Status
Available
Collection
Publication
Threshold Editions (2011), Edition: First Edition, 576 pages
Description
"In his unmistakable voice and with an insider's eye on history, former Vice President Dick Cheney tells the story of his life and the nearly four decades he has spent at the center of American politics and power"-- "A memoir from the former Vice President of the United States"--
Media reviews
The supposedly controversial Cheney memoir is not as provocative as the media hype accompanying its initial release; most controversies focus on just two chapters concerning the response to 9/11 and the Korean nuclear crisis, where he is at odds with both of Bush’s Secretaries of State. . .
Cheney’s contention is not that his administration colleagues were not good public servants, but that specifically during the hysterical times between 2003 and 2007, they were less willing to confront critics or they pulled punches in order not to incur any more of the crazed invectives of those times. Such tentativeness, Cheney argues, ultimately hurt the administration. Cheney clearly believes that strong-willed people, not just policies, make or break a government. . . .
Cheney, as is the habit of nearly all prominent statesmen, has written an apologia pro vita sua covering some forty years of public service. Most of his narrative is a workmanlike account of working for Presidents Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, and serving in Congress for a decade. A few oddities arise—there is far less detail about George W. Bush or the background politics surrounding the Wall Street crisis of September 2008 than one might expect given Cheney’s tumultuous eight years of service following 9/11. More importantly, anyone who completes this 565-page memoir would have liked to have fathomed the inexplicable mystery of Cheney’s life: How exactly had a once beloved public servant—a soft-spoken conservative who worked with Gerald Ford to defeat rival Ronald Reagan—been reduced to demonic status during the furor that erupted after 9/11?
Cheney, remember, before 2001 was praised for his sobriety, his close congressional friends of both parties, his intimate ties to the centrist Bush family, and his unease with partisan rancor. By 2000 he had achieved "Wise Man" status even in the liberal media. . . . Yet by 2008, Cheney was routinely defamed in the major papers as a ‘war criminal’ and ‘traitor,’ and his own approval ratings sunk below even those of George W. Bush.
We find the answer only by reading between Cheney’s lines. A brilliantly conceived removal of Saddam Hussein led to a bloody and unexpected insurrection in Iraq. That growing violence in turn raised controversy over why we had attacked that country, especially when no weapons of mass destruction, the apparent casus belli, were found. In this regard, Cheney had recommended the water-boarding of three known al Qaeda terrorists and, when the war went badly, was far more easily dubbed a "war criminal" for doing so. Take away Iraq and water-boarding, and Cheney would be as highly regarded in retirement as George H. W. Bush is. . . .
The Cheney of the first 328 pages of the memoir certainly does seem a quite different man from the one described in the last two hundred pages, in ways not wholly explicable by greater age, experience, and office. Again, the younger Cheney was circumspect and bureaucratic—he was politically astute in winning the respect of his peers. Cheney 2.0 was far bolder.
He did not care much for what people said about him, and was not shy in promoting his tragic views to his president and cabinet: Katrina was an inevitable screw-up, given that the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans were clueless; bad things happen in war, the winner makes the fewest rather than no mistakes; thugocracies like North Korea cannot be reasoned with or coddled, only deterred and corralled; Arafat was and would always be a thug you could never do business with; the suffering of three known terrorists is not worth much worry given their murder of 3,000 innocent civilians and the fear they instilled in millions of Americans; Arab dictatorships talk grandly of counsel and multilateralism, but privately calibrate their interests in terms of Thucydidean honor, fear, and self interest. . . .
Cheney’s liberal critics have derided In My Time; apparently so will many of his former conservative friends. As historians acknowledge his earlier record of selfless public service, they will nonetheless become far more fascinated with—and ultimately impressed by—Cheney’s final tumultuous eight years as vice president. In his last office, Washington’s ultimate insider forcefully did what he thought his imperiled country needed—and let others worry about whether he had become a shunned outsider.
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.Cheney’s contention is not that his administration colleagues were not good public servants, but that specifically during the hysterical times between 2003 and 2007, they were less willing to confront critics or they pulled punches in order not to incur any more of the crazed invectives of those times. Such tentativeness, Cheney argues, ultimately hurt the administration. Cheney clearly believes that strong-willed people, not just policies, make or break a government. . . .
Cheney, as is the habit of nearly all prominent statesmen, has written an apologia pro vita sua covering some forty years of public service. Most of his narrative is a workmanlike account of working for Presidents Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, and serving in Congress for a decade. A few oddities arise—there is far less detail about George W. Bush or the background politics surrounding the Wall Street crisis of September 2008 than one might expect given Cheney’s tumultuous eight years of service following 9/11. More importantly, anyone who completes this 565-page memoir would have liked to have fathomed the inexplicable mystery of Cheney’s life: How exactly had a once beloved public servant—a soft-spoken conservative who worked with Gerald Ford to defeat rival Ronald Reagan—been reduced to demonic status during the furor that erupted after 9/11?
Cheney, remember, before 2001 was praised for his sobriety, his close congressional friends of both parties, his intimate ties to the centrist Bush family, and his unease with partisan rancor. By 2000 he had achieved "Wise Man" status even in the liberal media. . . . Yet by 2008, Cheney was routinely defamed in the major papers as a ‘war criminal’ and ‘traitor,’ and his own approval ratings sunk below even those of George W. Bush.
We find the answer only by reading between Cheney’s lines. A brilliantly conceived removal of Saddam Hussein led to a bloody and unexpected insurrection in Iraq. That growing violence in turn raised controversy over why we had attacked that country, especially when no weapons of mass destruction, the apparent casus belli, were found. In this regard, Cheney had recommended the water-boarding of three known al Qaeda terrorists and, when the war went badly, was far more easily dubbed a "war criminal" for doing so. Take away Iraq and water-boarding, and Cheney would be as highly regarded in retirement as George H. W. Bush is. . . .
The Cheney of the first 328 pages of the memoir certainly does seem a quite different man from the one described in the last two hundred pages, in ways not wholly explicable by greater age, experience, and office. Again, the younger Cheney was circumspect and bureaucratic—he was politically astute in winning the respect of his peers. Cheney 2.0 was far bolder.
He did not care much for what people said about him, and was not shy in promoting his tragic views to his president and cabinet: Katrina was an inevitable screw-up, given that the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans were clueless; bad things happen in war, the winner makes the fewest rather than no mistakes; thugocracies like North Korea cannot be reasoned with or coddled, only deterred and corralled; Arafat was and would always be a thug you could never do business with; the suffering of three known terrorists is not worth much worry given their murder of 3,000 innocent civilians and the fear they instilled in millions of Americans; Arab dictatorships talk grandly of counsel and multilateralism, but privately calibrate their interests in terms of Thucydidean honor, fear, and self interest. . . .
Cheney’s liberal critics have derided In My Time; apparently so will many of his former conservative friends. As historians acknowledge his earlier record of selfless public service, they will nonetheless become far more fascinated with—and ultimately impressed by—Cheney’s final tumultuous eight years as vice president. In his last office, Washington’s ultimate insider forcefully did what he thought his imperiled country needed—and let others worry about whether he had become a shunned outsider.
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Those who hoped to see in this 576-page volume a contrite and compromising Dick Cheney will be sorely disappointed. But readers interested in understanding the decision-making and dynamics of the Bush administration will find a compelling examination of those eight years, which spans nearly half
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the book. The rest, an account of Cheney’s life and early career, provides a fascinating look at the events and experiences that shaped the man who would become America’s most powerful and controversial vice president. While Cheney does not engage in much second-guessing of the Bush-era policies with which he is most often associated, In My Time nonetheless includes candid and sometimes surprising assessments of the debates surrounding the decisions that led to those policies, and those in the Bush administration who participated in them. Show Less
Original publication date
2011