Dick Cheney is no longer just waging “public combat against the ‘far left’ agenda” of President Obama, said Barton Gellman in The Washington Post. In his work-in-progress memoir, Cheney’s opening a “second front” against his erstwhile partner, former president George W. Bush, reportedly telling confidantes that Bush went soft in his second term. Cheney said the “statute of limitations has expired” on his secrets from those years, so look out.
Wait, George Bush was an “appeaser?” said Kevin Drum in Mother Jones. Now that we’re finding out what Cheney “really thinks about George Bush,” that’s the inescapable conclusion: he believes “Bush went soft on him.” He’s apparently airing this laundry because he’s “still obsessed with the idea of terrorists getting hold of a nuke”—I guess he’ll never understand that his hard-line policies made terrorist nukes more likely, not less.
Bush shouldn’t be too unhappy about Cheney’s “post-presidency attacks,” said Gawker. The breach of Cheney’s “honor code of silence” may sting a bit, but it could be the best thing that happens to Bush’s legacy. “Even the most dedicated Bush-hater” dislikes Cheney even more, and “contempt” from Cheney only makes Bush an increasingly “sympathetic character.”
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Before we get carried away, it should be remembered that Cheney is still shopping his memoir around, said The Daily Beast. Learning the “inner workings of Dick Cheney’s head” will be interesting, but “the long-silent veep’s newfound loquaciousness” will also “be the book’s selling point.”
