Here’s a test for big media.

Will they cover Bill Clinton nodding off (New York Post video of Clinton snoozing in church here) the way they did Dick Cheney?  As you can see, it’s a genre of news that particularly entertains Chris Cuomo …

… otherwise known as George Washington University Hospital:

Doctors examining Vice President Cheney yesterday discovered an irregular heartbeat and applied an electrical shock to restore a normal rhythm, the White House said, the latest in a long string of episodes that have raised concern about the health of the man next in line for the presidency.

But here’s what the big corporate media won’t tell you:

Turns out, those Condoleezza Rice boots are made for walking — and talking — and maybe some purring.
From the Washington Post:

During a trip to Europe early in her tenure as secretary, Rice sported a dramatic outfit at a U.S. military base in Germany: a black skirt that hit just above the knee, along with a black coat with seven gold buttons that fell to mid-calf — and hung open to reveal sexy, knee-high boots.
The trip was notable for the administration’s move to support European efforts against Iran’s nuclear program, but the photographs of Rice dominated the news. Talking with Wilkinson, Rice professed puzzlement about the fuss over her boots. Wilkinson said he didn’t feel comfortable explaining the reason.
“Oh, Jim, you’re like my little brother,” Rice teased. “Tell me.”
Wilkinson finally answered. “Men like these,” he admitted.
Rice leaned over and whispered: “We know that.”

Indeed.  Sexy legs and a foggy bottom.  Works for me.  We want a State Department, not a Staid Department.
And truthfully, which gets you more excited about foreign policy opportunities.

This:

Or this:

Former Reader’s Digest editor-in-chief Kenneth Tomlinson reviews Stephen Hayes’s book Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President:

One of the great things about biography is it so often reminds us just how serendipitous life can be.
Steve Hayes’s new biography of Vice President Cheney provides another case in point.
Today the Vice President’s greatest fans are people who regard Richard Nixon’s wage and price controls as one of the worst exercises of governmental authority in our lifetime.   Unbelievably stupid.  No accident the idea originated with John Connally.
Can you identify the young man who wrote the Cost of Living Council regulations that were used to implement wage and price controls?
Dick Cheney.
These same fans regard Nixon’s failure to dismantle the Office of Economic Opportunity as a symbol of the wrong-headedness that led his administration to actually fund LBJ’s Great Society.   A huge failure of the Nixon presidency.
At one critical juncture, the White House dispatched to OEO director Don Rumsfeld a demand from Kentucky Governor Louis Nunn that OEO operations in the state’s eastern mountains be defunded.   What Rumsfeld aide was dispatched to examine the Kentucky poverty programs in question only to conclude that following the Governor’s advice would not be worth the political blowback?   Dick Cheney.
Now you can make the case that all this was magnificent on the job training for the one-time University of Wyoming student who, when he arrived at the Wyoming legislature for a prestigious internship, didn’t know whether he wanted to work for Democrats or Republicans.
Here is a man who has become one of the most politically polarizing figures in history, yet as a college senior he essentially had no politics.   Karl Rove couldn’t imagine such a thing.
Even Cheney partisans have to be a little embarrassed over the role he played in the Ford White House, first as Rumsfeld’s deputy and then as the President’s 33 year old chief of staff.   After all, Ford did postpone the arrival of Reaganism by a full four years.
Hayes doesn’t record Cheney’s attitude toward WIN [remember Whip Inflation Now?] buttons—but he does record Cheney’s powerful if unsuccessful memo to the President urging him to receive Solzhenitsyn in the White House.   Later, it would be Cheney’s responsibility to force Ford to face up to his horrible gaff in the first Presidential debate.  The Polish people were not free.
The cowboy was getting his legs.
Hayes follows Cheney back to Wyoming, to the House of Representatives, to the leadership of the Defense Department to Halliburton to the Vice Presidency.
It is clear that Hayes believes the White House has made a fundamental mistake keeping Cheney under wraps in terms of defending the administration’s record on issues ( i.e. the war in Iraq).   I found this especially compelling because the Cheney debate performance against his 2000 vice presidential opponent Joe Lieberman stands out in my mind as the best political performance since JFK.
I did not know until the book of the role former Ohio Rep. Rob Portman played acting as Lieberman in debate preps.   Seems Portman captured everything about Lieberman including his nasal voice inflections.  Turned out Portman was better than Lieberman—and that surprised me.
But whenever I think about the most powerful material in the book, I come back to Cheney’s early life.   Like the time Cheney was twice nailed for drunk driving while working in transmission line construction in the mountains of Wyoming.   Hayes writes:  “The same month that he was arrested for a second time, Cheney’s friends and former classmates received their diplomas from Yale.   As he sat in the jail cell in Rock Springs, the contrast struck him hard.  For eighteen years, Cheney had a carefree life marked by a series of seemingly effortless accomplishments.  His admission to Yale, on a full scholarship, appeared to continue this promising trajectory.
“Now almost four years after the excitement and anticipation of that first cross-country train trip to New Haven, Cheney found himself alone in jail, left to contemplate everything that had gone wrong.  Even for someone who had been—and would be—known for his equanimity, it was another disturbing new low.”
So how did Cheney emerge from these depths?
He experienced no rehab or AA.  Fact is, he didn’t even stop drinking.
Seems his girl friend who had just graduated early from the University of Colorado let him know she had no intension of spending her life with an electrical worker who was in trouble with the law.   He knew Lynne Vincent was a woman of her word.  So he simply straightened up and went to the University of Wyoming (where he lived on tomato soup and rice) and got interested in political science.
Life can be serendipitous.

From today’s Washington Post:

“I’ve seen this movie before from the liberal left in America, who share no responsibility for what happened in Cambodia when we said no,” said McCain, whose campaign has lost support partly because of his advocacy of the war. He singled out Mike Gravel, a Vietnam War-era senator from Alaska who strongly opposed that mission and is waging a long-shot antiwar candidacy for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

Biden jumped in. “Give me a break! Quoting Gravel as the voice of the left?” he exclaimed. “This is a man who, God love him, nominated himself for vice president. I mean, come on!”

No greater endorsement that the Almighty’s, eh?  Perhaps Biden likewise believes that because Dick Cheney picked himself as VP running-mate, the Good Lord loves him, too?

To resolve the question of whether Dick Cheney as Vice President is part of the executive or legislative branch, we solicit wisdom from Extreme Mortman senior historian Richard Andrews.  He offers this:

It’s not either/or.  He’s both.  This is not an unusual concept. 

Many state lieutenant governors are not only state senate presiding officers, but (unlike the VP) have substantial executive responsibilities imposed on them by their state constitution and/or statutes.  These vary greatly.  (I believe there has been a good bit of litigation among the states on the leg?-or-exec? question about lt. govs. The answer is, generally: it depends.) 

A number of them automatically become acting Gov. whenever their Gov. leaves the state.  (Like, famously, California; That always means an interesting time when they are of opposing parties, and the Gov. is trying to run for President.  This happened to Jerry Brown & Pete Wilson.)

Something not addressed in the Washington Post series on Cheney (and that I doubt will be) is that Cheney’s ability to carve out this sort of relationship with “W” is partly based on the uniqueness of Texas.  Bush’s ONLY previous gov’t. experience is being her Governor.  The only kind of #1/#2 relationship he’s had is the one he had THERE.

The Lieutenant Governor of Texas is unquestionably the most powerful in the nation.  On the legislative side, as President of the state senate, he is not merely some once-in-a-while presiding officer; he’s like Maryland’s Mike Miller - appoints all the committees and their chairmen, decides which committee(s) bills will be referred to, establishes the chamber’s “calendar” (agenda), et cetera.  On the executive side he is a member of numerous state commissions & boards that are the  (hydra-) heads of many state agencies, and exercise vast power.  These commissions are not directly answerable to the governor, and to the extent that he appoints their members at all, it is to staggered fixed terms.

Additionally, W was exceeding fortunate to have had a lt. gov. who, even though a Dem., was highly cooperative. 

These two happenstances have necessarily molded the relationship w/Cheney.

Poor Harry Reid. First he gets smacked around   (Instapundit, Mystery Pollster, Volokh ) for using mythical numbers for rhetorical excess in saying that only 9% of the American people like Dick Cheney.

But what’s worse than having 91% of the people hate you?  Having David Broder doubt you:

Reid is assuredly not a man who misses many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth. … The Democrats deserve better, and the country needs more, than Harry Reid has offered as Senate majority leader.

Today’s Broder column is the the OUCH! heard ’round the political world.

UPDATE: A point of clarification.  I missrepresented Volokh as among the smackers.  Here’s Volokh’s point:

I realize that some laypeople might miss the jocular hyperbole, but I suspect it will be very few. And Reid was apparently speaking to reporters, and in that context even someone who realizes he may be quoted might be pitching his off-the-cuff comments at the sophistication level of the audience that is present.

Harry Reid saying this about Dick Cheney…

“I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating.”

… leads the always fact-checking Mystery Pollster at Pollster.com to say this:

(Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit)

From today’s White House press briefing: 

Q  An HBO TV personality named Bill Maher said on the air, the Vice President, “I’m just saying, if he did die, other people, more people would live. That is a fact.” End of quote. Question: Since this is the same person whom ABC fired five years ago for commending the terrorists responsible for 9/11, surely the White House has some concern about Maher’s reference to the desirability of the Vice President’s death, don’t you?

DANA PERINO: I’m not going to dignify his comments with a response.

In Washington parlance, saying you’re not dignifying a comment is akin to strongly condemning it.  Leaves little doubt where the White House stands.

Joe Biden’s running for president.  Dick Cheney isn’t.   And Independence Day weekend has them both angling for photo ops.
Poor Joe Biden’s campaign has to settle for making news at the Bedford Village Inn in New Hampshire.  Nice place, but not the sort of fabulous high-profile settings the VP has enjoyed in recent days.

AP’s list:

• Catching the Pepsi 400 NASCAR race in Daytona, where he got “loud cheers” and a “standing ovation from the drivers and their crews and his excited staff took pictures with Dale Earnhardt Jr.”
• Visiting the Kennedy Space Center
• Throwing out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals home opener.
• -Touring a Harley-Davidson factory in Kansas City
• -Visiting the Chicago Mercantile Exchange

So the question is — which of the below two places is a more glamourous setting for launching a national campaign?