This is coming from a woman whose father said this:
"I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." -- on the Iraq insurgency, June 20, 2005
and this:
"We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." --March 16, 2003
and this:
"My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." --March 16, 2003
and this:
"There are a lot of lessons we want to learn out of this process in terms of what works. I think we are in fact on our way to getting on top of the whole Katrina exercise." --Sept. 10, 2005
Of course the name Halliburton or her father's energy policy that helped bring this disaster about never came up in the conversation. She has no credibility to be criticizing anyone about what's going on in the Gulf now, but that's not going to stop Fox from giving Mini-Me-Cheney a chance to lob political stink bombs at every opportunity.
Wallace: Liz, I think it's fair to say that Katrina marked a turning point in the public's view of George W. Bush. Does this have the same potential downside for President Obama?
Cheney: I think it does because I think we begin to get into the issues here of credibility and leadership where it's about, it's bigger than just this particular crisis and catastrophe. You've got a President now who thinks that saying something makes it so. You know you showed it in the last segment when he said "I'm going to have the most transparent administration in history" but that doesn't actually mean you're going to be open and transparent. It's not the same thing as we've seen with him.
On the war he says "I know we're at war" but he doesn't understand he actually has to lead us in the fight. Words themselves aren't enough. And, you know, going down to Louisiana and saying gosh, you know "I'm heartbroken, I'm angry, I'm frustrated" and then going on vacation to Chicago, really doesn't send a message that this is a man who's leading.
And at the end of the day, I disagree with Bill on this, I think actually there is more that the federal government could be doing in terms of approving the licenses for the berms that Governor Jindal has asked for, in terms of responding more quickly to the requests that are coming in from the parish presidents, not pushing this all off onto BP. And I think people sense when an administration is really in charge and really leading and when they aren't.
And so I think you know, the Obama administration has got a problem here, not having learned from the lessons of Katrina and you know, really confirming in people's minds frankly that a gift for reading a teleprompter is not the same as leadership.
