Cheney persists as polarizing figure

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dick Cheney refuses to be a has-been.

The former vice president’s voice appears to carry even more weight than it did in the waning days of the Bush administration.

Some people want him to be quiet and disappear. Others are cheering the public relations tour that Cheney began halfway through President Barack Obama’s first 100 days, defending the Bush administration’s harsh interrogation tactics and other anti-terrorism policies.

Vice presidents typically fade away quietly.

Not Cheney.

When Obama released memos detailing Bush-era interrogation techniques and wouldn’t completely rule out prosecuting or disciplining former Bush administration officials, Cheney couldn’t stay silent.

“It wasn’t like on Jan. 21, he planned that he was going to speak out in this way,” said Cheney’s daughter Liz, a former State Department official who has traveled extensively with her father. “It was driven by events, and I think he will continue to do it if he feels it’s important to the public debate.”

“You just have to know the way he works,” she said. “He was watching what was going on. He knew it was wrong, and he knew he had an obligation to say it was wrong.”

The Cheney camp says it’s not about politics.

In Washington, however, everything is about politics, and Cheney’s decision to make his case on talk shows and deliver speeches at think tanks cuts both ways. His message fires up conservatives but also rallies Democratic opponents who don’t miss an opportunity to portray the unpopular Cheney as the lead spokesman of the Republican Party.

“I would think the Republicans ought to be shy in using him as their front,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He dismisses Cheney’s appearances as if they were old TV reruns.

Even some prominent Republicans aren’t too happy about Cheney’s message.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, the nation’s first homeland security chief, was asked if he agreed with Cheney’s assertion that the Obama administration has made the country less safe. “I do not,” Ridge said.

Cheney supporters say the former vice president has received an outpouring of supportive e-mails, calls and comments from the military community, the families of those who died in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and from people at the CIA, which helped carry out the interrogation program.

His backers claim Cheney is having an impact.

They point to Obama’s move to reverse himself and fight the court-ordered release of prisoner-abuse photos and his decision to revive military tribunals for some suspected terrorists, although he is revamping how that system would work.

They also cite the Democratic-controlled Senate’s vote to deny Obama $80 million to close the prison camp in eight months, as the president promised.