Hi Mike,
I guess I meant to say that no one really dwelled on the Blago thing here as it wasn't something that lead to a big event like the financial market meltdown.
Speaking of Cheney... I finished that book, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman. He was a sneaky son of a gun...more so than I realized. The guy had all the skill sets of a virtual puppet master...not just the people skills, which were good, but his ability to manipulate a group or bureaucracy was incredible. And he knew how to do it from the 'dark side', which is term he favored.
Specifically, on WDM, the part about how he hoodwinked Dick Armey, the majority leader of the house, who was NOT going to vote for going to war in Iraq, was worth the price of the book alone. What was particularly insidious is that after U.S. inspectors discovered the real reason for those aluminum tubes(they were for missiles, not nukes. The Iraqis had copied an italian design which used the exact same tubes.) just months before the big vote, Cheney neglected to inform Armey of the fact. And the aluminum tubes, of course, was the one thing that had everyone so nervous. Just how many times did we hear, "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"?
Had Armey stayed the course, we'd never gone off on that misadventure. It was Dick Cheney's greatest performance as president...er, vice-president. <g>
craig |
