Judge Cheney on his record

Judge Cheney on his record

Miami Herald: Leave it to former Vice President Dick Cheney to throw custom and protocol to the winds to engage in partisan sniping with the new administration so soon after the inauguration.

Reprising his role as doomsayer-in-chief, Cheney told a CNN interviewer that some of the new president’s policies raise the risk of another terror attack. It wasn’t the first time, either. He said much the same thing in an interview on Feb. 3, less than two weeks after President Barack Obama took office.

Cheney is entitled to his opinion, but former presidents, vice presidents and senior aides usually withhold criticism at the start of a successor’s term for good reason. It’s part of the ritual of democracy that underscores respect for electoral outcomes and the continuity of government. Besides, it’s not as if Obama isn’t getting an earful every day from his Republican critics in Congress and elsewhere.

This is unbecoming for a former vice president, particularly given the administration’s low standing at the end of the second term. Cheney finished his tenure with a popularity rating of 30 percent, even lower than Bush’s 33 percent.

As for his record as a soothsayer — he is the one who declared in 2005 that the insurgency in Iraq was “in the last throes.” That bit of insight was offered in the same interview where he predicted that the war would end before Bush’s term did.

It’s hard to see how Cheney’s comments benefit fellow Republicans.

Ultimately, he comes off as defensive, which at least is understandable. He has much to be defensive about.