David Brooks makes, to me, the only interesting point so far about the back and forth between Obama and Cheney. He points out that Cheney's real influence in the Bush White House started to wane beginning in 2005. Many of the changes that have been pinned on Obama actually started in Bush's second term. So who was Cheney really attacking?
When Cheney lambastes the change in security policy, he’s not really attacking the Obama administration. He’s attacking the Bush administration. In his speech on Thursday, he repeated in public a lot of the same arguments he had been making within the Bush White House as the policy decisions went more and more the other way.
Brooks argues that substantively little has changed in terrorism policy between Bush's second term and Obamas current term. What has changed is the manner in which the policies are communicated:
What Obama gets, and what President Bush never got, is that other people’s opinions matter. Goldsmith puts it well: “The main difference between the Obama and Bush administrations concerns not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging. The Bush administration shot itself in the foot time and time again, to the detriment of the legitimacy and efficacy of its policies, by indifference to process and presentation. The Obama administration, by contrast, is intensely focused on these issues.”
Obama has taken many of the same policies Bush ended up with, and he has made them credible to the country and the world. In his speech, Obama explained his decisions in a subtle and coherent way. He admitted that some problems are tough and allow no easy solution. He treated Americans as adults, and will have won their respect.
He suggests for further info that we read The Cheney Fallacy, an article written by Jack Goldsmith, an ex-Bush Administration official known for having run ins with Cheney. I wonder if a rift between the Bush and Cheney camps will break open at some point.
