January 25, 2007

Defensive much, Dick?

Posted by: Chris

Vice President Dick Cheney was incredibly defensive on a whole range of topics in an interview yesterday with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.  On Iraq, he made all of Bush's bipartisan talk look like the hogwash it no doubt is and refused to acknowledge the quagmire the country is in to due in large part to his own zealotry about Saddam Hussein.

Even on a lighter topic, like his daughter Mary's pregnancy, Cheney was so gruff and defensive as to be a caricature of himself.  From a WaPo transcript of the exchange:

Your daughter Mary, she's pregnant. All of us are happy. She's going to have a baby. You're going to have another grandchild. Some of the — some critics, though, are suggesting, for example, a statement from someone representing Focus on the Family:

"Mary Cheney's pregnancy raises the question of what's best for children. Just because it's possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father, doesn't mean it's best for the child."

Do you want to respond to that?

CHENEY: No, I don't.

BLITZER: She's obviously a good daughter —

CHENEY: I'm delighted — I'm delighted I'm about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf, and obviously think the world of both of my daughters and all of my grandchildren. And I think, frankly, you're out of line with that question.

BLITZER: I think all of us appreciate —

CHENEY: I think you're out of — I think you're out of line with that question.

BLITZER: — your daughter. We like your daughters. Believe me, I'm very, very sympathetic to Liz and to Mary. I like them both. That was just a question that's come up and it's a responsible, fair question.

CHENEY: I just fundamentally disagree with your perspective.

BLITZER: I want to congratulate you on having another grandchild.

Cheney is so defensive you would think Mary Cheney were the equivalent of Chelsea Clinton, away at college, uninvolved in politics and her privacy violated.  But Mary Cheney has never been Chelsea Clinton.  She worked on her father's campaign to be vice president and ran his re-election effort.  She wrote a book about how her private life as a lesbian intersected with the views of her father and her father's boss on gay marriage and gay rights.

Blitzer's question didn't even go there, although it would have been fair game to do so. He focused instead on even stronger grounds: asking the vice president about conservative attacks on Mary for living her life. 

But as with Vietnam, Dick Cheney ducked the fight.  Let someone else defend his daughter and her civil rights.  Just like he's willing to let other Americans fight and die for a cause that only he and a small minority of Americans believe is still worth fighting.

Tags: Dick Cheney, Mary Cheney