A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

A View From The Left

As one of my intellectual mentors Dennis Prager likes to say, "Clarity over unity."  In other words, we don't have to all agree...but we would do well to know what it is we disagree about, and why.  I've made it a goal to frequently post the columns of thinkers and writers on the Left here at AVITW.

Few political commentators better typify liberal-progressive thought and attitudes than Marueen Dowd of The New York Times.  Dowd has been a constant and persistent critic of all things George Bush and Dick Cheney since 2000, and, if her latest column is any indicator, the woman seems intent upon continuing her decade-long obsession.

She's not too happy with Dick Cheney going on different Sunday Morning Talk Shows to point out the current president's less-than-inspiring policies when it comes to terrorism, and has created a fictional, hypothetical dialogue between Obama, Sec. of Defense Robert Gates, and Cheney to vent out her frustrations.

Obama invited Bob Gates to the Saturday summit. Gates, after all, had originally been brought in as defense secretary by W. to be a common-sense counterbalance to the batty Cheney.

The president prides himself on winning over hostile audiences, but this challenge would give a peacock pause.

The three men sat before the fire in the Oval.

OBAMA: Look, Dick, you’ve called me out on various particulars. And I have no problem with that. That’s politics. You thought Khalid Shaikh Mohammed should not be tried in New York City, and that’s fine.

And we both know that any blowhard can call me weak. But you’re not just any blowhard, Dick. You were the architect of America’s defense against terrorism. And when those folks sitting in a cave in Waziristan hear you chest-thumping, saying our guard is down, they think, “Hey, this might be a good time to attack.”

You believe in the unitary executive. You believe that if the president says something is in the national security interest of the U.S., then it is. So I am the president now, and I’m telling you that you need to put a sock in it.

CHENEY: What are you going to do about it, Hussein? Mirandize me?

GATES: Dick, the president’s right. When a former vice president calls a new president weak, it emboldens terrorists.

CHENEY (contemptuously looking at Gates with his one-sided smile): If you take the king’s coin, you sing the king’s song.

OBAMA: You keep saying there were no terror attacks after 9/11, Dick. That’s like saying that blimps were safe after the Hindenburg. I wouldn’t have been caught flat-footed reading “The Pet Goat” to second graders.

CHENEY: No, you’d have been teaching a graduate seminar on “The Pet Goat.” Don’t you Muslims eat pet goats?

It continues on from there, which you can read here, but I suppose you get the gist of it.  Bush was/is dumb; Cheney is insensitive and "batty"; Obama is patient and non-ideological in his pragmatic benevolence.  (Note: If you just threw up a little bit in your mouth, don't worry...me too.)

Just like Howard Dean claiming after Scott Brown's election in MA last month that it was really a signal from the electorate to get socialized medicine passed even quicker, liberal columnists like Dowd seem incapable of accepting the fact that this is still a Center-Right nation.

This last quote from her piece sums up the mantra we will continue to hear for decades after Barack Obama fails to win re-election in 2012.

OBAMA: If I don’t get re-elected, it will be because you ruined the country beyond EVEN MY ABILITY to rescue it.