THERE'S NO reason Dick and Lynne Cheney won't be grinning broadly on election
night no matter who wins.
They might be contemplating moving into the vice presidential mansion,
looking forward to a life of relative luxury, having their garbage taken out
for them and their lawn neatly mowed at government expense. Or they'll be out
of the political rat race, free to exercise a fortune in stock options, to
continue serving on company boards, moving in those incestuous circles of
corporate influence where nobody draws nasty conclusions when you make a huge
killing just for showing up or just because the price of oil goes through the
roof.
Makes you wonder why Cheney ever agreed in the first place to run for an
office that John Nance Garner, vice president in the first two administrations
of Franklin Roosevelt, said "isn't worth a pitcher of warm spit."
Cheney has belatedly declared that if he's elected he will forfeit his
perfectly legal right to exercise the lucrative stock options conferred on him
as a goodbye kiss from Halliburton Co., the oil drilling giant he recently
headed.
Who in all this presidential race has made a more demonstrable sacrifice
for the dubious honor of having his family's private life pawed over, his
privacy crudely invaded, his income and finances investigated?
Still, it would seem that Cheney, who's supposed to be a smart man, has
made two very elementary miscalculations. He naively assumed nobody would
notice that the Republicans had nominated not one but two Texas oilmen with all
the unfortunate baggage oilmen carry into political life. This is about as dumb
as nominating two HMO presidents or two executives from the pharmaceutical
industry. More tellingly, when he departed politics, having been a congressman
and secretary of defense, both he and his wife deeply immersed themselves in
the corporate world, made a ton of money and acquired a truckload of potential
conflicts of interest.
His wife, Lynne, took big money to be a director at several companies
including Lockheed Martin, a major defense contractor. I suppose they wanted to
draw on her combative experience as chairman of the National Endowment for the
Humanities, where she fought wars against political correctness. And while he
was building a fortune at Halliburton, Cheney took seats on the boards of
Procter & Gamble, Union Pacific, and Electronic Data Systems Corp.
These are typically the actitivites of former politicians who want to cash
in on the contacts and celebrity they built up while serving on government
salaries well below their true earning power. Nothing wrong with that, but now
the Cheneys want to waltz back into politics without penalty.
Obviously, it did not occur to Cheney at the end of George H.W. Bush's
administration that Bush's son would some day be so impressed by him that he'd
draft him for vice president. Anyway, nothing in Cheney's robotic and colorless
campaign style gives a clue in hell as to what gave Bush this bright idea. But,
if I were Bush, I'd be exceedingly worried about it. Can it be that Cheney
gives the impression that he doesn't care if he wins this election because he
doesn't?
Copyright © Newsday
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