It’s been my experience in a long and fruitful career spent watching politicians that the politicians of the regime-just-passed generally disappear when the new regime steps in — at least for a little while.
They go into academia.
They go into charity work.
They go back to their ranch to cut brush.
They do not, as has former vice president Dick Cheney, make themselves available to the press and defend their practices and criticize the new regime, no matter what’s at stake. They go off and be elder statespeople, go dandle the grandkids, something.
I admit I have not been a fan of Dick Cheney since, well, ever, but this seems like bad form from the former VP:
“In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists”
Or is that just because I’ve not been a fan of Dick Cheney since, well, ever. It’s so hard to separate feelings from fact here.
Dating Jesus 
I sort of wish that Bill Clinton and Al Gore had taken every opportunity available to point out that their successors were running a criminal enterprise out of the White House.
How would they have done that, though? And would we have listened?
I don’t know if “we” would have listened.
But *I* would have felt better, because I said all that stuff and everyone thought I was unpatriotic. It would have been nice to have some more company.
I’m not saying that he shouldn’t be talking — but what he’s saying makes about as much sense as it did when he was in power. And if you’re referring to yourself talking about the last administration, did you really feel alone?
When we went to war in Iraq, I felt pretty alone. I had a number of friends who bought the “it’ll be over in three months and they will strew flowers at our feet” meme.
And I was called a Cassandra for stating over and over again what I thought was obvious.
For real? I hang out with a bunch of lefties, I guess. Actually, a friend of mine who’s sets the standard for conservatism — he’d served in Vietnam — was saying the same thing you were, way back then.
You know, I named a tumor I had removed Dick Cheney and now he’s more present and overbearing than ever. I blame myself. (good Baptist upbringing!)
What I hear you saying (as any one who’s spent any moments in marriage counseling learns to say) is: I am not a fan. Am I right?
If some believe in what they did to serve the nation, why would you wish them to be silent? Someone is always going to the opposite viewpoint and want the talker to be quiet. What you wish on one may come back around and bite you later.
In this case, though, it comes off as completely self-serving. I just rewatched the HBO special on John Adams (all 120 CDs, or so it seemed) and John Adams seemed preoccupied with how history would treat him, but he kept silent. It’s just good manners to do that.
Undermining the current administratation is exactly the behavior that the previous administration would have castigated as being a traitor or anti-American. For one of the people primarily responsible for propagating that point of view, I find it disingenous for him to hide behind the cloak of it being part of being an American to be able to disagree. I agree that it is our right; I wish that he and his party when in power would have done the same while in power. I find it very disagreeable for one thing to be okay for Dick and not okay for ordinary Americans.
It’s a sticky wicket, as Justjss just brought up — that if we’re trying to restrict someone speaking out, then, well, we’re being restrictive and disrespectful of freedom of speech. And yet, there’s something about this that just feels so wrong. Again, I can’t separate my feelings for the human from his actions, perhaps, but ugh.