"Totally trustworthy"

Below I recite a roll call of conservative drummers and grifters, locating neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol among the latter group—i.e., not merely a salesmen, but an out and out con man. Because he admitted, in 1955, that he had advocated the economic policies he advocated not because they were good for the country (indeed he owned up explicitly that he had no idea what sort of economic policies were good for the country) but because they would help build a conservative political majority. (I would say he advocated them heedless of what these policies might mean for the wellbeing of future generations, but of course future generations of Kristols did just fine...)

As I wrote, I reflected to myself that his mark was not the unwashed masses but media and policy elites—the ones whose judgment proved sufficiently poor that they swallowed the neocon bait hook, line, and sinker.

Almost immediately and entirely by coincidence, a friend bestowed upon me the gift I gladly pass on to you to help make the case. Just how piss-poor is our elites' judgment, in this case their judgment of character? Click on, dear reader, click on...

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Chicago Tribune

March 15, 1989, Wednesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

Why Dick Cheney is a superb choice for the Pentagon

BYLINE: David Broder, (copyright) 1989 Washington Post Writers Group

SECTION: PERSPECTIVE; Pg. 21; ZONE: C

LENGTH: 769 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

Here are three things to understand about Rep. Dick Cheney (R., Wyo.) that will explain why President Bush made such a superb choice in naming him as secretary of defense following the John Tower fiasco. Cheney is smart, he is tough and he is totally trustworthy.

Put those qualities together, and you have a man who will bring real strength and rare judgment to the administration. At 48, Cheney already has proven himself exceedingly competent in both the executive and legislative branches of government, performing admirably as President Ford's White House chief of staff and then rising in very few years to the second-ranking leadership position of House Republicans.

His brain is as good as anyone's in town, and he is totally unafraid to voice his convictions in any company. From the time I first encountered him as a University of Wisconsin Ph.D. candidate working on the staff of an equally brainy young congressman, the late Bill Steiger, he has displayed qualities that command the respect of people much older than he is - and often of very different policy views.

Though he is a conservative by conviction and a staunch partisan Republican, he is admired by dozens of Democratic colleagues. He has a particularly close relationship with House Majority Leader Tom Foley (D., Wash.), a man of similar talent and temperament. Like Foley, Cheney downplays his own importance and conceals his shrewdness behind an engaging Western humor.

Cheney and his wife, Lynne, the head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, are perhaps the most literate couple in town, individually turning out highly readable essays and, jointly, a fine book on leaders of the House. But Cheney's true calling is government and, in that field, there are few better.

Although Cheney's career roots are in Congress, his viewpoint is almost always that of a president's man. No one fought harder during the post-Watergate period and in the Iran-contra affair against measures he thought would inhibit future presidents from exercising their full powers as commander-in-chief and negotiator-in-chief. An essay Cheney wrote for an American Enterprise Institute conference this week, on what he calls "congressional aggrandizement" in the national security area, criticizes "aggrandizers" as varied as Sen. Jesse Helms (R., N.C.) and Speaker Jim Wright (D., Texas) and doubtless will provoke questions at Cheney's confirmation hearings.

But Cheney is totally consistent in his view, favoring a strong president - even if it's a Democrat. He told reporters in a 1987 interview that he would far rather see the Democrats nominate Sen. Sam Nunn (D., Ga.), the Armed Services Committee chairman and architect of Tower's defeat, than "a governor with no foreign policy experience," like Massachusetts' Michael Dukakis. Nunn would have a far better chance of beating the Republican nominee, Cheney allowed. But that was more than offset, in his view, by the prospect that if Nunn won, the nation would get what he considered a highly qualified president.

The Cheney nomination demonstrates, once again, that George Bush has quick recuperative powers and the ability to do well with his second efforts. Bush showed that earlier by winning the presidency on his second try and, in that second effort, recouping in New Hampshire what he had lost in the opening contest in Iowa.

Recovery skills are about as useful a trait as a president can possess. No way will the occupant of the Oval Office go through four years, or eight, without bumping into adversity. The ability to come back from such a blow, to shake off the after-effects and think clearly about what needs to be done, is what distinguishes political survivors from those who contribute, willy-nilly, to their own political demise. Bush is a survivor.

In choosing Cheney, Bush has completed what may well be the most skilled, politically sophisticated trio of national security officials Washington has seen in decades. Along with Secretary of State James Baker and national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, he forms a team of highly competent, compatible lieutenants, with the capacity to adjust policies to a changing world and defend those policies in the domestic political arena.

In terms of personal chemistry and history, I cannot recall any matchup of men in these jobs that promises as much compatibility and teamwork as these three. Cheney and Scowcroft worked side by side in the Ford White House; Cheney and Baker were the twin strategists of Ford's courageous 1976 campaign. The country is lucky to have them working together again.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future