by Ed Kociela
Dick Cheney looked like he was about to have a stroke.
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Or, maybe, invite Wolf Blitzer to go quail hunting in Texas.
Or, maybe, ratchet up his tough-guy image a few notches in case he ends up
in the slammer with Scooter Libby.
It was an unbelievable performance by the president of vice when he sat
across from Blitzer the other day on CNN.
"They aren't gonna stop us," he snapped at Blitzer when it was suggested
that the new Senate is not too happy with the president's decision to up
the ante in Iraq by 20,000 or so new troops.
Cheney was definitely in a foul mood.
"So?" he said with a kind of dull thud, kind of like a blackjack applied
to the back of the neck, when Blitzer asked him about comments by John
McCain that the president had been "badly served" by Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld.
Then his eyes took the sharp glint of a cobra about to strike when Cheney
told Blitzer that a question about his lesbian daughter being pregnant was
"out of line."
Sorry, nothing is out of line when it comes to interviewing an elected
official.
Especially a question about family values asked of a man who has built his
conservative appeal around nihilistic military aggression and a set of
family values that were outdated back when Ozzie and Harriet were on the
television screen.
And to go after Blitzer, of all people.
This is a guy who is about as far away from being an attack-dog
interviewer as there is. He's always done his homework, always asks a
decent question and always strikes a professional pose. But he doesn't
ambush his subject from behind a tree.
And this wasn't a setup like when Chris Wallace tried to slam Bill Clinton.
I can understand Cheney's discomfort to a certain degree. I mean, if my
boss were the president and his approval rating dipped to that of Richard
Nixon's one week before he resigned, I guess I'd be a little hot under the
collar, too.
Especially if a guy like McCain, the new guy who seems to have the
president's ear, was saying nasty things about me.
The thing to remember here, for better or worse, is that Blitzer, or any
other reporter, is supposed to be a watchdog for the public. He and his
brethren are supposed to ask tough questions, demand transparency from
elected officials and ensure the public trust is not violated.
Which means that it is relevant to ask if the daughter of the assistant
commander in chief is living up to the standards Cheney and his cadre of
neocon, religious-right supporters expect from the rest of us.
I'd like to see what would happen if Cheney told Sam Donaldson he was "out
of line."
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