{"id":701,"date":"2009-04-16T12:41:41","date_gmt":"2009-04-16T10:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=701"},"modified":"2009-04-14T13:00:21","modified_gmt":"2009-04-14T11:00:21","slug":"is-getting-into-the-gutter-with-cheney-a-good-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=701","title":{"rendered":"Is getting into the gutter with Cheney a good idea?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been told never to argue with drunks, and never to kick people when they&#8217;re down.\u00a0 What happens, however, when they throw the first punch, verbally or otherwise?<\/p>\n<p>CNN has reported a <a href=\"http:\/\/politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com\/2009\/04\/13\/cnn-poll-obama-not-making-us-less-safe\/\">poll<\/a> that 72% of Americans disagree with Former Vice President Dick Cheney&#8217;s assertion that the Obama administration is worsening America&#8217;s security.\u00a0 Whether we are improving our security is an important question, and while clearly the last administration did a dismal job at diplomacy that led to America&#8217;s isolation, why go there now?<\/p>\n<p>The answer\u00a0 is that Vice President Dick Cheney chose to open his mouth.\u00a0 There is an unwritten rule in executive politics that you do not speak ill of either your successor or your predecessor.\u00a0 The reason is obvious: it looks like sour grapes.\u00a0 Cheney has vested his ego in an approach that the American people have demonstrably disagree with<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-299\" style=\"border: 0pt none; margin: 3px;\" title=\"Joseph Biden\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/biden.jpg\" alt=\"Joseph Biden\" width=\"168\" height=\"114\" \/>.\u00a0 It is also possible that the man whose policies were a huge source of controversy misses the limelight.\u00a0 And it is certainly true that Cheney believes that his policies were the correct ones, and that the dismantling of those policies are dangerous: he&#8217;s not lying.<\/p>\n<p>This leaves open the question of whether  Vice President Joe Biden should engage in the same kind of dirt throwing, negative politics.\u00a0 It goes back to the Vince Lombardi rule: when you get to the end zone, act like you&#8217;ve been there before.\u00a0 Having exited with the lowest opinion poles in history, Cheney is not in a position to affect public opinion.\u00a0 So why then engage him?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been told never to argue with drunks, and never to kick people when they&#8217;re down.\u00a0 What happens, however, when they throw the first punch, verbally or otherwise? CNN has reported a poll that 72% of Americans disagree with Former Vice President Dick Cheney&#8217;s assertion that the Obama administration is worsening America&#8217;s security.\u00a0 Whether we &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=701\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Is getting into the gutter with Cheney a good idea?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=701"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":709,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions\/709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}