn’t regretted it for a minute — but I’m here to serve him as long as he serves. … I think if I were a candidate, then you’d begin to get the traditional divisions … inside the West Wing, the president headed down one road and the vice president worried about how he’s being received in Ottumwa, Iowa, and the Iowa caucuses four years hence. It doesn’t work that way … It’s worked very well for us. I’m absolutely committed to doing everything I can to help him succeed, but I’m also committed four years from now. I don’t plan to be here. I’m going to be out on the road or back with my grandkids or fishing streams I’ve not yet fished. Does Cheney leave the door open just a teensy bit for a 2008 run? The sentence arguing for this option is, “He persuaded me to come back after eight years in the private sector.” Could Cheney be persuaded again? I wish it were possible. But Cheney does seem set on casting his fly rod four years from now.
That’s a pity. During the interview I brought up a prescient and potentially prophetic column in the Wall Street Journal by Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations. In it, he coined a new term: Cheney envy. You have to be a special sort of vice president to earn such praise. Cheney, of course, has been instrumental in promoting freedom and democracy abroad, but he’s also been a key player in selling supply-side tax cuts, personal savings accounts for Social Security, legal-abuse tort reform, energy reform, and other market-oriented policies at home. His partnership with President Bush is legion. And the scope of their transformational reform administration is itself almost unsurpassed. In the last hundred years, only the FDR reforms have been greater.
Ironically, it is precisely the FDR New Deal reforms that Bush and Cheney are attempting to reconstruct. They want the New Deal to fit a 21st century paradigm that substitutes free-market choice and personal responsibility for Roosevelt’s Depression-era over-regulated capitalism.
But when you see leading Republican Senators and House members move off the reservation of personal-account Social Security reform — when you see them flinch on even the mildest budget restraints for overspending entitlements — you wonder if the Bush-Cheney reform-legacy will stand the test of time.
There is a disappointing parallel here. George H. W. Bush was elected to a third Reagan term to guard the Gipper’s legacy of tax-rate cuts, deregulation, and the exportation of political and economic freedom abroad. But Papa Bush disappointed by raising taxes at home and doing business with dictators overseas. Realism trumped idealism on foreign policy. Seeing Saddam Hussein retain power in Baghdad was the worst example of this.
It is highly doubtful that a President Cheney would repeat such errors in a third W. term. First off, Cheney’s basic belief system has been set in stone for more than three decades. Second, he is a highly effective communicator, having trounced Joe Lieberman and John Edwards during the vice presidential debates. Third, Cheney possesses one of the widest and deepest knowledge-bases of government policy of anyone in Washington today. His ability to get things done — often amidst fractious debates on domestic and international policy — is well documented.
This is the true source of Cheney envy. It has frequently been observed that the Republicans have all the good ideas nowadays and that the Democrats have virtually none. But you’d be correct if you said Bush and Cheney not only generated these ideas, but also put them into action.
Does anyone seriously doubt that Cheney is the most qualified person, in either party, to be our next president? Any number of early Republican hopefuls — Frist, Allen, Giuliani, McCain, Romney — would look good riding the bus with Cheney in a few years. The Cheney for President bus, that is.
I hope President Bush asks Vice President Cheney to succeed him. For four more years.
— Larry Kudlow, NRO’s Economics Editor, is host of CNBC’s Kudlow & Company and author of the daily web blog, Kudlow’s Money Politic$.
My thinking was not so much that the eventual GOP candiate would run a campaign in a manner that was "outside the box".
My thinking is that most current potential candidates are caught up in the minutia of current events and staking their future positions on their responses to all that current minutia.
My thinking is that the minutia hides as well as represents the undercurrents of larger trends.
My thinking is that it is the trends, not the minutia, that is going to lead to new decision-time events in 2006 and 2007.
My thinking is that if some GOPer is sitting back, looking at the trends, not the details, has an idea of events (yet to come) in the making, and is already thinking "outside the box" on policy responses to those possible events, and if they stand up in 2006 and 2007, they will stand out as "fresh" in a crowd of the usual and familiar.
The country likes a change every eight years or so. That comes from our cultural side, regardless of our political allegiences.
The GOP will need someone who is "fresh" in 2006 and 2007. A truly fresh conservative face can squash the media loving McCain's and RINOs, who will have very well established faces, and positions on todays events; events that will not be the drivers of tomorrow's election. Some of those positions will make them flip-flop with their responses to possible coming events. That's one of the ways they will lose some of what currently may seem their edge.
I think the trends to watch involve foreign policy more than domestic matters.
Edwards has southern charm?
Absolutely he has said this many times that he is not willing to do the things that is needed to be President. He decided this back in the mid 1990s and is unlikely to change his mind over 10 years later.
Wuli has an excellent point here.
Whenever leadership skips a level, as in the USSR when it got Gorby, good things happen. Fresh thinking illuminates the issues.
Cheney will turn out to be a pivotal figure in the future of the Freedom Trail, doing what's necessary to win elections, manage public affairs, and step aside when necessary.
Cinncinnatus and Washingtom come to mind.
Great men and selfless.
May the good Lord watch over him and give him peace.
I like Cheny alot, and if he were the GOP candidate in 2008, I'd vote for him. I just do not think he will be, I do not think the eventual GOP candidate has much public visibility now. I think that events, in 2006 and 2007 will drive the deciding issues of the 2008 elections. The GOP candidate that will have the best chance will be a fresh face, with some fresh ideas, simply because every eight to twelve years, Americans like that better than not. On the other hand, if we are at war with ??????? at the time, all bets are off.
...but he could run for VP again!
The thing that soldified me for W was his choice of Cheney in 2000. In fact I was so thrilled that Cheney was chosen that I signed up with FR the very day the selection was announced. [I hadf been a lurker only prior to that.] I was dissapointed when in 1996 Cheney dropped out of the race.
Hmmm..."willing to bulsh*t" is too strong a term...I'd rather say able to hand the retail side of politics, sell himself and his policies to the largest audience. This doesn't have to be BS, just saying 'the right things' with sincerity [real or otherwise].
I think Cheney, like Rumsfield, would prefer to speak his mind, and his mind is not necessarily as TV friendly to the voters as Bush's is. For example, think he'd be a lot more conflicted over this Terri case if cornered. He does better work left unmolested.
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