Dick Cheney’s MAD, just not in the way you think. As Time, the AP and virtually every pundit across the political spectrum debate the meaning of Cheney’s ubiquity on your television screen, it may be an old Cold War theory which best explains his strategy. The former vice president isn’t merely trying to rewrite history or work the jury with his repeated claims that torture "saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives" and that "nothing devious or deceitful or dishonest or illegal about what was done." With his brinksmanship, Dick Cheney is threatening the political equivalent of Mutual Assured Destruction to produce a stalemate he apparently believes he will win.
Cheney’s escalating campaign against the Obama administration began within days of the election. His charge that President Obama will "raise the risk to the American people of another attack" has reached a crescendo with appearances on CBS and Fox News this week. And while Cheney Tuesday blasted Obama’s approach on Iran as a "giant conspiracy" which is "bound to fail," next week at the American Enterprise Institute he will offer a full-throated defense of the Bush administration’s national security policies, including its regime of detainee torture.
All of which begs the question: why would a wildly unpopular figure who has proclaimed he has no future political ambitions mount such an unprecedented public campaign to criticize his successors?
Over on the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen ponders "is Dick running for something?" For its part, the AP explores the gamut of explanations, ranging from the sincere ("it could be that Cheney really sees a threat out there"), routine revisionist history ("He sees himself in a position where his legacy is called into question, and he wants to get his story out before history gels") to the Freudian:
"This is not the same level of control and discipline Cheney’s exercised over the last 40 years," said John Baick, professor of history at Western New England College. "I think it grows out of a deep sense of hurt and betrayal."Time’s Michael Duffy joins in the burgeoning "meaning of Dick" cottage industry to explain why Angler is now "so chatty all of a sudden." Noting Cheney’s belief that "in politics as well the best defense is often a good offense," Duffy rightly concludes Cheney is seeking to "refocus the question about waterboarding and other interrogation techniques from whether they were legal to whether they worked."But lost in these analyses is Cheney’s real objective and strategy is his twilight struggle against the Obama administration. For that, one need only look to Dick Cheney’s Cold Warrior roots and the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).
By raising the stakes over the torture issue with his repeated appearances, Dick Cheney isn’t merely daring Democratic Congress and the Obama administration to investigate him and other members of the Bush torture team. Cheney’s is a scorched earth game he believes he can win.
Cheney’s MAD strategy goes something like this. If the DOJ or Congress proceeds with torture probes or prosecutions, Republican retaliation will be massive and total. Nominees will be blocked, legislation filibustered and the gridlock in Washington permanent. The blame for the carnage, the theory goes, will go to the side (in this case, Democrats) which launched the first strike. As Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."
With the prospect of an atomic political conflict assured of leaving both parties devastated, stalemate is the only alternative. And in Dick Cheney’s case, stalemate equals victory. By ratcheting up the public pressure, Cheney is forcing Obama’s hand: act on torture, or back down. And by backing down, Obama would in essence codify the Bush administration’s criminality. In the unsteady equilibrium which would endure, the Bush torture team would appear to be right, seemingly vindicated. Like the Soviet threat, the risk from torture prosecution would be successfully contained. In his eyes, Cheney’s omnipresence isn’t a nightmare for Republicans, but their path back.
As the Associated Press noted, "Cheney seemed even more exercised after Obama released memos detailing how ‘enhanced interrogation’ became a tactic used during the Bush administration."
Cheney’s MAD, all right. Just not in the way most people think.
But mostly, my impression of Dick Cheney right now is that he’s doing what Dick Cheney does. What I mean is that this is simply part of his character – his personality. An influential Psychoanalyst, Melanie Klein, once remarked how astounding it is that people do the same things over and over. In psychodynamic circles, it’s called "character" or "the repetition compulsion" or "structure." Each of us has a set of tools we use when faced with problems or conflict, and we use them over and over. Cheney mounts campaigns. Remember the lead-up to the Iraq War? He was everywhere. It’s what my friend means when he says, "it’s his nature." He’s doing the exact same thing now that he did when he got us into this mess. Mounting a campaign, mobilizing evidence [true or false]. Attacking his enemies. Calling on friends. It’s "the Cheney Way." Discrediting Pelosi is the this-time version of discrediting Joe Wilson. All this speculation about his motive is moot. What matters is what he does [over and over]. It’s often called bully-ism…
Aristotle would call this a "fatal flaw." The very aspect of his Cheney-ness that got him [us] in this mess is running full bore again. What’s different? Last time, we listened to the content of his campaign. This time, all we can talk about is his methodology. We’re on to him now…
I agree that it’s his character. And I would expand that to include maybe what we shrinks call narcissistic rage.
Cheney’s choice has always been to operate in the background: chief of staff, cabinet member, VP — never the one who runs for office and presents his plans in the light of day. Secret meetings, manipulations, pressure, schemes — and subtle ways of controlling the president. That was his way. I don’t doubt for a minute that keeping Bush away from D.C. on 9/11 was to give him a free hand to do what had to be done.
VP with a malleable front guy was the perfect spot for him Until — late in the second term, it seems that Condi Rice and Bob Gates began to get the upper hand on some things. And Bush no longer did it all Cheney’s way.
The last straw was the lack of a pardon for Scooter Libby.
I think, in addition to all you say, there is this rage coming out because his power has been taken away — certainly because he’s no longer in office, but also because he began to lose control over Bush even before.
So I think we have a characterological bully who’s having a narcissitic rage on top of it.
That has to be an essential ingredient. I have a more worried friend who wonders if he’s forming the American Nazi Party, and I can’t argue with him in that Cheney and Rush seem to be fomenting for a coups d’etat. But your explanation makes more sense. He dramatically over-reacted to Joseph Wilson’s op-ed. Had Cheney been quiet, it would have been a short story rather than the first chapter in a long novel. The line in Wilson’s op-ed that seemed to light his fire was not:”some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” It was “I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office had questions about a particular intelligence report.” It was the part that implicated him [as it now turns out it should have].
Your thesis is that the motor is being fueled by his “Narcissistic Rage” explains much of his irrational behavior. Associated with that, the current accusation [torture for political purposes] actually puts him in a compromised legal position, and Sheldon Whitehouse is all over that possibility. I don’t know if “suggesting” that they waterboard an Iraqi P.O.W. is illegal, but it sure smells to high heaven.
When I think back over the things they did in 2002, I’m amazed at their arrogance and brashness. Secret wiretaps, torture, controlling the DoJ, visiting Ashcroft in the hospital while he was deleroius, appointing AGAG, trying to appoint Harriet Miers, appointing John Bolton during a recess, firing non-compliant US Attorneys, marching us off to war on next to no evidence… It boggles the mind. And it adds credence to your thesis of extremely friable narcissism. “If I think it, it’s right.”
At issue: Does he have some plan, something he’s trying to bring off, or is he just being a bull in a china shop. If it’s the latter, he’s going to end up alienating every right thinking American. More power to him. If he’s got a plan, he’s capable of doing a lot of damage, and he’s still going to end up alienating every right thinking American. It’s Aristotle’s Poetics in camera.
Were there still a Shakespeare, would he name this remake of Lear and Macbeth, “Dick” or “Cheney” [since Richard is already taken]?
I wonder if der fuhrer had a plan when the Allies were closing in on Berlin from every corner. He was mad at Germany, mad at the Wehrmacht, mad at everybody for letting him down and ruining his 1000 year reich dream…a kind of “permanent majority” that we’ve heard bandied about in recent years… and by God, everyone was going down in a hell of total destruction with him. But how can this 2 bit macawber imagine that he’s got any kind of clout really? Your fading images of the former vp are most apt and, one hopes, an immediate reality. I was stunned when he first started blabbing off, now I am really ticked off and I wish POTUS would deal with it more emphatically than he has to date. If anyone is causing a threat to national security, well, that would be Dick Cheney.