KING: don't you ever say, 'maybe I'm wrong?' CHENEY: No.
Did anybody watch Dick Cheney on "Larry King Live" last night? I watched it until Cheney got to this part, and then my gag reflex kicked in.
KING: Do you ever, as an intelligent person, look in the mirror and say, maybe I'm wrong?
CHENEY: Well, the way you have to operate in these jobs -- and the president obviously is the one who bears the greatest burden -- he's the one who makes the decisions. But I clearly support him. You have to do it on the basis of what you think is right and what's best for the country.
The polls are notoriously unreliable in the sense that they change all the time and they bounce around all over the place. And that if you looked simply at public opinion, for example, a lot of the key decisions in our history would never have been pursued or followed through on.
Washington never would have carried through for seven years of the Revolution. Abraham Lincoln would never have stayed with it in order to win the Civil War. We would have been two separate nations by then.
You can look at major moments in our history and be thankful that we had leaders and presidents who made decisions, stuck with them and saw them through to the end.
KING: But in all cases, they did question themselves. In all cases, they said, well, let's look at it this way.
Don't you?
I mean the question is, don't you ever say, maybe I'm wrong?
CHENEY: No. I think what we do is we look at it in terms of trying to decide what's the right thing to do. And the -- and weigh the evidence. And there's a lot of debate and discussion.
CHENEY: Well, the way you have to operate in these jobs -- and the president obviously is the one who bears the greatest burden -- he's the one who makes the decisions. But I clearly support him. You have to do it on the basis of what you think is right and what's best for the country.
The polls are notoriously unreliable in the sense that they change all the time and they bounce around all over the place. And that if you looked simply at public opinion, for example, a lot of the key decisions in our history would never have been pursued or followed through on.
Washington never would have carried through for seven years of the Revolution. Abraham Lincoln would never have stayed with it in order to win the Civil War. We would have been two separate nations by then.
You can look at major moments in our history and be thankful that we had leaders and presidents who made decisions, stuck with them and saw them through to the end.
KING: But in all cases, they did question themselves. In all cases, they said, well, let's look at it this way.
Don't you?
I mean the question is, don't you ever say, maybe I'm wrong?
CHENEY: No. I think what we do is we look at it in terms of trying to decide what's the right thing to do. And the -- and weigh the evidence. And there's a lot of debate and discussion.
It's bad enough that Cheney said that he has never once questioned his own judgement, but he then compared the decision making process of the present administration to that of Abraham Lincoln.
5 Comments:
I'm not surprised, but I'm still disturbed.
Lincoln was notoriously full of self-doubt and depression.
Cheney doesn't have to second guess, his success metric is shown to him in quarterly reports. The rest is just abstract.
J.D.: It was so creepy to watch, I had to change the channel.
Jess Wundrun: It is amazing that he could say such things with a straight face, like he had no idea how awful it sounded.
I did and then I showered using a brillo pad and bleach.
Can't shake the ick.
I know. I had to wash out my ears with oven cleaner!
Post a Comment
<< Home