If one more commentator says that Bush "went soft" on Cheney I'm gonna

[Happyhippychick]

:puke:

[MNDemNY]

1. Cheney should have kept his figure, maybe dressed a little sexier for him.

[xxqqqzme]

2. Was this in the oval office? What will we tell the children?

[Proud Liberal Dem]

3. What was THAT in reference to?

:shrug:

[Orsino]

4. Possibly to *'s last year in office...

...when he retreated into an alcoholic haze, or might as well have.

No president does well as a lame duck, and * was less inclined than any toward actual work. So I guess conservatives are pretending to be surprised that George Bush could get bored with ruling, as he has with everything else.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

5. How did he "go soft" on Cheney though?

I personally believe that Cheney and his cadre of PNACers ran more or less a "Shadow Government" through at least most of Buscho's first term and that Bush himself was more of a figurehead. I think that that dynamic changed towards the end of Bush's first term when I think he realized that their hijinks (and the obvious embarrassment of not being able to find any WMD in Iraq and the devolving security situation there and scandals about pre-war planning and 9/11) might cost him the election (which it almost did).
In his second term, nearly all of the neocon "hawks" left the (mis-)administration and Bush seemed to be listening more to SOS Rice and SOD Gates than Cheney, which is probably good because a lot of us here were worried that it was only a matter of time before Buscho started something with Iran too but obviously he had neither the will, support, or resources to actually attack Iran or anybody else for the remainder of his term in office even though I think Cheney and some of the neocons were STILL goading him to launch some kind of attack on Iran.

[Orsino]

6. When he stopped trying to sell us on the Cheney Agenda...

...and turtled on us. The neocons are always convinced that we will see the Light of Truth, if only it's marketed to us correctly.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

8. Oh I see what you mean now. Thanks!

Well, you remember what *somebody* in the 2001-2005 Bush (mis-)administration said about us being an Empire and "history's actors" now and how they (Bushco) would "create" new realities that the rest of us could judiciously study (Suskind).

[WCGreen]

7. I would have chosen the word Limp....

Soft is just so soft while limp, well, that's an insult sent straight to the man's manhood.