Now Cheney Cares What We Think?

Former Vice President Dick Cheney sounds to me like one of those bitter white guys of a certain age who can't believe they aren't calling the shots anymore.

If I said that, though, the usual cast of bitter white guys would accuse me of hating men, particularly those who are bitter and white. So instead, I'm going to quote Roger Simon, a columnist for Politico:

"Dick Cheney is 68, white and bitter."

Hey, don't yell at me. That's Roger talking. And he's a white guy. Simon also said that being 68, white and bitter, Cheney is the Republican Party. I wouldn't go that far. I've talked to plenty of moderate Republicans lately who desperately want Cheney to munch those sour grapes in the privacy of his own Death Star and let the rest of America move on to brighter galaxies. They usually say this to me in hushed tones and poised to duck.

Cheney seems to be trolling for targets lately, and they want to stay wa-a-a-a-y out of firing range. As we all know, you don't have to be in the former vice president's cross hairs to get a face load of buckshot.

In recent weeks, Cheney has become the darling of the far, far right, attempting to scare Americans to death with his accusations that President Barack Obama has been reckless on the issue of terrorism and is putting our country at risk. He has accused Obama of "contrived indignation and phony moralizing" over the issue of detainee interrogations.

And Cheney has criticized the president's decision to close Guantanamo, even though Obama's predecessor — and Cheney's former boss — wanted to shut it down, too.

Cheney also took aim at former Secretary of State Colin Powell, comparing him unfavorably with Rush Limbaugh, the far-right entertainer and de facto head of the Republican Party. Limbaugh, you may want to forget, insisted that Powell no longer deserves to be a Republican after Powell endorsed Obama.

Cheney agrees.

"Well, if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh," Cheney told "Face the Nation's" Bob Schieffer. "My take on it was Colin had already left the party.

Powell fired back on the same show two weeks later: "Rush will not get his wish, and Mr. Cheney was misinformed; I am still a Republican."

I have had my share of disagreements with Colin Powell, especially over the war in Iraq. But someone needs to explain to Cheney that no African-American needs a white guy telling him who he is or what he should call himself. That is so two centuries ago.

I can hear the groans from here: There she goes, making it all about race again.

OK, let's put it another way: No civilian who scored five deferments to stay out of Vietnam should be talking trash to a four-star general who served there — twice — and was wounded there — twice.

As columnist Mike Lupica noted this week in the New York Daily News, men like Powell "put their own lives on the line, (while) Cheney always did it with somebody else's."

Not that Cheney ever has cared what we think of that.

In an interview last year, ABC's Martha Raddatz told Cheney a new poll showed that two-thirds of Americans thought the war in Iraq was not worth fighting.

This was Cheney's response: "So?"

A surprised Radditz pressed: "So you don't care what the American people think?"

"I think we cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations of the public opinion polls," he said.

Now that Cheney's out of office, he's all about those polls. He's particularly keen on what the public thinks of him, so he's courting attention like a floozy flashing leg. And he's recruited his daughter Liz in the courtship for public approval.

As she explained on Fox last week, her father wants classified memos released so that the public can decide whether torture worked.

"My dad has stood up and said: 'No, wait a minute. That's not right. It's not accurate. It's not fair,'" Liz Cheney told Sean Hannity. "'The American people ought to have a chance to judge.'"

Cheney wants to hear from the American public?

Let's stick with change we can believe in.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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