Gloomy ex-veep unleashed

Scripps Howard: When he was vice president and often holed up in an “undisclosed secure location,” Dick Cheney was all but invisible. Now that he’s out of office, he seems unavoidable.

While former President Bush has remained silent back in Texas, Cheney, in selected interviews, has been almost incendiary. Democrats are delighted because he’s unpopular generally — approval ratings around 30 percent — and a divisive figure within the Republican Party, which seems too cowed to rein him in.

Asked over the weekend about the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh and Colin Powell, Cheney said, “If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh.” A curious choice between a radio host whose most celebrated remark this year is that he is rooting for President Obama to fail and a decorated veteran who served as secretary of State and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- with Dick Cheney. And then he added that he didn’t know Powell was still a Republican.

Inappropriate?

Some believe it is inappropriate, certainly un-statesmanlike, for the former vice president to speak out forcefully so soon after leaving office, but he has every right to and, given his lack of political ambition and the fact that he is financially secure, there is no reason to think that he is motivated by anything other than that he deeply believes in what he is saying.

And Cheney seems to believe that if he doesn’t stand up for his administration, no one else will. Absent him “the critics have free run, and there isn’t anybody there on the other side to tell the truth,” which is a little sad when you think about it.