Blue Double Cross

By PAUL KRUGMAN, NY Times

That didn’t take long. Less than two weeks have passed since much of the medical-industrial complex made a big show of working with President Obama on health care reform — and the double-crossing is already well under way. Indeed, it’s now clear that even as they met with the president, pretending to be cooperative, insurers were gearing up to play the same destructive role they did the last time health reform was on the agenda.

So here’s the question: Will Mr. Obama gloss over the reality of what’s happening, and try to preserve the appearance of cooperation? Or will he honor his own pledge, made back during the campaign, to go on the offensive against special interests if they stand in the way of reform?

The story so far: on May 11 the White House called a news conference to announce that major players in health care, including the American Hospital Association and the lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans, had come together to support a national effort to control health care costs.

The fact sheet on the meeting, one has to say, was classic Obama in its message of post-partisanship and, um, hope. “For too long, politics and point-scoring have prevented our country from tackling this growing crisis,” it said, adding, “The American people are eager to put the old Washington ways behind them.”

But just three days later the hospital association insisted that it had not, in fact, promised what the president said it had promised — that it had made no commitment to the administration’s goal of reducing the rate at which health care costs are rising by 1.5 percentage points a year. And the head of the insurance lobby said that the idea was merely to “ramp up” savings, whatever that means.

Meanwhile, the insurance industry is busily lobbying Congress to block one crucial element of health care reform, the public option — that is, offering Americans the right to buy insurance directly from the government as well as from private insurance companies. And at least some insurers are gearing up for a major smear campaign.

On Monday, just a week after the White House photo-op, The Washington Post reported that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina was preparing to run a series of ads attacking the public option. The planning for this ad campaign must have begun quite some time ago.

The Post has the storyboards for the ads, and they read just like the infamous Harry and Louise ads that helped kill health care reform in 1993. Troubled Americans are shown being denied their choice of doctor, or forced to wait months for appointments, by faceless government bureaucrats. It’s a scary image that might make some sense if private health insurance — which these days comes primarily via HMOs — offered all of us free choice of doctors, with no wait for medical procedures. But my health plan isn’t like that. Is yours?

“We can do a lot better than a government-run health care system,” says a voice-over in one of the ads. To which the obvious response is, if that’s true, why don’t you? Why deny Americans the chance to reject government insurance if it’s really that bad?

For none of the reform proposals currently on the table would force people into a government-run insurance plan. At most they would offer Americans the choice of buying into such a plan.

And the goal of the insurers is to deny Americans that choice. They fear that many people would prefer a government plan to dealing with private insurance companies that, in the real world as opposed to the world of their ads, are more bureaucratic than any government agency, routinely deny clients their choice of doctor, and often refuse to pay for care.

Which brings us back to Mr. Obama.

Back during the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama argued that the Clintons had failed in their 1993 attempt to reform health care because they had been insufficiently inclusive. He promised instead to gather all the stakeholders, including the insurance companies, around a “big table.” And that May 11 event was, of course, intended precisely to show this big-table strategy in action.

But what if interest groups showed up at the big table, then blocked reform? Back then, Mr. Obama assured voters that he would get tough: “If those insurance companies and drug companies start trying to run ads with Harry and Louise, I’ll run my own ads as president. I’ll get on television and say ‘Harry and Louise are lying.’ ”

The question now is whether he really meant it.

The medical-industrial complex has called the president’s bluff. It polished its image by showing up at the big table and promising cooperation, then promptly went back to doing all it can to block real change. The insurers and the drug companies are, in effect, betting that Mr. Obama will be afraid to call them out on their duplicity.

It’s up to Mr. Obama to prove them wrong.

22 Percent And Out Of Ideas

By Harold Meyerson
Friday, May 22, 2009

The dizzying downward spiral of the Republican Party continues apace. Yesterday, the Pew Research Center released a survey showing that the percentage of Americans who answer to the name Republican is down to 22 percent -- about as low as a party can go in a two-party system.

Also yesterday, former vice president Dick Cheney delivered a prolonged defense of "enhanced interrogation techniques" even as President Obama, speaking alongside the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution at the National Archives, repudiated torture and spelled out the toll that the torture tactics used by the Bush-Cheney administration inflicted on America's standing in the world.

Cheney has become the GOP's Banquo's ghost -- a constant reminder (and, unlike poor Banquo, defender) of past crimes who just won't leave the dinner party.

But even when Republicans speak of the future these days, they sound like the voice of the past. They turn for new ideas to Newt Gingrich, whose biggest idea was to close down the federal government to force Bill Clinton to slash Medicare payments. They turn to Cheney for guidance on national defense and to Rush Limbaugh to set the standards for party orthodoxy.

They hold anti-tax rallies to protest an administration that has cut taxes for the vast majority of Americans. They see a bill that would rein in credit card companies as an opportunity to slip in an amendment that would allow Americans to bring concealed and loaded guns into national parks. Their national committee considers a resolution expressing the sense of the body that the Democrats should rename themselves the "Democrat Socialist Party."

They offer no solutions for the nation's problems but are chock-full of solutions for issues (such as the lack of concealed weapons in Yellowstone) that aren't problems. They play with renaming the Democrats while they're the ones with the identity crisis.

But there's a reason they enumerate old themes and gravitate to the most peripheral ones imaginable -- a reason that's neither old nor peripheral. The economic crisis has plunged their worldview into crisis, if not negated it altogether. What's more, several leading conservative economists and thinkers have acknowledged as much, though none has really suggested a plausible alternative course.

Some of this rethinking has taken the form of mea culpas from key economic figures of the Reagan age. Alan Greenspan confessed to a congressional committee late last year that his basic assumptions about the self-corrective tendencies and fundamental rationality of both the economic system and its leading players (the banks) were wrong. Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, whose elevation of shareholder value over other corporate goals has been hugely influential since he began preaching that gospel in the early 1980s, has now said that shareholder value is just one of many goals that a business should pursue.

The most comprehensive repudiation by a conservative thinker of the tenets of laissez-faire has come from federal judge (and prolific off-bench author) Richard Posner, who has been a seminal influence on the conservative law-and-economics movement that has moved judges to consider economic efficiency in their rulings. In his new book, "A Failure of Capitalism," Posner argues that the current downturn, unlike any since the Great Depression, reveals that capitalism is not self-correcting, that market forces cannot in themselves produce a recovery for a crisis this systemic, and that what we are experiencing is, well, a failure of capitalism.

All this leaves Posner in a bit of a bind, since he remains hesitant to recommend the full range of governmental activism that, by his own lights, is all that's left to rebuild the economy because the markets cannot do it themselves. His writing, like that of other conservative intellectuals such as the New York Times' David Brooks, has a kind of Emily Litella "never mind" quality to it now: repudiating many of the conservative verities that they themselves advanced over the past several decades while refraining from actually embracing the kinds of remedies that the Obama administration is advancing.

Since the end of World War II, American conservatism defined itself above all by its anti-communism and, since the late '70s, by its support of a radical, laissez-faire capitalism. Win one, lose one, but the cumulative consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union and, in more attenuated fashion, of the Wall Street banks is that the Republican Party isn't left with much of a defining doctrine. Packing heat in Yosemite and waterboarding in Guantanamo are not only stunningly dumb ideas, they're also no way to build a party.

Rumsfeld was even worse than you thought

A new report details the anger within the Bush administration toward the former secretary of defense, and shows how he hurt Katrina relief efforts.

Alex Koppelman, Salon.com

May. 18, 2009

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not a popular guy, and his tenure during the Bush administration isn't generally well-regarded. He even became the fall guy for Republicans' disastrous losses in the 2006 midterm elections, as then-President Bush very publicly accepted his resignation one day after the GOP lost control of both houses of Congress.

Now, though, a new article in GQ by Robert Draper is doing more damage to Rumsfeld's already-tarnished reputation. Veterans of the Bush administration, who'd apparently been waiting for the opportunity to unload on an old foe, dished plenty of dirt on the former defense secretary, and delivered some truly amazing images to go along with it.

On its Web site, GQ has published a slide show of cover sheets that accompanied intelligence updates produced by Rumsfeld's DOD for Bush. They all feature images of American soldiers in the field, and biblical quotes. It was, apparently, at least partially an attempt to appeal to Bush's religious belief, but it also made other administration officials quite unhappy, in part because if they ever leaked, the images would bolster the perception, which the administration had been working to counter, that America was fighting a holy war against Islam.

That's the most visually stunning element of Draper's story, but the portrait he paints of Rumsfeld as bureaucratic player is astounding too. The story of his actions in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is particularly damning. "It was commonly known in the West Wing that there was a battle with Rumsfeld regarding this," Draper quotes one unnamed former "top White House official" as saying. "I can't imagine another defense secretary throwing up the kinds of obstacles he did."

Draper writes:

Rumsfeld's aversion to using active-duty troops was evident: "There's no doubt in my mind," says one of Bush's close advisers today, "that Rumsfeld didn't like the concept."

The next day, three days after landfall, word of disorder in New Orleans had reached a fever pitch. According to sources familiar with the conversation, DHS secretary Michael Chertoff called Rumsfeld that morning and said, "You're going to need several thousand troops."

"Well, I disagree," said the SecDef. "And I'm going to tell the president we don't need any more than the National Guard."

... Having only recently come to grips with the roiling disaster, Bush convened a meeting in the Situation Room on Friday morning. According to several who were present, the president was agitated. Turning to the man seated at his immediate left, Bush barked, "Rumsfeld, what the hell is going on there? Are you watching what's on television? Is that the United States of America or some Third World nation I'm watching? What the hell are you doing?"

Rumsfeld replied by trotting out the ongoing National Guard deployments and suggesting that sending active-duty troops would create "unity of command" issues.

Even after that meeting, when the president expressed his disapproval of what Rumsfeld was doing, the defense secretary still continued dragging his feet on sending in troops.

-- Alex Koppelman

The Best on the Internet: The Gregory Brothers "Auto-Tune the News"

Gotta love The Gregory Brothers when they "auto-tune the news". It's the only time these folks all make sense.

Guns, Geysers and Mr. Reid

By GAIL COLLINS, NY Times

Whenever life feels dark and difficult, it’s always helpful to think about people who have it worse. Be thankful, for instance, that you’re not one of those co-pilots for regional airlines who make $16,000 a year and have to commute from Seattle to Newark. Or a person currently riding in a plane with a $16,000 co-pilot in the cockpit. Be thankful you aren’t a Chrysler dealer. Or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Nothing is simple if you’re Harry Reid. This week the Senate was working on a consumer rights bill for credit card holders when Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, suddenly proposed an amendment to allow people to carry loaded guns in national parks.

This would seem relevant only if consumers are worried that they will not be able to use their American Express at a souvenir stand in Yellowstone, and will need to hold up the cashier in order to bring home a much-anticipated geyser refrigerator magnet.

Coburn said it was not a “gotcha” aimed at forcing the opposition into a corner on a hot-button issue, although when you say you’re offering an amendment “to protect innocent Americans from violent crime in national parks and refuges” I think you are kind of stacking the deck.

But one way or another, the Democrats clearly did feel trapped into placating the gun lobby. Twenty-seven of them wound up voting yes on an amendment that would arm the tourists and make final passage of the credit card bill more complicated. Including Reid.

Then Reid tried to get the Senate to confirm David Hayes, Obama’s nominee to be deputy secretary of the interior. This proved to be impossible even though Hayes was both uncontroversial and a man whose qualifications for the job include having already been deputy secretary of the interior. But no, the Republicans threatened a filibuster because Senator Robert Bennett of Utah was ticked off at the Department of the Interior for canceling the sale of oil and gas leases on public lands in his state.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar told Bennett that he’d review the leases and could probably reinstate some of the sales, but that it would be a lot easier to do all that if he had, um, a deputy. No deal.

This is exactly the sort of procedural roadblock that you need 60 votes to overcome, and people are beginning to ask why the majority leader can’t handle these things since Arlen Specter’s defection gave the Democrats 60 votes. Do not say this to Harry Reid! For one thing, Al Franken is still in court in Minnesota, and when you ask the Republicans how long they’re going to litigate the results of an election that took place last November, they murmur vaguely about how Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Anyhow, Ted Kennedy is sick and Robert Byrd is 91 and it’s a miracle some of the other ones can find their way to the Capitol. Even if you eventually get all 60 Democratic votes in the same room, how do you get them to do the same thing? You will remember that when Specter came over, Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska instantly said: “They might have a 60-member majority. That doesn’t mean they have 60 votes.” Reid must have found the point Nelson was making less chilling than the fact that the senator kept referring to his own party as “they.”

Next week, some supporters of Dawn Johnsen are hoping that Reid will take up Johnsen’s nomination to run the Office of Legal Counsel, the place where the president goes for advice on whether whatever he wants to do is legal. This causes the majority leader’s office to hold its collective head and moan.

Johnsen actually is controversial. She was once a lawyer for the National Abortion Rights Action League. Twenty years ago, she put a footnote in a legal brief saying that forcing a woman to give birth to a child against her will was “disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude.” This has been creatively translated into the charge that Johnsen, the mother of two, believes pregnancy is akin to slavery.

Also, she has spoken out so forcefully against the Bush administration’s politicizing the Office of Legal Counsel that Republicans are claiming she’d ... politicize the office.

The inevitable filibuster threats have been made. Since the Office of Legal Counsel doesn’t actually have anything to do with abortion, it might be reasonable for Reid to expect that anti-choice Democratic senators could throw him a vote on the procedural issues and then oppose the actual nomination, when Johnsen would only need 51 votes and Reid would not require their help.

That, however, would presume a degree of consistency that is hard to get in a place that holds one important aspect of credit card reform is giving people the ability to pack a handgun at the Grand Canyon.

Democrats who want 30 percent credit card rates

I've been posting some stories on the Senate defeating the cap on credit card rates at 15%, a very fair rate in these times, or any. They want it to stay at a usurous 30%, a rate which, in times previous to Reagan's usherance in of deregulation, may have been illegal if not usurous. These were rates that were once only found with loan sharks, and street corner thugs who kept families in debt to them, calling favors for those debts. It's right out of The Dead End Kids.

Now, these Senators are protecting their states where Credit Card companies and banks operate without supervision, free to do as they please. Those states are Delaware, South Dakota, and Connecticut. among others.

Thanks you (tongue in cheek) Senators Chris Dodd, John Thune, Tim Johnson (South Dakota), Tom Carper, Ted Kaufmand (Delaware) and lone Democratic Rep Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota for joining the Republicans to soundly defeat such a bill that would actually help the consumer. It is now clear who represents the banks.

Perhaps, as I note those states looking for help from the rest of us - such as Delaware wishing for money to aid its film industry - it is up to the rest of us to call our Senators and Representatives to let them know we are watching their votes on such bills to see if there is some sort of line that says "We're for the consumer, not the banks, who already make so much on our backs."

S.D. senators wary of credit card reform plan

May 14, 2009

LEDYARD KING
Argus Leader Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Both of South Dakota's senators are expected to vote against a sweeping credit card reform bill unless significant changes are made to protect industry jobs in the state.

Democrat Tim Johnson and Republican John Thune told reporters Wednesday they've been talking with Senate banking committee leaders about the need to ensure that the roughly 20,000 workers in South Dakota tied to the industry don't lose their jobs.

"I'm hopeful that there will be language that protects South Dakota jobs," Johnson said. "This is a bipartisan bill, so the possibility of blocking this is not great."

Johnson and Thune sided with 58 other senators Wednesday in a procedural vote against an amendment to cap interest rates on credit cards at 15 percent.

The Senate bill is considered to have stronger protections for consumers than legislation that passed the House last month and than Federal Reserve regulations that would take effect July 1, 2010.

It would give consumers 45 days' notice before rate increases and allow them to pay by phone without additional fees. It would prohibit rate increases in the first year after an account is opened, prohibit interest charges on paid-off balances from billing in the previous cycle and protect young people from aggressive solicitations.

President Obama strongly supports credit card reform and wants legislation on his desk by Memorial Day weekend.

Thune, Johnson and Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, the lone Democrat to vote against a House credit card reform bill last month, say the Federal Reserve rules should be given a chance to take effect because they were crafted after years of careful study and treat both lenders and borrowers fairly.

Thune said the plan in Congress is "swinging the pendulum too far in one direction. It will put a lot of jobs in South Dakota in jeopardy if it passes in its current form. We're trying to work with the sponsors of the bill to see if we can get some of those issues addressed."

The three members of South Dakota's delegation also say the Senate and House versions would penalize responsible consumers and restrict access to credit at a time when America's struggling economy needs a boost.

Contributing: Nicole Gaudiano, Gannett Washington Bureau. Contact Ledyard King at lking@ gannett.com.

Carper helps banks kill credit card rate cap

Kaufman also votes against 15% limit to protect consumers

By NICOLE GAUDIANO
News Journal Washington Bureau, Delawareonline

WASHINGTON -- A plan for a national cap on credit card interest rates was defeated Wednesday by the Senate.

The proposal to cap rates at 15 percent would have been a significant change for Delaware, which hasn't had usury laws on the books since they were abolished in 1981.

"In a free-enterprise system, I'm not sure that [interest rate caps are] what we need to do," said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del. He and Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., were among 60 senators who voted to block a vote on the measure, offered as an amendment to a larger credit card reform bill.

However, Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said Wednesday's vote shouldn't be interpreted as a rejection of the concept. An analysis of which rate caps would be appropriate for which institutions under which financial circumstances would be helpful, he said.

"It's a confusing issue, except for the fact that most of our constituents and millions of Americans would like to see some restraint," Dodd said. "I don't know how you possibly could explain why some institutions get away with rates that are literally triple digits."

The American Bankers Association opposes rate caps, as well as the overall credit card reform legislation, expected to come up for a vote in the Senate this week. It says the bill would jeopardize access to credit. But consumer groups say it would put an end to abusive practices.

The Senate bill is considered to have stronger protections for consumers than either legislation that passed the House last month or Federal Reserve regulations. It would give consumers 45 days' notice before rate increases and allow them to pay by phone without additional fees. It would prohibit rate increases in the first year after a credit card account is opened, prohibit interest charges on paid-off balances from billing in the previous cycle, and protect young people from aggressive solicitations.

Unlike the House bill or Fed regulations, the bill would prohibit retroactive interest rate increases until an account is 60 days past-due. It also would be implemented in nine months. The House bill would take effect in a year. The Fed's regulations would take effect by July 1, 2010.

President Barack Obama has strongly advocated credit card reform and has asked to have legislation on his desk by Memorial Day weekend

Senate Rejects a 15% Ceiling on Credit Card Interest Rates

So.. the Democrats and Republicans want to LOOK like they're looking after you. But really.. they're still looking after the banks. Democrats and Republicans alike... are bowing to Wall Street and not the working person. In years past.. 30 percent was considered loan sharking, and a crime. Now, both parties have made it legal. I will look for the 33 Senators who voted for it, to give them credit.. and for the rest who voted against it... the ones who are clearly still in the pocket of the banks and credit card companies. Kudos to Senator Sanders for sticking up for the working person. (From Greetings)

By CARL HULSE, NY Times

Despite complaints that banks and credit card companies are gouging customers by charging outrageous interest rates, the Senate on Wednesday turned back an effort to cap interest rates at 15 percent.

The proposal by Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent, drew only 33 votes and needed 60. A bipartisan group of 60 senators opposed it, though the Senate pushed ahead with other restrictions on credit cards. Some Democrats and consumer groups have said that an interest cap is needed to put real teeth into an otherwise solid bill.

The bill still contains provisions that would prohibit companies from raising interest rates on existing balances unless a card holder was 60 days behind, and then would require the rate to be restored to its previous level if payments were on time for six months. Consumers would have to be notified of rate increases 45 days in advance. Companies would not be allowed to charge late fees if they were late in processing a payment.

Other backers of the measure calculated that an interest rate ceiling would doom the popular legislation. The banking industry, which had some heavyweight representatives monitoring the vote, warned that an interest rate limit could cause a sour reaction in the financial markets. But Mr. Sanders said the card companies and banks were engaged in conduct that could get others hauled into court. He said one-third of all credit card holders are paying interest above 20 percent and as high as 41 percent.

“When banks are charging 30 percent interest rates, they are not making credit available,” said Mr. Sanders. “They are engaged in loan sharking.”

Rogue Diva of Doom - Dick Cheney

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

When Bush 41 was ramping up to the Gulf War, assembling a coalition to fight Saddam, Jimmy Carter sent a letter to members of the U.N. Security Council urging them not to rush into conflict without further exploring a negotiated solution.

The first President Bush and other Republicans in Washington considered this treasonous, a former president trying to thwart a sitting one, lobbying foreign diplomats to oppose his own country on a war resolution. In 2002, when Bush Junior was ramping up to his war against Saddam, Al Gore made a speech trying to slow down that war resolution, pointing out that pivoting from Osama to Saddam for no reason, initiating “pre-emptive” war, and blowing off our allies would undermine the war on terror.

Charles Krauthammer called Gore’s speech “a disgrace.” Michael Kelly, his fellow Washington Post columnist, called it “vile” and “contemptible.” Newt Gingrich said that the former vice president asserting that W. was making America less safe was “well outside the mark of an appropriate debate.”

“I think the president should be doing what he thinks is best as commander in chief,” Gingrich said flatly. Now, however, Gingrich backs Dick Cheney when he asserts that President Obama has made America less safe.

Asked by Bob Schieffer on Sunday how America could torture when it made a mockery of our ideals, Cheney blithely gave an answer that surely would have been labeled treasonous by Rush Limbaugh, if a Democratic ex-vice president had said it about a Republican president.

“Well, then you’d have to say that, in effect, we’re prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America,” Doomsday Dick said.

Cheney has replaced Sarah Palin as Rogue Diva. Just as Jeb Bush and other Republicans are trying to get kinder and gentler, Cheney has popped out of his dungeon, scary organ music blaring, to carry on his nasty campaign of fear and loathing.

The man who never talked is now the man who won’t shut up. The man who wouldn’t list his office in the federal jobs directory, who had the vice president’s residence blocked on Google Earth, who went to the Supreme Court to keep from revealing which energy executives helped him write the nation’s energy policy, is now endlessly yelping about how President Obama is holding back documents that should be made public.

Cheney, who had five deferments himself to get out of going to Vietnam, would rather follow a blowhard entertainer who has had three divorces and a drug problem (who also avoided Vietnam) than a four-star general who spent his life serving his country.

“Bush 41 cares about decorum and protocol,” said an official in Bush I. “I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate Cheney acting out. He is giving the whole party a black eye just as Jeb is out there trying to renew the party.”

Cheney unleashed, egged on by the combative Lynne and Liz, is pretty much the same as Cheney underground: He’s batty, and he thinks he was the president.

W. admired Cheney’s brass (he used another word) but grew increasingly skeptical of him, the more he learned about foreign policy himself, and the more he got pulled into a diplomatic mode by Condi in the second term. There were even reports of W. doing a funny Cheney imitation and that it dawned on him that Cheney and Rummy represented a scofflaw, paranoid Nixon cell within his White House.

“Toward the end, 43 was just as confused as anybody about what makes Cheney tick,” said a Bush family loyalist.

Cheney’s numskull ideas — he still loves torture (dubbed “13th-century” stuff by Bob Woodward), Gitmo and scaring the bejesus out of Americans — are not only fixed, they’re jejune.

He has no coherent foreign policy viewpoint. He still doesn’t fathom that his brutish invasion of Iraq unbalanced that part of the world, empowered Iran and was a force multiplier for Muslims who hate America. He left our ports unsecured, our food supply unsafe, the Taliban rising and Osama on the loose. No matter if or when terrorists attack here — and they’re on their own timetable, not a partisan red/blue state timetable — Cheney will be deemed the primary one who made America more vulnerable.

W.’s dark surrogate father is trying to pull the G.O.P. into a black hole of zealotry, just as the sensible brother who lost his future to the scamp brother is trying to get his career back on track.

When Cheney was in the first Bush administration, he was odd man out. Poppy, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell corralled Cheney’s “Genghis Khan” side, as it was known, and his “rough streak.” Cheney didn’t care for Powell even then.

But with W., “Back Seat” — Cheney’s Secret Service name in the Ford administration — clambered up front. Then he totaled the car. And no amount of yapping on TV is going to change that when history is written.