Icicles, Inside and Out

From an op-ed in The New York Times by Maureen Dowd:

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama knew that the snow clogging the capital would melt a lot sooner than Dick Cheney's heart.

But when he saw that Cheney was going on ABC's Saturday morning show with Jonathan Karl, he braved the ultimate lion's den. He took Jonathan Alter's advice in Newsweek and called the former vice president to set up a private meeting in the Oval Office, hoping to use any combination of diplomacy and tongue-lashing that would make Cheney quit calling him weak.

Obama invited Bob Gates to the Saturday summit. Gates, after all, had originally been brought in as defense secretary as W. to be a common-sense counterbalance to the batty Cheney.

The president prides himself on winning over hostile audiences, but this challenge would give a peacock pause.

The three men sat before the fire in the Oval.

OBAMA: Look, Dick, you've called me out on various particulars. And I have no problem with that. That's politics. You thought Khalid Shaikh Mohammed should not be tried in New York City, and that's fine.

And we both know that any blowhard can call me weak. But you're not just any blowhard, Dick. You were the architect of America's defense against terrorism. And when those folks sitting in a cave in Waziristan hear you chest-thumping, saying our guard is down, they think, "Hey, this might be a good time to attack."

You believe in the unitary executive. You believe that if the president says something is in the national security interest of the U.S., then it is. So I am the president now, and I'm telling you that you need to put a sock in it.

CHENEY: What are you going to do about it, Hussein? Mirandize me?

GATES: Dick, the president's right. When a former vice president calls a new president weak, it emboldens terrorists.

CHENEY (contemptuously looking at Gates with his one-sided smile): If you take the king's coins, you sing the king's song.

OBAMA: You keep saying there were no terror attacks after 9/11, Dick. That's like saying that blimps were safe after the Hindenburg. I wouldn't have been caught flat-footed reading "The Pet Goat" to second graders.

CHENEY: No, you'd have been teaching a graduate seminar on "The Pet Goat." Don't you Muslims eat pet goats?

OBAMA (shaking head in disgust): You have the audacity to say I'm "pretending" we're not at war. You let the Taliban regroup. I sent 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. I've quadrupled the number of drone attacks in Pakistan. The prisoners who returned to terrorism after being released from Gitmo did so under your watch. You released one of the terrorists behind the foiled Christmas Day plot into an art therapy program in Saudi Arabia. Nice work, Dr. Phil.

CHENEY: You're such a Nervous Nellie you can't even use the words "war," "win," "terrorism," "enemy combatant," "Bomb Iran," "Fire Eric Holder" or "Fire John Brennan."

OBAMA: You and W. like Brennan well enough to put him in charge of the National Counterterrorism Center. And I didn't want an attorney general who was a rubber stamp on torture.

CHENEY: The tea partiers agree with me about torture, and that's why you're already over, Mr. Charisma. First you lost Teddy Kennedy's sea. Now you've lost his kid. Scott Brown will wipe the floor with you in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

GATES: Speaking of Scott, the new 41, why can't you be classy in retirement like the original 41, Dick?

CHENEY: Scott's an All-American winner -- Sarah Palin with better legs and less sarcasm. And the hair extensions make her seem even more phony.

OBAMA: Consensus, at last.

CHENEY: You, on the other hand, have about as much hair on your chest as a hairless Chihuahua. Michelle has the biceps in this family.

OBAMA: Michelle is campaigning against obesity. You might listen up on that, Dick. At least the women in my family aren't Mini-Me's trash-talking about the commander in chief.

CHENEY (growling): Liz and I are right! You're on the terrorist team!

GATES: Calm down, Dick. You don't want to end up in the hospital like poor Bill Clinton.

CHENEY: Joe Biden's going to end up in the hospital if he brags again that Iraq will "be one of the greatest achievements" of your administration.

OBAMA: If I don't get re-elected, it will be because you ruined the country beyond even my ability to rescue it. Remember when you said deficits don't matter, Dick?

CHENEY: Stop whining, Mr. Radical Chic. You won't get a second term because you're letting America fall into second place. Put that in your teleprompter.

OBAMA: Why don't you go help W. with Haiti instead of spewing paranoia?

CHENEY (stomping out): Is that your Indonesian birth certificate in the Oval vault?

GATES: So, that went well.

Anyone else catch Dowd's opening error?

"Capitol," not "capital."

The Real Polichick 1, NYT 0.