{"id":6635,"date":"2006-02-16T10:39:37","date_gmt":"2006-02-16T15:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6635"},"modified":"2006-02-16T10:39:37","modified_gmt":"2006-02-16T15:39:37","slug":"a-noonan-trial-balloon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-noonan-trial-balloon\/","title":{"rendered":"A Noonan trial balloon?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan — who, it’s worth noting, went on a leave of absence in 2004 to help the Bush\/Cheney campaign — wrote a provocative column<\/a> today that may have been a bit of trial balloon for White House insiders. The headline read: “Hit Refresh? Why Bush may be thinking about replacing Cheney.”<\/p>\n

Noonan makes the case that the shooting controversy will never really go away. “He’s been painted as the dark force of the administration,” Noonan said, “and now there’s a mental picture to go with the reputation.”<\/p>\n

What’s more, Noonan wrote, presidential aides may soon start seriously wondering if they’d be better off with someone else. (Noonan prefaced this by saying this isn’t based on insider knowledge, but is based on what she knows about those who practice politics “within the Bush White House.”)<\/p>\n

I suspect what they’re thinking and not saying is, If Dick Cheney weren’t vice president, who’d be a good vice president? They’re thinking, At some time down the road we may wind up thinking about a new plan. And one night over drinks at a barbecue in McLean one top guy will turn to another top guy and say, “Under the never permeable and never porous Dome of Silence, tell me . . . wouldn’t you like to replace Cheney?”<\/p>\n

Why would they be thinking about this? It’s not the shooting incident itself, it’s that Dick Cheney has been the administration’s hate magnet for five years now. Halliburton, energy meetings, Libby, Plamegate. This was not all bad for the White House: Mr. Cheney took the heat that would otherwise have been turned solely on George Bush. So he had utility, and he’s experienced and talented and organized, and Mr. Bush admires and respects him. But, at a certain point a hate magnet can draw so much hate you don’t want to hold it in your hand anymore, you want to drop it, and pick up something else. Is this fair? Nah. But fair has nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n

This is a White House that likes to hit refresh when the screen freezes. Right now the screen is stuck, with poll numbers in the low 40s, or high 30s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s more, Noonan argues, Bush is so intent on seeing his Iraq policy through, he may want to replace Cheney (who won’t run in 2008) with a successor who’ll stay the course in 2009 and beyond.<\/p>\n

Noonan takes this thought experiment pretty far, even suggesting that Bush could talk Cheney into stepping aside.
\n<\/p>\n

If he were pressed — Dick, we gotta put the next guy in here or we’re going to lose in ’08 and see all our efforts undone — he might make the decision himself. He’d have to step down on his own. He’s just been through a trauma, and he can’t be liking his job as much now as he did three years ago. No one on the downside of a second term does, hate magnet or not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Noonan concludes that White House aides are already “asking themselves…silently” who could best take Cheney’s place.<\/p>\n

This seems largely far-fetched to me, but the fact that this column was published on the conservative Wall Street Journal op-ed page, by a key Republican insider who’s worked for the last three Republican presidents, is pretty interesting, isn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan — who, it’s worth noting, went on a leave of absence in 2004 to help the Bush\/Cheney campaign — wrote a provocative column today that may have been a bit of trial balloon for White House insiders. The headline read: “Hit Refresh? Why Bush may be thinking about replacing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}