"Public opinion... has a strong underlying sense of justice."

I really dislike Dick Cheney.

The guy is a monster. I honestly don't understand how he manages to show such arrogance when he's hated by so many people.

But then again, I can. He's said over and over that he ignores public opinion. So has Bush.

There's already a great front-page post up about his interview on Good Morning America but I made a point in the comments section of the diary and I want to expand on a few things.

Before I even get into the other points, I quickly want to make Dick Cheney feel stupid based on one statement he made on the show:

Q: Tell me whether you imagined at this point five years later whether there would be 4,000 lives lost; whether it would last this long?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I didn't have any way five years ago -- we didn't have any way five years ago to estimate what the final cost would be. We knew it would be difficult. I think it's gone on -- insurgency lasted longer than I would have anticipated.

This one dude kinda disagrees, you might want to have a talk with him:

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

Here's an exchange from the show:

Q Let me go back to the Americans. Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.

   THE VICE PRESIDENT: So?

   Q So -- you don't care what the American people think?

   THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. Think about what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had paid attention to polls, if they had had polls during the Civil War. He never would have succeeded if he hadn't had a clear objective, a vision for where he wanted to go, and he was willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the political wars in order to get there. And this President has been very courageous, very consistent, very determined to continue down the course we were on and to achieve our objective.

The front page post already addresses the "so?" aspect, and Cheney's blatant disregard for people actually living in the country, but I want to talk about the historical inaccuracy and the general stupidness of his comments.

First of all, I'd point out to the guy that he's president of the senate. He can only vote to break a tie, but the Senate is a rather important body, as it deals with laws that affect Americans on many different issues.

To be nice, I'll summarize Artice One, Section Eight of the Constitution for dick:

lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence..., To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;...To regulate Commerce...,To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States, to coin money and regulate its value..., to punish counterfeiting... establish post offices, roads... promote science and arts, make copyright laws, make tribunals that are below the supreme court... protect against piracy and felonies... declare war, establish rules of war, raise armies, navies - for them to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions, to do everything for the military except appoint officers...

I hope he realizes that the Congress makes laws for and by the people, and thus demands their opinions on this issue.

Secondly, public opinion polls are, obviously to anyone of us, polls of trends of public opinion. There are lots of other ways to express public opinion, and to measure it. Stuff like elections and that whole media and newspapers thingy. They actually had those things around back then. I mean, I just hope he realizes:

1. That there was a public back then

2. That they expressed their opinions in many of the same ways we do today

3. That the opinion of the public was paid attention to and commented on by the media and by the government.

4. People actually voted, and still vote, based on their opinions and based on the media's expression of their opinions

I don't think he realizes that, so, there it is.

Thirdly, they actually did have opinion polls in Abraham Lincoln's time. They were straw polls. They weren't very good, or scientific, and they definitely were not nationally-based polls, in fact, they weren't done too terribly frequently, but that is not to say they didn't exist. He is completely, completely wrong. I would just hope that our vice president would know some stuff about our country.

Fourthly, it's stupid to say "Lincoln wouldn't have looked at the polls", anyway, because they were bad polls. Nobody would've looked at them seriously. Sure, it's "factually correct" to say that he wouldn't have looked at opinion polls back then, but that's because the opinion polls were not the way to really gauge public opinion back in the 1860s. No president would've used one. Remind me again, it's 2008, right? We've had time to perfect the ideas of scientific opinion polls, right? Didn't Gallup start that whole trend?

Fifth, Lincoln, would have, and did, think about and consider public opinion. It might not have been in polls, but it would've been in the way people looked at public opinion in those days. Obviously. I'm not gonna gauge public opinion today by a Dailykos poll or a Zogby interactive poll, for example.

Sixth, Lincoln actually did address public opinion, after paying attention to it. Which is funny, since Cheney completely tries to say that "if" they had public opinion "polls", Lincoln would have ignored them, just like he is. Yup, he's just like Lincoln!

Except for the part where he's not:

Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice. - Abraham Lincoln

Yeah, Dick Cheney, you're definitely the new Abraham Lincoln.