November 4, 2006

Dick Cheney and George Bush could not be more dismissive of the American people when it comes to Iraq.

Cheney revealed the full length of his arrogance in his interview with George Stephanopoulos.

“It may not be popular with the public—it doesn’t matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. And that’s what we’re doing,” he said.

Amazingly, just days before an election in which the uppermost issue in the voters’ minds is Iraq, Cheney displayed uttered disdain.

“We’re not running for office,” he said, a line that is sure to make Republican House and Senate candidates gasp. “We’re doing what we think is right.”

Never one to be troubled by self-doubt, Cheney expressed no alarm at the house of horrors in Baghdad. “We’ve got the basic strategy right,” he said, and pledged “full speed ahead.”

That is not exactly the message that most Americans want to hear, and I’m sure many parents of soldiers in Iraq aren’t delighted by it, either.

But more than Cheney’s willful denial of reality, more than his insistence on a headlong rush right over the cliff of disaster, it his—and Bush’s—disregard for the wishes of the American people that is so disturbing.

This is not new for this power couple.

Right after the Supreme Court gave Bush the White House in 2000, he and Cheney threw out the advice from the pundit class and from the public at large that they should repair the rift in the nation and govern from the middle. Instead, they set out to ram their agenda down our throats. High on that agenda was the Iraq War.

Then Bush and Cheney took the 2004 election not only as an endorsement of their decision to go to war but the final word on it.

“We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections,” Bush told The Washington Post in an article on January 16, 2005. “The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me.”

Bush echoed that comment as recently as two weeks ago. At his October 25 press conference, Bush was asked about Donald Rumsfeld. Bush responded: “You’re asking about accountability. That rests right here. It’s what the 2004 campaign was about.”

Bush and Cheney view the United States almost as a dictatorship that is authorized by a quadrennial plebiscite.

Their rhetoric and their actions flow from this profoundly anti-democratic belief.