NEAL CONAN, host:
Now that he's been freed from his undisclosed location, former Vice President Dick Cheney is making the media rounds these days on CNN, FOX News, and here on CBS TV last Sunday on "Face the Nation."
The former vice president stuck by his belief in the GOP's political philosophy.
(Soundbite of television show, "Face the Nation")
Former Vice President DICK CHENEY: We are what we are. We're Republicans. We have certain things we believe in. And maintaining our loyalty and commitment to those principles is vital to our success.
CONAN: The former vice president not only defending Republican principles, but talking about who's an appropriate leader for the Republican Party. He's gone on the offensive against the new administration, where he told CNN that President Obama's policies make the country less safe.
The question is: Why is the former vice president talking about all of this? And why now? And our question to you: Is it appropriate for a former vice president to criticize the subsequent administration's policies on national security or on global warming? 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org.
Political Junkie Ken Rudin, still with us and joined now by NPR's senior Washington editor Ron Elving.
And, Ron, nice to have you back on the program.
RON ELVING: Good to be with you, Neal.
CONAN: Ron wrote a column this morning titled "What is Dick Cheney Trying to Accomplish?" You can read it at npr.org or you can listen right now, as I say, Ron Elving, what is Dick Cheney trying to accomplish?
(Soundbite of laughter)
ELVING: Well, to a certain degree, I think what you see is what you get. Dick Cheney is trying to accomplish exactly what he is accomplishing, which is to change the conversation or the debate terms, if you will, about the use of extreme interrogation techniques by the United States in the wake of 9/11 -torture, by the terminology of most of the world and many people in this country. Did the United States use torture? Is waterboarding torture? And he's trying to change the terms of that debate to say, well, look, didn't we get something out of this? Weren't there some unique pieces of information? But he hasn't really talked too much about the fine points of whether or not torture produces unique information, or whether or not is redundant of other techniques, or whether or not it was done to perhaps induce people to give information that wasn't true.
CONAN: Well, he says he saw, as vice president, a couple of memos that delineated exactly the intelligence derived from these harsh techniques and that, in fact, they were productive and he wants the president to declassify those too.
ELVING: Yes. He's actually even filed a Freedom of Information Act, a request for these to be released, which is ironic to a lot of people who filed…
CONAN: Pretty rich.
ELVING: …filed those exact kinds of requests during the last eight years and had them opposed by Dick Cheney. But he would like to see those two memos released. I suspect someday they will be.
And then the question will be: Do they bear him out? Or do they elucidate the things that were learned in some of these extreme interrogation sessions that were already known and had been learned earlier?
CONAN: Another question is: What is he doing to the Republican Party in the process? He is suddenly the most visible, most prominent, most senior member of the party who's out there on the talk shows talking.
ELVING: I'm going to diverge a little bit with what I think is conventional wisdom on this. I think that he is more interested in changing the terms of the debate on national security and in resisting the emerging consensus about what went on in the Bush administration, which is quite harsh among historians, political scientists and so on. And he is himself a trained political scientist and amateur historian.
Also, I think he is not that interested in what happens to the immediate identity of the Republican Party. I don't think he wants to be part of the argument with, say, Michael Steele or Mitt Romney or who's going to be the exact spokesperson for the Republican Party.
I think he's less interested in that than he is in these other things, that is to say the principles by which he defended national security, whatever else you want to call them, and the reputation of the Bush administration.
As for the Republican Party, that is a secondary concern.
CONAN: He certainly seemed to go out of his way to take a shot at the man who served him as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the hugely successful first Gulf War.
ELVING: He was asked, who would you identify more as a leader? Or who would you like to see speaking for or identified as a leader of the Republican Party? At this point, Rush Limbaugh, who is, well, after all, not even an elected official or somebody who is an official of the party, but a talk show host.
CONAN: Much more important than that, a talk show host.
ELVING: A talk host who has a certain independence, right? Neal, just like you. And then at the same time, Colin Powell, who, as you say, was the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, while Dick Cheney was the secretary of Defense. And he chose Rush Limbaugh for at least one specific reason that he was quite clear about: and that is Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama, in no uncertain terms, went on a Sunday talk show to do it and gave one of the best sermons Barack Obama ever had preached in his church last fall.
That is something, well, Dick Cheney is not going to forgive, at least not in someone who is being put forward as a leader and spokesperson for the Republican Party.
CONAN: Ken Rudin, I have to ask, the current leaders of the Republican Party, such as they are, are they happy seeing Dick Cheney, this voice of the past as far as they're concerned, identified as the face of the party?
RUDIN: Well, first, I would say, I'm a big fan of Ron Elving's work. I've heard you on podcast. I think you did very adequate work.
But also, more importantly - who are the Republican leaders? I mean that's the thing, if you think who's been before the cameras lately it's been Rush Limbaugh. It's been Dick Cheney. It's been Karl Rove. There are leaders to come. I mean, we talked about the Eric Canters, we talked about the Jeb Hensarlings, the new members of Congress, perhaps, Charlie Crisp.
Right now, we're still try to get the issue of the last eight years written in the way Dick Cheney would like. Look, the fact is Nancy Pelosi has suddenly become - put on the defensive over interrogation memos and what she knew and when she knew it. The fact that - and Nancy Pelosi has been put on the defensive means that in some ways that Cheney offensive has worked in some ways.
CONAN: Let's see if we can get some listeners in on the conversation. Is it appropriate for a former vice president to attack the new administration? 800-989-8255, e-mail: talk@npr.org.
And Joe(ph) is on the line from Binghamton, New York.
JOE (Caller): Hi. How are you?
CONAN: I'm well, thanks.
JOE: Great show. Yeah, my comment is that in a way, I'm not - I never really had been a Dick Cheney fan. But in a way, you know, the administration, at him the way he's kind of been maligned, I think only a fool, at a certain point, wouldn't try, at least, to get their point out - their point across.
And every administration has issues with the past administration. But I think that he's trying to shape, as someone said early, he's trying to shape the legacy for himself going forward. And I think, you know, to the Democratic Party, they're keeping him relevant, they're keeping his name up and - I think he's trying to, you know, for what it's worth and for what he can accomplish, trying to reshape the debate and try to respond to some of the attacks that been aimed towards him.
CONAN: All right, Joe, thanks very much for the call. Appreciate it.
JOE: Thank you.
CONAN: And let's see if we can go now to - this is Tom(ph). Tom, calling from Cincinnati.
TOM (Caller): Hi.
CONAN: Hi, Tom.
TOM: Hi. I think Dick Cheney is - I kind of agree with the last caller. I also think he's trying to protect Bush's legacy and kind of throw it down the road, so we don't judge him now. But I also think he's trying to become the Rush Limbaugh. He's trying to kind of upstage Rush right now. While this, you know, passes, so that maybe he can become the face of the Democratic Party temporarily.
CONAN: I think you meant Republican Party.
(Soundbite of laughter)
TOM: Oh, yeah. I'm sorry.
CONAN: That's quite all right. It has never happened to me, of course.
TOM: I'm a little nervous.
CONAN: Yeah, thanks very much for the call, Tom.
TOM: Okay. Thanks.
CONAN: Appreciate it. As said, when you look at this, Ron, it's interesting, there's a column, another column on this subject, this morning by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, which absolutely eviscerated the former vice president who criticized previous Democratic leaders when he was vice president for attacking his administration on national security policy. He says, hey, that's…
ELVING: Out of bounds.
CONAN:…out of bounds.
ELVING: Yeah. Well, there's always been a division between people who say that politics should stop at the water's edge. And when you are talking about any kind of foreign confrontation, we should all speak with one voice.
I think that's always been honored in the breach. And that it's been something of a polite fiction in Washington. I do think it's difficult to say it's inappropriate for someone not to defend such a mortal policy, such an extraordinarily important and central, essential part of the administration that he was in.
Al Gore, by the way, not too long ago, in the first term of George Bush and Dick Cheney was all over them about global warming. He was a big opponent of the Iraq war. He went out there and said a lot of things that Bill Clinton, the former president, did not say. So it's a role that vice presidents have taken in the recent…
CONAN: Still the attack dog even in retirement, Ken Rudin?
RUDIN: Well, we've mentioned the Maureen Dowd column, but there's also, Ron, there was a Richard Cohen column in the Washington Post the other day where basically he said, look, I don't want to see myself, defend myself, call myself as a defender of Dick Cheney. But what if torture worked?
And I think that's the debate that I think a lot of Americans are wrestling with. What if we actually - it did save life, which is what the Cheney argument is.
ELVING: The Cheney argument is that if we got any information from torture, it was justified. That's perhaps not the real question. The real question is did we get information we could not have gotten anyway, any way other than torture? And did we get information that was verifiably true only because of torture or did we get a certain amount of information that was false specifically because of torture? And finally, does torture induce more terror or more adverse behavior against the United States down the road?
CONAN: Interesting today, President Obama decided to fight the release of photographs, additional photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib - so perhaps, listening to the military's argument that that would endanger US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Couple of e-mails we'll get to, quickly. Chris in Rochester, Minnesota. I'm not a great lover of Dick Cheney but the old, informal rule against criticizing the current administration has been violated repeatedly over the past six or seven years. Jimmy Carter has been hugely outspoken at home and abroad in his criticism.
Dan in Chicago: as an Obama supporter and Democrat, I would love Dick Cheney to continue speaking out in the media. I believe he, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Steele and Sarah Palin are just the team to continue alienating the majority of voters and marginalizing the Republican Party. Cheney/Limbaugh in 2012 is - and Ken, you'd have to think that Democrats are, well, you know, enjoying this.
RUDIN: Oh, they absolutely are. When they saw the Sunday talk show line up led by Dick Cheney, they said, we couldn't even - in our wildest dreams we couldn't make this happen. Because Cheney, for all his arguments, for all his attempt to rewrite the last eight years or at least defend the last eight years, he still comes off as unhappy, angry, nasty. And that's not the vision that the Republican Party (unintelligible) face, that Republican Party wants for the next - looking forward.
CONAN: And, Ron Elving, another point. The former vice president, the former president, well, they can defend themselves, they still have plenty of influence and a lot of people who will talk to them. Is he also trying to defend those in the Department of Justice, the lawyers who wrote the memos, who are less able to defend themselves and the people who carried out these interrogations?
ELVING: Yes. And he has made this point particularly in an interview that he had with the Weekly Standard, in which he said, look what I'm really upset about is when an administration leaves the little people out to dry. And I don't mean little people in the sense of perhaps, people who drove the car, but people who wrote the memos, justifying or trying to provide some legal justification for waterboarding and other forms of extreme interrogation or torture.
And a number of people who were operatives, for example. It's widely reported and widely known that Dick Cheney was extremely upset that President Bush did not grant a full pardon to Lewis Libby, Scooter Libby, the chief of staff to former Vice President Dick Cheney, whom Cheney obviously wished would be given a full pardon instead of just a commutation of his jail sentence.
CONAN: You guys ought to, you know, work together sometime. It might be an interesting show.
ELVING: I actually have taken a vow never to grace a studio again with that man.
(Soundbite of laughter)
RUDIN: Wait, Al Simpson said that last week: What's going on?
CONAN: What's going on here? Ken Rudin, NPR's Political Junkie here with us every Wednesday on TALK OF THE NATION. And from time to time, we are also graced by the appearance of Ken - Ron Elving, excuse me, Ken Elving - Ron Elving, NPR's senior Washington editor whose burdens in life include him being that guy's boss.
Thank you both, gentlemen. Appreciate your time today.
You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
Copyright © 2009 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.