Unleash the dogs!

Back in the sixties, a political friend of mine – Irish-American Chicago politics background – told me that whenever you hear a politician worry in public about something happening, you can be certain that he is working his very heart out behind the scenes to make it happen.

Which brings me to Dick Cheney.

“Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” The question asked by England’s Henry II about Thomas a Becket almost a millennium ago comes to mind unbidden but irresistibly.

In case you missed it, Cheney gave an interview to Politico in which he said, essentially, that if the Obama administration didn’t conduct matters of security exactly the same way as Bush had, we would be struck again on our homeland by terrorists. He offered chemical, biological and/or nuclear attacks as possibilities.

What on earth could be the purpose in trying to scare us to death again? It’s a rhetorical tactic left over from the campaign of 2004, but why? Dick Cheney and his ideas were disavowed by his own party way before the recent election made it clear that it’s time to move on.

Who knows? Maybe he just wants to be loved.

For the good of the country, it’s time for Cheney to follow the example of his old boss and go quietly into that good night. Head back to the ranch in Wyoming, or Texas. Wherever.

With friends like him, the American people don’t need enemies.
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In other developments, I am so furious with Tom Daschle that I can hardly see straight. How dared he be so cavalier as to think the errors of his judgment would be overlooked? And what on earth are accountants for, anyway?

His failure to act honorably helped deliver a humiliating blow to the Obama administration.

He knew last June that the unpaid tax matter could be a problem, and yes, there might be perfectly acceptable explanations for his situation. But he KNEW it was there when he was vetted by the Obama people and he didn’t tell them until last month.

Tom Daschle has been around long enough to know that unpaid taxes can be a problem for any potential cabinet member – heaven knows, we’ve seen enough go down in flames in the past. What was he thinking?

Add to that the extraordinary amount of income – almost $5 million -- he had received as a consultant since he left the Senate. “Consulting” is a more discreet form of lobbying than Jack Abramoff and friends practiced. It’s legal, but it raises questions and, to make matters worse, he received some of those consulting fees from companies in the medical community.

The dogs of war were let loose: Not just the usual puppies, like John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Ensign (R-NV), but then the pitbull Grover Norquist, the anti-tax guy, emerged from whatever kennel he has been hiding in since he and Abramoff fell out of favor a couple of years back.

(Norquist was a big player in the White House during the Republican years; most famously, he has said he wants to reduce taxes in order to shrink government to a size small enough to flush down the bathtub drain. D’you think he’d get rid of the White House, too?)

So here they were, yapping and snarling again – just like the good old days. As if they never had a scandal in the world . . .

Not only did Daschle embarrass the administration and Obama personally, but in the matter of choosing a Secretary of Health and Human Services he consumed precious time and perhaps even damaged the chances of success for health care reform.

Thanks, Tom.
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Finally, while we’re talking about such things, remember the old adage mentioned here before: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

Along those lines, President Obama’s repeated efforts to work with the Republicans in Congress — traveling up to the Capitol to meet with the Republican caucus, meeting with individual Republican leaders, inviting them for cocktails at the White House, or to watch the Super Bowl game; yielding on one point after another in the stimulus package only to have them reject it again and again — all came to naught.

Toward the end of last week, though, he proved he hasn’t lost his mind. Describing the Republican opposition, he said, “Then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? That’s the whole point. No, seriously. That’s the point!”

So here we are, after years of Republican tax cuts that helped get us into this mess, with the Republican leadership in both houses now insisting that only tax cuts will get us out of it. They have claimed they want bipartisanship in Washington, and yet to date only three Republicans — none in the House, all in the Senate — are willing to support the legislation that even most of them acknowledge will provide jobs and tax relief to the American people and small businesses.

Another bit of psychology comes to mind: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.