New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd got into a bit of trouble this week for lifting, word for word, a paragraph of Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall.
She should do it again. Or someone should.
On the morning Dick Cheney unveils his Great National Security Speech, Josh Marshall has written a couple of paragraphs that deserve to be lifted (or at least quoted verbatim with credit), word for word, about the worst Vice President in the history of the United States.
Those two paragraphs, below the fold.
Since it was revealed that Dick Cheney would give a speech at the American Enterprise Institute moments after President Obama's own speech on national security and American values, the media has set today up as a (to quote Wolf Blitzer) "showdown" between the two men. Never mind that the majority of the American people are comfortable with the Obama administration's efforts on national security, and the majority also disapprove of what Cheney did while in office.
Josh Marshall puts it all in perspective, in a way that should be quoted by Blizter, by Dowd, by somebody (and that's why I'm quoting him now). In a post entitled "Don't Forget the Mockery" Josh describes Cheney:
This is someone who not only organized and seemingly directed a policy of state-sponsored torture. He did it in large part to get people to admit to crankish conspiracy theories he got taken in by by a crew of think-tank jockeys in DC whose theories most even half way sensible people treated as punch lines of jokes. So it's Torquemada or 1984 but only after getting rescripted by Mel Brooks.
This is an extremely gullible man who has just come off being the driving ideological force in an administration that most people can already see produced more fiascos and titanic, self-inflicted goofs than possibly any in our entire history. By any standard the guy is a monumental failure -- and not one whose mistakes stem in some Lyndon Johnson fashion from tragic overreach, but just a fool who damaged his country through his own gullibility, paranoia and bad judgment. Whatever else you can say about the Cheney story it ain't Shakespearean.
Josh concludes by reminding the media that "the great majority of Americans see Dick Cheney, accurately, as a clown. And mockery isn't just the most effective but also the most morally apt response to the man."
Words to remember. And to disseminate as widely as possible on a day when Dick Cheney opens his mouth to defend his administration's record. So go for it, Maureen Dowd. You liked Josh Marshall's words enough to use them last week; these words are even more deserving of inclusion in your column.
(Maybe attributing them correctly wouldn't be a bad idea this time.)