Film Makes Clear: Cheney Pulled the Strings All Along

Maureen Dowd noticed something interesting while watching the new documentary The World According to Dick Cheney. In his interviews "Cheney dispenses with the fig leaf of 'we,'" Dowd observes in the New York Times. He says things like "I had a job to do," no longer even feigning deference to George W. Bush. And why should he? The movie makes clear that Cheney was pulling the strings all along. For starters, he vetted the other VP candidates mercilessly, while regaling Bush with stories of strife between presidents and ambitious veeps.

Cheney also ran the transition team, hiring his own people. "He was always goosing up W.'s insecurities so he could take advantage of them," Dowd writes. To convince him to invade Iraq, "he played on W.'s fear of being lampooned as a wimp, as his father had been." Cheney also talks about how he became a conservative thanks to his contempt for Vietnam war protesters. "Maybe if he’d paid more attention to the actual war," Dowd quips, "he wouldn't have propelled America into two more Vietnams." Click for her full column. (More Dick Cheney stories.)