Dick Cheney’s Coarse Contemptuousness
Shows Bush Administration’s Core Values

By William Finucane

Sometimes it is the littlest thing that demonstrates the deepest sentiment.

So it was recently with Vice President Richard Cheney.

Cheney said, during a Senate photo shoot, that Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, could either "f--- off," or "go f--- yourself."

How well formed.

How perfectly it put Cheney’s sentiments.

How perfectly it demonstrated his valuation of the United States Senate.

Senate conversation is not baby talk, nor is it supposed to be street talk.

Senate conversation is and has always been an exacting science.

One does not simply say that the person whom he is addressing is the senator from, say, Massachusetts, or perhapsVermont, and then continue with the point.

Oh No.

Generally, no senator ever mentions another’s name at all.

This can reach, sometimes, the flowery heights of language.

It can at times seem almost foolish, or at least antiquated.

But it does serve to illustrate that all the members of the United States Senate are people of character and ought to be addressed with dignity and restraint.

House of Representative members speak much more casually and sometimes much less civilly.

They sometimes come to near physical battles on the House floor, and in past history actually did sometimes battle with fists and canes.

Senators historically rely on their wits, and their good manners, combines with grace and taste.

If of course they happen to have any or those attributes.

Cheney has none.

Being the vice president of the United States, he has a number of duties to perform, and one such duty is to preside over the United States Senate.

There are of course 100 U.S. Senators.

In his job of presiding over the Senate, the Vice President holds the crucial one vote that makes the number of United States senators 101, should there be a tie vote.

This is a real live job for Cheney, not a ceremonial task. He can break Senate ties.

Therefore he should be expected to know, and respect, the protocol of the Senate.

His words should carry all the subtle innuendo of a crafty statesman.

"F--- off," or "go f--- yourself," fall incredibly short of the high standards of language, combined with undertones of deep meaning, that most senators expect from the titular head of their body.

Cheney’s vulgar comment was actually in response to the subject at hand, raised by Sen. Leahy, which involved the misuse of United States dollars by Halliburton, Inc., where until just before he ran for the vice presidency Richard Cheney had served as the chief executive officer.

It was his relation with Halliburton that Sen. Leahy had been probing in questions to and with Cheney. Now, here we have the crux of the problem. If Cheney was being questioned as a witness for Halliburton, and as such was not being addressed as the second executive officer of the United States, it might be natural in today’s coarsened business world that his aside remark was delivered according to the standards that apply to corporate executives, rather than the rules of decorum that apply to one of the nation’s highest elected officials.

In such a scenario, Cheney’s remark might have been offered in the corporate colloquial, or "slang," hereto specified with the "f--- you," as a crude but acceptable part of a boardroom discussion between private corporate executives voicing their actual feelings to one another.

So simple, really: no reason to get upset at all.

But the fact that Cheney can so easily shuck the historical grace and honor of his elected position, and sneer at the traditions of America’s Senate, shows that he has no concern for the historical processes of government that have been respected by the American people for centuries.

Cheney feels free to just load up an "f" word and drop it in mid-Senate and let the rich humours rise to the noses of thoughtful men and women to be enjoyed and savored as a perfect example of how contemptuously this particular vice president – together with the Bush Administration that supports him without a comment much less a reprimand – truly feels about the principles of democracy and decorum that have held the nation together until now.