1 Boring Old Man

Cheney: No One Could Have Predicted The Financial Crisis,
Just As No One Foresaw 9/11

Yesterday in an interview with the Associated Press’s Deb Reichmann, Vice President Cheney repeatedly insisted that no one anticipated the looming U.S. financial crisis. “I don’t think anybody saw it coming,” he said. He then compared the financial crisis to 9/11, another crisis that supposedly no one predicted:

CHENEY: No, obviously, I wouldn’t have predicted that. On the other hand I wouldn’t have predicted 9/11, the global war on terror, the need to simultaneous run military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq or the near collapse of the financial system on a global basis, not just the U.S.
CHENEY: Did you see it coming? [Laughter]
REICHMANN: I wasn’t responsible for seeing it coming.
CHENEY: Now, what my point is that I don’t think anybody saw it coming.

Oddly enough, in today’s White House press briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Scott Stanzel insisted that the Bush administration “saw those [financial] problems on the horizon,” but it was Congress’s fault for taking “a long time…to act.” In reality, many economic experts — such as Nouriel Roubini, Dean Baker, and Paul Krugman — did predict the economic crisis; the Bush administration just wasn’t listening to them. In reality, administration officials often turned a “blind eye to the impending crisis.”

The same goes for 9/11. On August 6, 2001, the Bush administration received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.” The memo warned:

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a —- service in 1998 saying that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists. Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

In 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration distributed a CD-ROM presentation to airlines and airports that cited the possibility of a suicide hijacking. In response to the threat warnings, the Bush administration did nothing.

I haven’t read the book about Cheney, Angler – just the part that was in the Washington Post. I’m saving that book for a time when I’m not so angry at him [if that time ever comes]. Whatever makes him tick, all I know right now is that I don’t like it. He’s very effective at getting things done, but the things he does are usually misguided, including picking himself as a Vice President. I don’t much know what he stands for, only what he opposes. In fact, I doubt that he is driven by anything more than his intense oppositionalism and his emotions [see below].

He came into being in the salad days of the Nixon era – landing a job with Donald Rumsfeld in 1969 at the Office of Economic Opportunity where their task was to undermine the purpose of the Agency. He was good at wheeling and dealing, ending up as Gerald Ford’s Chief of Staff, where he tried to keep the power mongering of Nixon alive. After Ford’s failed campaign [which he managed], he returned to Wyoming and got himself elected to Congress. In his ten years in Congress, he was an effective wheeler dealer, but his voting record was monocular. He opposed anything "liberal" – Civil Rights, Education, Environment, Gun Control, increasing soldiers pay, AIDS testing, Abortion, etc. He only voted for things Conservative – Military Spending, Iran-Contra, etc. He had the most Conservative voting record in Congress.

When he became Secretary of Defense, he set about downsizing the military. While that seems like a paradox, it is consistent with his oppositionalism – he opposed everything Congress wanted to do just as he had done when he was in Congress himself. I can’t tell whether the decision to limit our First Gulf War was his and Bush agreed, or vica versa, but I suspect the former. I have a hunch  that he is actually a very frightened guy, something of what’s called a "coward," and that his persona is a defense against an excessive fearfulness.

While he’s obviously an ambitious guy, he flunked out of Yale quickly. He became a draft dodger and stayed in the shade of a host of deferments until he was old enough to avoid the military altogether. He remained rigidly bound to the anticommunist, antiliberal, hawk position while being drawn to anything that had to do with acquiring power. His ascendency to Secretary of Defense seems odd [except that he "followed the leader" – Rumsfeld – just as he had done throughout his career]. He became a Sportsman, shooting pheasants [and old men] on game preserves [where the birds are raised in cages], and fishing in [stocked] trout streams.