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Grumpy Old Man

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You have to hand it to ol' Dick.  He doesn't miss an opportunity to castigate the current president.  He can't even write a short "biography" without condemning the Obama administration, turning an innocuous occasion like the Wyoming State Bar convention into front page news.  Now, others from around the country will no doubt fill the vacancies left by Wyoming lawyers who were upset by Cheney politicizing the event.

Some thought that having a new ticker would give the former Veep a new lease on life, but since his heart transplant in 2012 he hasn't let this administration off the hook, blaming it for anything and everything under the sun.  As a result, he makes many appearances, like this one on ABC News only four months after the surgery.  He used this opportunity to castigate Obama as well, calling him one the weakest presidents in history, and saying he even preferred Carter.  Of course, that was an election year and maybe he thought he was helping his buddy, Mitt Romney, out.

It's been a busy year for Dick.  He has a new book out in hardback and another one issued in paperback, as well as a documentary, all of which he has been busily promoting on the talk show circuit.  At each and every turn comes another swipe at Obama.  A veritable "one-man zombie apocalypse," as Ana Marie Cox points out in this book review of Heart, released last October.

At some point you have to wonder to what degree this contempt for the president is pathological.  Of course, you could say that about many persons on the Right, who have been vociferously antagonistic toward Obama even before he took the oath of office.  Rush Limbaugh was among those who hoped Obama failed as President.  So did Dick, it seems, as he continues to admonish the President for a foreign policy he helped set while serving in the Bush administration.

Fact of the matter, the Obama administration hasn't failed.  His administration might not have delivered on the hope many had during the 2008 election that he would set a new tone for the White House, but Obama has maintained a steady course throughout the last six years, with a slowly improving economy and a foreign policy based as much on international cooperation as on American hubris.

But, the Wyoming State Bar won't see a debate on the merits and demerits of the Obama White House.  Cheney will have his unfettered say on the matter before a convention full of lawyers, who probably won't care much one way or the other what the former Veep has to say.  However, I doubt anyone will be inviting Dick quail hunting afterward.

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