Wouldn't be a sad comment on the state of political inclusivity if only Dick Cheney in a room of several hundred people could "speak" for Democrats on history's most radical proposals to change Social Security, the bedrock of American economic security for almost a century?
On a related note, a sad comment:
[A]bout Vice President Cheney's visit to Smyrna, Ga., yesterday for a talk about Social Security. . . . [with an] overwhelmingly Republican, invitation-only audience of about 700 in the gymnasium of Campbell High School. . . .
Smyrna resident John Kendrick . . . told the vice president, he wanted to know what "the other side" thought.
"So, I get to speak for the Democrats," the vice president retorted, drawing laughter. . . .
That Kendrick, an avowed Republican, had to pose the question and that Cheney was left to answer it proved one thing: This audience was a stacked deck. . . .
In a limited survey of the audience, everyone claimed to be a Republican, not to mention a Cheney fan.
(there's more...)
In a nice poetic bit that must've had him laughing on the inside, giving the setting, Cheney made a bid for bipartisanship, of all things:
Cheney, making his first speech on the subject since President Bush put some new proposals on the table in a news conference Thursday,
invoked the bipartisan approach that then-President Ronald Reagan and then-House Speaker Tip O'Neill took in 1983, when they worked together to save the social insurance program from a funding crisis.
"We need to do that again. We need to come back together as a nation and solve this problem," Cheney told the overwhelmingly Republican, invitation-only audience of about 700 in the gymnasium of Campbell High School.
The irony is rich. Compare from the same paragraph: The need to do "that" (i.e., a bipartisan approach) with speaking to a room of invitation-only blind supporters. I hope us uninvited taxpayers weren't charged for this trip.
Especially on the heels of this point, that whatever Cheney is saying on these trips are for the consumption of the invitees only:
Cheney apparently discussed the indexing proposal, and "even brought up raising payroll taxes -- something the administration consistently has opposed -- although he put the idea in a negative light: 'Frankly, we're a little nervous about that.'"
But what exactly did he say? Who knows? The White House, although it released a transcript of an event Cheney held later in the day, seems to have stopped distributing transcripts of Cheney's Social Security events. Is it because he's getting more specific than the president?
The White House does have a nice photo from the Social Security event on its Web site.
It can't be that the crowd was hostile.
If by not hostile the reporter means rabid supporters outside of the mainstream on Bush's Social Security plans, then spot on. This crowd was so "not hostile" to Cheney, they didn't even know what "the other side" (i.e., the party representing the mainstream) was saying in this Social Security debate.
I told you it was sad.