Dick Cheney and the Politics of Fear
There has been much talk about Dick Cheney’s motives for continually speaking out about President Obama’s policies making us less safe. Yesterday and today, for example, Leon Panetta was quoted as saying “It is almost like he wants this country to be attacked”. Ed Shultz has taken it even farther and truly believes that it is the only way Dick Cheney and the Republican party can get back in power. He stood his ground against an incredulous Joe Scarbborough this morning and insisted that Dick Cheney truly wants this country to be attacked again.
There is, however, a much simpler explanation. Politicians are creatures of habit and when they want to get a message across to the public or to influence public opinion they always go back to the thing they know best. Dick Cheney knows fear. Dick Cheney understands how effective fear is in motivating the public. When he wants to both defend his record and attack the current administration he naturally falls back to the tactics and politics of fear to get the job done. In other words Dick Cheney doesn’t do hope like Obama, he doesn’t do the “bright shining city on the hill” like Reagan. Dick Cheney is just not that good a politician. A better example might be John Mccain, another less then talented politician. The only effective message he had that could cut through the noise and get to the public was his record as a military hero. That is what he used to get elected over and over again in Arizona and that is what he counted on to get him through the Presidential election. In the end, Dick Cheney will always use the politics of fear to try to get what he wants because ultimately that is all he knows how to do.
Wow!