Will Bob Schieffer play dumb with Dick Cheney this Sunday?
May 08, 2009 3:10 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
Cheney's appearing on CBS's Face the Nation, apparently as part of his on-going anti-Obama smear campaign. (What else do you call Cheney's claim that Obama has made America less safe since taking the oath of office?) The question is, will Schieffer in his comments and questions to Cheney make this point perfectly clear to viewers: that what Cheney is doing with his high-profile attacks on the new administration is unprecedented. Period.
We have simply never seen, in modern American politics, the losing VP belittle a new president, just weeks into his first term, the way Cheney now routinely does in the media. Why? Because those were the ground rules the press established: if you, or your side, lost the November election (and especially if your side lost in a rout), you went away for a long time and remained silent. (Think Michael Dukakis or Bob Dole.)
Just ask Al Gore. The press used to consider it beneath contempt for the losing side to take partisan swipes at the White House winner during the early days of his presidency.
That's how the game was played for decades. But Cheney mounts a sustained anti-Obama media campaign and the Beltway press doesn't flinch. The press corps acts like it's normal; like that's what all former VP's do right after they vacate the WH. It's not. It's unprecedented.
Will Schieffer at least make a passing reference to that, or will he play dumb?
The media myth of Obama's "falling poll numbers"
How to annoy Glenn Beck in five minutes or less
Media Matters: In which Glenn Beck hosts talk of tickle fights
Patraeus, McCain, and Gingrich.
They're really making an effort to break with the "if it's Sunday, it's Conservative" tradition.
Liberal media my @$$.
Schieffer is an old hawk himself and will undoubtely allow Cheney to use the Sunday platform to launch more attacks about how unsafe we are now and how necessary waterboarding it.
The old talking to the old regarding the old. Same-o, Lame-o.
And we're supposed to believe anything he says because.....?
Does a bear poop in the woods?
Shieffer: When you, speaking as an expert, say that Obama has made the country less safe, aren't you in a sense saying to terrorists: the U.S. is weak now, come on in!!??
Cheney: No ...
Shieffer (interrupting): REALLY!!!???? (you know in the same sense he used when Gen. Wesley Clark said getting one's plane shot down doesn't qualify one to be president.)
And then Shieffer should continue that tone -- that what is being said is the strangest thing he's ever heard (like he does with Democrats), throughout the interview.
But no, Shieffer will display an air of friendliness and utmost courtesy (like when he interviews McCain) and ask questions like:
"When you see Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, who never objected to torture back at that time, being very crtical NOW of those policies, how does that make you feel?"