the craziest thing about the wapo's article about cheney is how unsurprising it is. for the past six years, we've been joking about how cheney is the real president behind the president. that was a really criticism of bush, not cheney. it echoed the sentiment that bush is a yahoo who really isn't up to the job.
that stereotype of bush was a bit of a joke. but it's really frightening to watch the joke being confirmed as essentially true. the reason cheney got so much influence was because of the power vacuum at the top--a vacuum that existed only because bush did not have the ability to be his own president. to make matters worse, and as laura rozen suggests, in terms of results, cheney didn't turn out to be any more competent.
