Liz Cheney owes her prominence as a TV talking head to her daddy. But nepotism can be dangerous as well as annoying
On paper at least, Liz Cheney is more than just the privileged daughter of a former vice-president, bristling with hostile remarks about the Obama administration, the president’s patriotism, and all the terrible perils we face because her father is no longer in control of our national defenses. She advertises herself as a “specialist in Mideast policy,” a term that implies some vague expertise in counterterrorism. What she usually delivers are crude, propagandistic pronouncements like this cheesy attack ad, titled “100 Hours.” Reinforced by lurid music and graphics, its chief message is that President Obama played a few rounds of golf over the Christmas holiday — and spent a few days finding out what happened with Flight 253 before commenting publicly on the incident.
Serving as a board member of Keep America Safe, the neoconservative propaganda organ responsible for that ad, Cheney is also a Fox News commentator and a regular guest on many other outlets. In those roles she has usually escaped tough questions, but there are some signs of weariness with her vacuous bluster.
When she appeared on “ABC News This Week” to discuss the 100 Hours ad, George Stephanopoulos quickly pointed out that George W. Bush didn’t speak publicly about shoe-bomber Richard Reid until six days after he attempted to bring down Flight 253. (Stephanopoulos might also have noted that Cheney and her friends never seemed to notice how often Bush left the White House on vacation — especially during the weeks before 9/11, when the warning system was flashing red-red-red and steam was shooting from Richard Clarke’s ears.) Then Andrew Sullivan wondered aloud why the mainstream media lavish so much attention and airtime on someone whose public prominence is rooted solely in nepotism. A very good question, even though Sullivan is about eight years too late in asking.
But whenever Liz Cheney (or her dad) complain that nobody except them takes terrorism seriously, I think about her husband, Philip Perry, and the Washington Monthly’s remarkable July 2007 investigation of how he protected the chemical industry from any federal effort to secure their manufacturing plants — huge and enormously toxic — from a terror attack. (Real experts have long agreed that chemical manufacturing complexes, many of them abutting metropolitan population centers, present exceptionally tempting and insecure targets for al-Qaida.)
Strictly a patronage appointee like his wife, Perry is a Republican attorney who has spun his government appointments at the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Homeland Security into gold at the Latham & Watkins lobby shop — where he chairs the Homeland Security practice group, representing the same contractors and corporations he failed to regulate. This is simply the usual revolving-door Republicanism, except that in a period of actual danger, Perry did lasting damage to the nation’s security. Listening to Liz and Dick is irritating, but America is safer with the Cheney family (and cronies) on TV and out of government.
Joe Conason blogs in Salon several times a week and writes a weekly column for the New York Observer. His latest book is "It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush." More Joe Conason
The Atlantic Magazine's celebration of Washington's power elite culminates in a pleasant father-daughter chat
This week, the Atlantic Media Co. held its “Washington Ideas Forum,” one of many regular events held for Washington’s political elite to gather and congratulate themselves for having so many ideas. The Atlantic — which also publishes a monthly magazine, I’m told — throws these pricey orgies of self-regard each year, in Washington and Aspen. One of the big “ideas” presented at this year’s forum was actually a pretty old one: that no matter how awful and criminal certain people’s behavior is in office, they will never, ever be kicked out of the Washington elite.
That’s why the forum hosted Henry Kissinger, this big idea’s mascot. And that’s why the forum ended with an interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has a memoir to promote. Cheney was joined onstage by his daughter and co-author, Liz Cheney, who is devoting herself to whitewashing her father’s legacy of torture and death and shooting old men in the face.
They were technically being “interviewed” by a third party — a journalist! — but for some reason most of the question-asking was actually done by … Liz.
“Were you really secretly running things?” Liz Cheney asked.
“No,” her father said.
As proof, he cited the fact that President Bush once had Cheney’s dog banned from a section of Camp David.
This gentle interrogation seems to have struck certain high-profile Atlantic contributors as a bit silly but on the other hand it would be much harder to get big names to attend these things if they were worried someone might call them out for being a war criminal. (Hot tip for the International Criminal Court: Try sending out invitations for a sham “Ideas Festival”?)
The forum also hosted former Pakistan leader Pervez Musharraf, an actual former dictator. (But one of the “good ones”!)
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene
Slideshow: A gold-obsessed birther, Dick Cheney's daughter and more. Meet the opponents of the "Ground Zero mosque"
The project seems innocent enough: A progressive Muslim group wants to build Cordoba House, a community center modeled after the YMCA near the old World Trade Center site. New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is all for it, and the local community board has signed off on it. But that means nothing to a fervent crew of right-wing Islamophobes — including a gold-crazed televangelist birther, a businessman with a taste for racist and graphically sexual e-mails, and the New York Post — have banded together to recast the project as the “Ground Zero mosque.” In the following slide show, we introduce you to the rogues’ gallery of “Ground Zero mosque” opponents.
View the slide show
Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott
Why isn't the president thrilled that an American citizen and 8 others were killed in a botched raid?
Liz Cheney desperately needed to find some excuse to fault Barack Obama for not being Cheney-ish enough in his response to the Israeli flotilla attack. There’s only one problem: In American politics, Republicans and Democrats agree that Israel can and must shoot whomever it wants to — even American citizens! — to protect itself from the very real threat posed by the potential delivery of toys to desperately impoverished Palestinians.
So Obama’s response has been tepid and “neutral” (read: pretty much toothless). So Liz is just grabbing onto whatever she can to convince Americans that the president is not willing to do what it takes to protect us from… some sort of nuclear slingshot aimed at America, from Gaza (or perhaps a “sharpened pole” long enough to reach our shores):
This is what she came up with:
Yesterday, President Obama said the Israeli action to stop the flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip was “tragic.” What is truly tragic is that President Obama is perpetuating Israel’s enemies’ version of events. The Israeli government has imposed a blockade around Gaza because Hamas remains committed to Israel’s destruction…
President Obama is contributing to the isolation of Israel, and sending a clear signal to the Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis that their methods for ostracizing Israel will succeed, and will be met by no resistance from America.
There is no middle ground here. Either the United States stands with the people of Israel in the war against radical Islamic terrorism or we are providing encouragement to Israel’s enemies — and our own. Keep America Safe calls on President Obama to reverse his present course and support the state of Israel immediately and unequivocally.
It’s hardly worth bothering to correct the record, but the president just said that it was “tragic” that people, including a 19-year-old American citizen, died. I guess Liz’s position is that the loss of life was necessary.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene
The former vice-president's daughter tosses out the red meat at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference
Liz Cheney wasn’t exactly shy about going after President Obama in her speech at the opening session of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference here.
“President Obama should stop apologizing for this great nation and start defending it,” she said, in one of several lines in her 30 minute speech that won big ovations from the crowd. Other bits of Cheney wisdom that went over big:
- “Somebody needs to keep reminding this administration that foreign terrorists do not have constitutional rights.”
- “The media has played this up as a confrontation between Dick Cheney and Barack Obama. I prefer to think of it as a constructive dialog — between a two-term vice president and a one-term president.”
- “Regardless of massive public disapproval of the healthcare plan, this president rammed it through on a partisan vote. President Obama’s phony numbers are about to become our very real problem.”
- “One of the greatest thinkers of our time, in my opinion, is Charles Krauthammer.”
In fairness, she did also say conservatives need to applaud Obama when he does the right thing. But she made it clear that “doing the right thing” basically entails “doing whatever the Bush administration would be doing if it were still in charge.”
One line in Cheney’s speech, though it didn’t get much of a reaction from the audience, seemed like a bit more than a throwaway. “It will fall to our next president, whenever he — or she — takes office on Jan. 20, 2013,” Cheney said, to lead the nation back to the right path. With Sarah Palin speaking here on Friday, was Cheney trying to encourage her to run in 2012?
Mike Madden is Salon's Washington correspondent. A complete listing of his articles is here. Follow him on Twitter here. More Mike Madden
Defending terror suspects puts lawyers "in the finest traditions of the country," says Clinton's nemesis. Poor Liz
Right now I’m watching Kenneth Starr denounce Liz Cheney on MSNBC’s “Countdown,” and it’s very disorienting. Starr was one of the villains of Clinton’s impeachment, dragging his investigation far beyond the Whitewater questions that triggered it, leading the nation through a tale of stained blue dresses, sad Oval Office trysts and more than we ever needed to know about cigars. But he’s delivering sense about our justice system tonight on MSNBC. Saying something nice about Ken Starr on Salon might cause our servers to meltdown – but I’m going to have to. Liz Cheney made it happen.
Even Starr is outraged by Cheney’s despicable attack on Justice Department lawyers who’ve defended terror suspects in their past. She’s labeled the group “the al Qaida seven,” and suggested they should be ineligible for Justice Department work.
By contrast Starr called such work “in the finest traditions of the country.” He noted that American founder and president John Adams “represented the British redcoats who were accused of the Boston Massacre – and he successfully defended seven of the British troops who were accused of these crimes.” Starr worked in Atticus Finch from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” remembering Finch told his kids “‘I’ve got to do this as a matter of conscience,’ and it was the conscience of a great profession… One needs to be courageous at times and stand up to power.”
Starr isn’t the only conservative who signed the letter. Former Solicitor General (and counsel to the anti-Clinton Arkansas Project) Ted Ols0n did too. Maybe most remarkable to me, since I’ve debated him, is the signature of torture-defender David Rivkin. If Cheney’s gone too far for Rivkin, that’s pretty far indeed.
I’m amused by the fact that Cheney’s biggest defender is Wrong-way Bill Kristol, who’s almost always wrong about almost everything. He predicted some conservative lawyers would sign the letter of protest, sneering “The legal fraternity doesn’t like criticism of lawyers.”
Starr’s response? “I love Bill Kristol, I view him as a friend. But this is not consistent with the great traditions of our country and certainly of our profession…very fine traditions. [The condemned lawyers] deserve commendation. They do not deserve criticism at all. This was very unwise.”
I love that it’s Cheney and Kristol, two of the nation’s top beneficiaries of affirmative action for conservative white people (which is far more widespread than any preferences for minorities), who are still insisting their shameful attacks are reasonable. Like naughty spoiled children, they’re happy their high jinks are rattling their elders. Kewl!
But I don’t think this helps Liz Cheney in her reported quest to redeem her father’s legacy by running for Senate in Wyoming or Virginia. For all these conservative lawyers to immediately smack her down suggests she’s a) dead wrong and b) not well respected. This is a public humiliation for Cheney, and on a lesser scale, for Kristol. It shows they don’t understand “the finest traditions of our country.”
Honestly, both of them are starting to look like the washed-out later generation of once-relevant elite families. We all know how that happens. I could be wrong, because being mean and conscience-free counts for a lot in politics today. But this won’t be the last time Cheney is rebuked.
Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More Joan Walsh
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