god damn dick cheney's shit-filled soul to hell.

This is a little unfair. Give W a little credit yeah? Here's a guy we all despised for eight years doing the right thing. Can't you give him more than a single truncated sentence of acknowledgment?

Yes, Cheney's still a dick (no pun intended). But you don't need to look further than Cheney for a place to put the blame.

I don't think W and The Big Dick are on very good terms these days, considering as how The Big Dick has been publicly trashing W for not pardoning Scooter Libby. I suspect W has also had some leisure to ponder the extent to which listening to The Big Dick sunk his Presidency. He's not very smart, but he's just smart enough for it to finally occur to him that he was used.

So yeah, I give him some credit and I don't blame him for Cheney's churlishness.

After hearing how the Libby non-pardon went down, I'm not sure that Bush and Cheney are on terribly good speaking terms....

God Bushed America!

But don't think for a moment that Dick and George acted alone.

They (powerful folks like AIG executives and Iraq war mongers) spent 8 years robbing us all of our dignity and destroyed the world's economy.

Nice to see thatone of our ex-Presidents continues to have class. Wish the same could be said for Clinton and Carter.

You have got to give the guy credit.

He was very gracious to Obama after the election, and remains so.

Cheney really is just a fossilized fool. He has a mind set that is impervious to facts. Happens to older people, and there are even theories, which have gained significant traction, about the effect of heart disease on cognition.

I am becoming nostalgic for the days when Cheney spent most of his time in an undisclosed location.

I'm with Jesse and some of the other commentators, the good cop-bad cop dig wasn't called for.

Bush was a failure because the presidency was way over his head in terms of knowledge, intellect, instinct and philosophical principles (which by the way is also the case 3 out of 4 for John McCain).

Bush's whole reason for becoming president was pedigree-entitlement. In other words, he is an 'establishmentarian' who knows and respects establishment rules. His frat boy antics were/are just a means of covering his competence deficit: As long as he could joke with people, he didn't have to engage them in an earnest manner and thereby could avoid having his lack of knowledge exposed.

With all that said, I think Bush's comment on Obama 'deserving his silence' was most likely sincere and he should be given due credit for this. (That doesn't exclude the possibility that Bush is also smart enough to lie low for a while until more time has passed and in the mind of the general public the current economic problems have become more 'Obama's crisis').

Cheney is a whole different matter. He is a way more competent politician than Bush, not to speak of his bureaucracy manipulating skills, but at the same time he also has a scorched earth personality and he will likely turn out to have been the driving force behind a lot of the evil stuff that went down during the Bush 43 presidency. That guy really needs to be put in his place and Gibbs is doing a fine job of it.

terms of knowledge, intellect, instinct and philosophical principles (which by the way is also the case 3 out of 4 for John McCain) - SRW1

Which was the 1?

Bush has always had more class than Cheney. As I've said before, I think his principal failures were ignorance and incompetence rather than malevolence (though certainly a mixture of all of the above).

If the Republicans want to put Cheney on as their public face, I am delighted. A more transparently evil, more reviled figure, would be hard to find. Imagine being Tedesco's handler trying to win with that Dick reminding everyone of how well Republicans have managed things.

It won't last, but the thing to do is memorialize these statements now to freeze Republican opposition in support of people and policies whose failure is nearly universally acknowledged. Gibbs had exactly the right tone. And if a few of the White House Press Corps go down with Cheney, so much the better.

I see Bush as smart enough to see a classy way out of his laziness and lack of curiosity.

Let´s not give him too much credit here. I´m sure he is more happy clearing brush than doing politics at this point.

Now watch this drive.

Danp,

I'd give McCain a passing grade on instinct.

Silence? I was thinking the country deserved Dick Cheney's indictment, trial, conviction, sentencing, and imprisonment.

Um, this isn't "class" as much as it is typical Bush family operational mode. They always take the high road and let their sycophants--which, in GWB's case, include Rove, Fleisher, and many others--do the dirty work for them. The rest of the quote from Bush, according to the AP, was that their are plenty of voices in the arena criticizing Obama. Most of those voices are loyal Bushies. So, no, I will not give the guy any credit on this.

Bush shouldn't have been given a chance to give that speech. He should have been arrested as soon as he stepped off the plane.

Canada disappointed me. I don't expect justice from the United States, but a so-called civilized country like Canada? I expected better.

Jeb and most of bush's cabinet were charter members of the PNAC. In no way was bush duped by cheney ... he was the ENABLER of the conspiracy.

Come now, Tree. Prime minister Harper and Bush were buddy-buddy. Not only do they/did they share the same political ideology, but Harper was the only leader out there that more or less supported Gitmo and the "process" going on down there. That was (and still is) the reason he and his government give for refusing to repatriate Omar Khadr, the last Western citizen held there.

Given all that, it would be foolish to have expected him to allow Bush to be arrested, touched, or even breathed on by protesters.

I second aretino.

I wonder whether this stance by Bush isn't so much a "good cop/bad cop" act, as it is a signal that Bush is breaking with Cheney, that he now recognizes how Cheney co-opted his adminstration and has screwed his legacy.

I don't agree with the "tradition" you describe. I think former presidents have every right to criticize sitting ones, just like anyone else does. The ability to do this without the risk of bloodshed is what separates the U.S. from countries like Pakistan. If I was a former president, I would have had quite a lot to say about Bush and Cheney while they were in office. Just because something is a "tradition" doesn't necessarily mean it is good.

Maybe the country "deserves" Dick Cheney's "silence," too?

Good lord, no-- Cheney's silence has always been what made him so dangerous. If he's talking, he's not spending as much time plotting.

And I'm not going to give GWB that much credit; "deserves my silence" is a pretty weak defense and from someone more articulate, I'd interpret it as implying that he'd like to criticize & is giving Obama a pass as a courtesy.

That's a very nice sentiment. But I hope Bush isn't playing "good cop" to Dick Cheney's "bad cop." - Mr. Benen

Shrubwit is playing as smart a cop as he knows how. As in, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt".

Shruby is and was and will be a boob. I can see from various remarks above that he's already on the road to rehabilitation. He was Cheney's poodle but he belligerently proclaimed himself the "decider" while screwing every pooch he got a hold of.

I'll give him credit for belatedly learning how to keep his mouth shut. Should have happened long ago.

I doubt Bush is playing "good cop" to Cheney's "bad cop," as apparently after the Scooter Libby dispute they don't play together at all. Rather, I am willing to commend W for his graceful behavior, just was he was justifiably lauded for the way he handled the transition. I have never worked directly for a president but I have worked for a couple of governors, and what I have observed is that anyone who has held these types of jobs has plenty of empathy for those who have to assume these tremendous responsibilities. I would expect W to refrain from public criticism for most if not all of Obama's administration, unless he feels to need to respond to some very direct criticism, which Obama has been careful not to do.

I have no sympathy for Duhbya, but saying that, he was almost certainly under Chaney and Roves very strict guidance.
He may, in order to powder his own ass historically, start telling some truths as time goes on.

By saying he won't criticize Obama, Bush implies that he WOULD criticize Obama if it weren't seen to be unseemly. So he gets to have it both ways - implicitly rebuking the new president, but with deniability. Very Rovian.

".... I´m sure he is more happy clearing brush than doing politics at this point."

Now that there will be no one to take photographs, I suspect the brush will thrive and grow. Sustaining that hardworking cowpoke persona must have been a real bore. The Crawford Ranch was a late-day purchase and should be going up on the market pretty soon since it has outlived its usefulness. Perhaps he'll be picking dandelions in the yard of his gated community home in Dallas.

Is Rush going to go after W Bush for wanting Obama to succeed and declarding that we need to support him? Bush's statements (and the very specific wording) flies directly in the face of the Failure Caucus.

It should be remembered that Bush was always like this. On the campaign trail, he wasn't dogging Gore and Kerry the way McCain did to Obama. He knew he had goons to take care of that kind of thing, so he always said nice things about them. And beyond that, I really don't think it's in Bush's personality to openly insult his opponents. He might take pleasure in having them endure torture intense interrogation techniques, but he knows enough to realize he'd look petty by bad mouthing them in the media.

That's the thing about Bush: He was a moron when it came to just about everything but fratguy social skills. Say what you will, but the man knew how to network. That's why the media liked him so much.

The problem with Dick Cheney is that he has 3 disturbing personality traits: He is an authoritarian, paranoid sociopath. When you get a person with no conscience and is paranoid, watch out. He can and is willing to do anything to protect himself, hence the assassination squads.

This is an irony free post but does history even matter to some of you anymore? Jimmy Carter railed against Bush everytime someone put a mike in front of his face and Bill Clinton wasn't much better.

I guess it's only "tradition" when Republicans like Bush and his father maintain silence about their successors.

Um, Steve... I think you're missing the point here. I'm pretty sure that Bush's "not going to criticize" remark was meant at least in part as a dig at Cheney. There's no love lost between those two at the moment, remember?

Indaku, at 9:38AM:
>

He's been more interested in clearing brush than doing politics for the last eight years, by the looks of things.

We also deserve Dick Cheney's indictment, conviction, and imprisonment for war crimes, systemic FISA violations, etc. It doesn't mean we're going to get it.