Been Reading the WaPo Series on Cheney?

We are now on Day 2 of a four-article series on Vice President Dick Cheney, which is running in the Washington Post. “Angler” is the Secret Service’s code name for Cheney. Cute. He’s all of that and a bag of worms. The WaPo series, “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency” started yesterday with “A Different Understanding With the President”. Day 2 is today: “Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power”. And it’s not like any of the information about the power-obsessed, war mongering, neo-conservative, draft-dodging, lying, VP is a surprise. But reading details about his methods and vindictive techniques for getting his way is very informative and interesting. There are points where these articles elicit an almost involuntary, Oh please! response. Like this gem: “He wed his high school sweetheart, Lynne Vincent, beginning what friends describe as a lifelong love affair.” A man like Dick Cheney cannot have a love affair with anything but himself and his ambitions. And the idea that Cheney is not a shadow president is ridiculous since it’s based on “inside accounts”, such as: “Cheney is not, by nearly every inside account, the shadow president of popular lore. Bush has set his own course, not always in directions Cheney preferred. The president seized the helm when his No. 2 steered toward trouble, as Bush did, in time, on military commissions. Their one-on-one relationship is opaque, a vital unknown in assessing Cheney's impact on events. The two men speak of it seldom, if ever, with others. But officials who see them together often, not all of them admirers of the vice president, detect a strong sense of mutual confidence that Cheney is serving Bush's aims.” Uh-huh! The insiders know what they have to say or get canned. But a clear message comes through in these articles anyway. If George W. Bush were not a weak, ignorant, uninformed, frightened, narcissistic, insecure little putz, no Vice President, not even Dick Cheney could have seized control the way Dick Cheney has seized control. So is Dick Cheney actually Dr. Strangelove? In a word, Yes. At least that’s how one reporter answered the question on the Chris Matthews Show yesterday.