The Dish

A reader reminds me of Joan Didion’s peerless dissection of the life, work and personality of the most powerful vice-president America has ever known. I read it a while back. If you haven’t read it, here’s the link. Money quote:

[Cheney’s] every instinct is to withhold information, hide, let surrogates speak for him, as he did after the quail-shooting accident on the Armstrong ranch. His own official spoken remarks so defy syntactical analysis as to suggest that his only intention in speaking is to further obscure what he thinks. Possibly the most well-remembered statement he ever made (after "Big-time") was that he did not serve in the Vietnam War because he had "other priorities."

Bob Woodward, in Plan of Attack, describes an exchange that took place between Cheney and Colin Powell in September 2002, when Cheney was determined that the US not ask the UN for the resolution against Iraq that the Security Council, after much effort by Powell, passed in November:

Powell attempted to summarize the consequences of unilateral action…. He added a new dimension, saying that the international reaction would be so negative that he would have to close American embassies around the world if we went to war alone.

That is not the issue, Cheney said. Saddam and the clear threat is the issue.

Maybe it would not turn out as the vice president thinks, Powell said. War could trigger all kinds of unanticipated and unintended consequences….
Not the issue, Cheney said.

In other words the Vice President had by then passed that point at which going to war was "not about our analysis." He had passed that point at which going to war was not about "finding a preponderance of evidence." At the point he had reached by September 2002, going to war was not even about the consequences. Not the issue, he had said.

Whatever else this is, it is not conservative. It is a kind of blind brutalism. When combined with the unfettered power of the executive he and his acolytes have constructed, it is deeply disturbing.

(Photo: Shawn Thew/AFP/Getty.)

"It was not an abstract question for me. I wondered: is the point of our life on earth to become like Jesus, or is it to maintain formal affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church? I honestly don’t believe God will ask of me, in the day of judgment, "Were you an obedient Catholic? (Or Orthodox, or Presbyterian…)" He will ask me, "Did you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind? Did you love your neighbor as yourself?" I had made in my life till that point the fundamental error of conceiving of the Church as an end in itself, rather than a means to the end of becoming a saint in Christ," – Rod Dreher on why he has finally left the Roman Catholic Church for Orthodoxy.

There is much in his honest anguish that, to my mind, is symptomatic of true faith.

Watch the federal drug tsar, John Walters, boast about spending federal money on stopping Nevadans from deciding their own policies on marijuana regulation. It’s one more sign that this administration loathes states’ rights if they get in the way of big government moralizing. It’s a classic case of the GOP’s attack on principled conservatism and states’ rights. If you’re a Nevadan, you have a chance to tell the federal government where to shove it. Vote yes on Question 7. If you’re an American tax-payer, tell the feds not to spend your money interfering with state politics.

I’ll be on C-SPAN’s Q & A with Brian Lamb about "The Conservative Soul" this Sunday at 8 pm and 11 pm. It’s a full hour of conversation about the book, politics, conservatism, faith and America. My interview for NPR’s "All Things Considered" can be heard online here.

Prescient genius strikes again.

As usual, Bill Clinton isn’t dumb:

"This is an election unlike any other I have ever participated in. For six years this country has been totally dominated – not by the Republican Party, this is not fair to the Republican Party – by a narrow sliver of the Republican Party, its more right-wing and its most ideological element. When the chips are down, this country has been jammed to the right, jammed into an ideological corner, alienated from its allies, and we’re in a lot of trouble … The Democratic Party has become the liberal and conservative party in America. If you want to be fiscally conservative, you’ve got to be for us. If you want to conserve natural resources, you’ve got to be for us," he said. "If you want a change of course in Iraq … you’ve got to be for us."

Fiscal conservatives, limited government conservatives, libertarian conservatives: in this election, the Democrats are the only way to stop the abuse of power now dominant in the GOP leadership.

"It’s early in the probe, but we may be looking at emerging evidence of a homosexual recruitment ring that operated on Capitol Hill," – Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media. The column is one of the most disgusting smear pieces yet to emerge from the bigoted swamp that is the Republican far right.

… has lost his mind.

The last excerpt from the Cato debate. A woman finds it "appalling" that a conservative could support equality in marriage. I respond – or try to.

Dick Armey unloads another barrage:

"Freedom is a gift from God Almighty, and we have a responsibility to protect it. Christians face a temptation to power when we are fortunate enough to have a majority of support in Congress. But government can never advance a faith that is freely given, and it is corrosive to even try. … And so America’s Christian conservative movement is confronted with this divide: small government advocates who want to practice their faith independent of heavy-handed government versus big government sympathizers who want to impose their version of ‘righteousness’ on others through the hammer of law."

It’s great to see a Republican call it like it is – for the sake of politics, and for the sake of religion. I’m beginning to feel what may be a sea-change out there. I guess this election will either confirm or refute that.