Dick Cheney Takes A Shot At Sarah Palin, Not Sure She Was Even Qualified To Be Vice-President
Former Vice-President was a guest today on Laura Ingraham’s radio show and, late in the interview, Sarah Palin came up:
Ingraham: “If you could cite a couple of things that are required, not constitutionally, but necessary for this job, for someone to take this job.”
Cheney: “You mean Vice President?”
Ingraham: “Yes”
Cheney: “Thick skin. You need the capacity to turn on the tube every night and watch the late night comedians make you the punch line, tell a lot of jokes, it goes with the turf and I’m not above telling a few of those stories myself. But the fact of the matter is you really do need to have the capacity to do what you think is right, to offer the advice you think the president of the country needs, you have to remember you are not in charge of anything, you don’t run anything as Vice President. And you do need to have thick skin, you’ll be subject to a lot of criticism, some of it funny, some of it not so funny.”
Ingraham: “Sarah Palin comes to mind when I think about that because she was set to become number two after the Bush administration. Do you think that was, you know, well suited?”
Cheney: “Well I’ve never gotten around the question of her having left the Governorship of Alaska midterm. I’ve never heard that adequately explained so that I could understand why, how she decided in her first term to step down and still be, I’d like to know more about that.”
Here’s the full interview below, the Palin section starts at 23:02:
McCain has pulled a lot of Crazy Ivans in his time but Palin takes the cake. Not only was she a complete disaster and still is a complete disaster but given her youth her “15 minutes” might last a decade or more. Plus when you juxtapose Palin with the other obvious options available in 2008 — e.g., Pawlenty, Thune, Blunt, Romney, Portman, Toomey, etc. — the inescapable conclusion is that McCain made the worst Veep selection in history.
The mass psychosis that Palin “was qualified” kind of shows the limits of democracy. You can fool a lot of people for a short time, if it’s their group, and their shot at power.
@Tsar Nicholas:
I think the history is that when he couldn’t get Lieberman, he said “hell, whoever.” And yeah, that shows something about his decision making.
Dang it, if only Palin had actually explained at the time just why she resigned…
Maybe something like this:
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/full-text-of-palins-resignation-speech.php
That would’ve made all the difference…
J.
@Jay Tea:
Cheney did not say that he never heard that explained, he said he never heard it adequately explained.
@Jay Tea: I just browsed the link. Nowhere in her rambling, incoherent response was she even close to anything that could be considered an explanation. Anyone who clicks on this link and tries to sort through this mess is now dumber for having done so.
Let’s see….
Bullshit ethics charges that ran up huge bills for the state, her staff, and herself. So much time dealing with bullshit ethics charges, not enough doing the job.
Seems simple to me.
J.
@Jay Tea:
ANd she filed the biggest ethics complaint, $500k, against herself, on the advice of the McCain campaign, to take the complaint out of the hands of an independent investigator and turn it over to the Republican-appointed Board of Ethics in Alaska. She could have just, you know, not done that, and the costs of the ethics complaints against her would have been about $150k… pretty much a pittance compared to the beaucoup bucks Alaska rakes in on the backs of the poor little oil companies.
@Blue Galangal: Could you post a link to that story in English?
J.
The significance of this story is not that Dick Cheney doesn’t think Palin is qualified–we’ve known that for a long time. The key is that Laura Ingraham–who in the past has been one of the boosters of Palin as the wave of the future–tossed Cheney a huge softball. Knowing that he would hit it out of the park.
Jay Tea, sorry, but you can stick a fork in Palin now; she’s done. Even “the vast right-wing media conspiracy” is tired of her. Expect to see other pseudopundits on the right set Cheney up to play attack dog as he continues his book-pitch talk show circuit.
@A voice from another precinct: I don’t make predictions about Palin’s future. And I’ve lost count how many times she’s been pronounced politically dead by various and sundry pundits.
J.
@Jay Tea:
Oh please. McCain plucked her out of obscurity in 2008; otherwise, she’d still be sitting pretty in Alaska and most of the rest of the country wouldn’t know (or care) who the heck she was. She’s sucked up just about all the fame and fortune she can from that boost out of obscurity. Hell, three out of four Republicans would prefer she didn’t run for president.
She may stick around for a while on the Faux News commentariat front, but politically she’s dead meat.
jay:
One of your most adorable qualities is the way you repeat the same baloney even after it’s been proven to be baloney.
Palin’s resignation speech sounded a bit like the rambling of someone who has been up for a few days doing meth. Not that I think she uses drugs, I don’t. Her brain works that way naturally.
I have a LOT of issues with Cheney, but there is zero question about his intelligence, experience, and overall grasp of how government works. He is dismissive of Palin, and rightly so.
Duh. Palin quit to make more money. He doesn’t need to hear an “adequate explanation” to figure that out.
Most prominent politicians have enemies. It’s interesting that the “attack” on Palin, which was so effective that she had absolutely no choice but to resign is not simply used over and over. Hey, we can force any governor to resign, here is the template.
Nope. Only Palin bailed. But she was the one with suitcases full of money waiting for her the moment she left office, no?
Sometimes the Palinists claim that the law in Alaska makes it easier to create this kind of problem. But if that’s true, then why did she never lift a finger to fix that law? She never did so, before or after her resignation. And her successor (effectively picked by her) never did so. If she really cares about Alaska, and if there’s really some kind of problem with Alaska law, in this regard, then why not try to address this problem, for the sake of the future?
So this alibi is just more baloney.
Yup. And speaking of suitcases full of money, she already had a big pile of money, collected from her supporters, that was available to pay for her legal bills (this is documented via the link I provided above). We never hear about this from Palin and the Palinists. So the claim that she was about to become impoverished by her legal bills is yet more baloney.
@jukeboxgrad: Sometimes the Palinists claim that the law in Alaska makes it easier to create this kind of problem. But if that’s true, then why did she never lift a finger to fix that law?
Because that would have been yet another complaint — attempting to change the law to benefit herself. Duh.
Yup. And speaking of suitcases full of money, she already had a big pile of money, collected from her supporters, that was available to pay for her legal bills (this is documented via the link I provided above). We never hear about this from Palin and the Palinists. So the claim that she was about to become impoverished by her legal bills is yet more baloney.
Said “pile of money” was the subject of one of the last ethics complaints, and mentioned quite frequently by those who bring up uncomfortable (to you) truths. Had that one ruled against her, she’d have been on the hook for the entire legal fees — at that point, 200% of her family’s annual income and 40% of their net worth. (Annual income 250K, net worth 1.2 million, legal bills 500K — all numbers approximate.)
I’m sensing a pattern here. Palin never put forth her reasons for resigning, Palin doesn’t talk about how the legal defense fund would have protected here, etc. Those have been said, time and again, but you just don’t want to hear them.
I’m reminded of all those who talk about Bush’s “illegal war” in Iraq. They don’t want to hear about the multiple UN resolutions, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or the terms of Saddam’s 1991 surrender. You have your own reality, and just can’t accept that what you “know” just ain’t so.
J.
@Jay Tea: Thanks for explaining it YET AGAIN for those who didn’t get it the first 100 times, Jay.
Oh… BTW…. WTF, Cheney?
jay:
The “Duh” applies to you. If the law is a problem, she could have and should have made efforts to improve the law during her first year in office. This was before any ethics complaints were brought against her, so there would be no reason to accuse her of “attempting to change the law to benefit herself.”
Likewise, she (and/or her successor, who was effective selected by her) could be taking steps now to improve the law. Those improvements would not be retroactive, so they would do nothing “to benefit herself.” However, they would ostensibly help the people of Alaska in the future. So why has Palin not lifted a finger in that direction? It would make sense for her to do so, if a) she actually cared about Alaska and b) there really is a problem with the current law.
I demonstrated in the other thread that these numbers are baloney, and of course you never addressed what I said. Repeating baloney doesn’t make it not baloney.
When did Palin ever “talk about how the legal defense fund would have protected here [sic]?”
Do you really want so badly to change the subject? Because you’re wrong about that subject, too.
And when a leader is challenged, folding, followed by a cut and run is the only option. Of course.
Would Ronald Reagan have quit in a similar situation? Kind of doubt it. How about Cheney? He would have crushed his opponents like bugs. Palin? Her response was “show me the money”.
I just love the whole “The Walton’s eat their young” aspect to this story.
Gotta love Doug and James’ current GOP. It’s a train wreck you can’t help but watching.
I would expect that comment from about any of the GOP establishment, since Palin represents a serious threat to such folk.