Former Vice President Dick Cheney sat down with ABC’s Jonathan Karl on This Week with… fill in the blank. The rotating program formerly hosted by George Stephanopoulos. As is usually the case from Cheney, he didn’t pull any punches… until he was thrown a question or two about Republican/Conservative starlet Sarah Palin that is. On that issue alone, he seemed to
(June 1, 2009 - Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images North America)
measure his response ever so slightly and appeared reluctant to swing the hammer like only Cheney can do.
Karl asked him two direct questions regarding the former Governor Palin – both of which he evaded. The first searching for a response from the former second in command regarding Palin’s recent comments about President Obama’s position on dealing with the growing threat from Iran where she “intimated” that the Chief Executive could capitalize on the Iranian problem by taking decisive action against the rogue nation. Cheney gave a diplomatic response to say the least, but in fairness, it was the only answer a man of his experiences could give – and the right one.
In fairness, Palin was obviously not suggesting that the President should wage war on Iran solely for political gain or to appear “tough” to the American electorate , but even nearing such murky waters is yet another sign that Gov Palin is still very immature in her grasp of world affairs beyond the forum of political commentary. While Cheney’s response fell short of directly criticizing Palin’s remarks, he did clearly state that a President cannot allow him/herself to be motivated by purely political objectives. In Cheney-speak, that was his way of saying, “Are your freaking kidding me?” – a phrase you would have likely heard if Palin wasn’t Palin, and the whole of the Right Wing universe wasn’t absolutely terrified of crossing the Former Alaskan Governor…
On Palin’s prospects as potential Leader of the Free World….
Karl: Is she qualified to be president?
Cheney: ”I haven’t made a decision on who I’m going to support next time around… all the prospective candidates out there have a lot of work to do….”
