(Gawd knows it’s apples to road-apples, but the pardon sounds good right now.)
It's just the fact of Presidents making tough decisions and how they are perceived contemporaneously (good word, right?) versus what they look like 20 or 30 years down the road.
(Fat, old, bloated, wrinkled and smelling of urine.)
And I myself am personally persuaded (by I, myself) that this President (whatshisname) and this administration (Mine!) will look very good 20 or 30 years down the road, (when has really hit the fan and everything is commodified and owned by Halliburton) in light of what we've been able to accomplish with respect to the global war on terror, (I mean look how many more terrorists there are now! That’s an accomplishment) keeping the nation safe for the last seven and a half years against further attacks by al Qaeda, (too bad we missed that first one despite all the warnings but hey! Nobody bats 1.000, right?) administering, I think, a very significant defeat to al Qaeda over the course of the last few years, (and by defeat, I mean exponential growth and influence) of liberating 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq.
(Not counting the dead. Death is a very liberating experience, I’m told.)
I just – (farted) I think the set of accomplishments there – (meaning ‘absolute debacles that would shame anyone with a conscience or morals’)establishing democracies in both places with constitutions and free elections (if by ‘democracy’, you mean puppet states with no choice at all)-- those are major, major kinds of changes in the course of history that I think this President deserves credit for.
(Or blame. Ranks right up there with Pol Pot and that Old Joe Stalin.)
And I think they'll be recognized as such in the future. (And with luck, we’ll die before we’re brought before the International Court.)
(to be continued)
Q You've been described and attributed to be one of the most powerful and influential Vice Presidents in history. How would you describe your influence, your power, and your contribution to this administration?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: In terms of whether or not I'm the most powerful and influential, I'll let somebody else make those judgments. I think -- I do believe that the vice presidency has been a consequential office, if I can put in those terms, in this administration. But that's, first and foremost, because that's what the President wanted. He's the one who asked me to take the job. He's also the one who decided during the course of his search process eight years ago that he wanted somebody who could be another member of the team, who had a certain set of experiences and so forth, and could be an active participant in the process.
I know the job of vice president has been terribly frustrating for a lot of people. Jerry Ford once told me it was the -- the worst nine months of his life were the years he lived, the months he spent -- it seemed like years -- but the months he spent as Vice President. I watched Nelson Rockefeller in the Ford administration -- he was never happy with the post.
And everybody is familiar with the history that it has not been a consequential office in the past. I think that began to change, I think in particular, during the Carter years. I didn't agree with much of what Jimmy Carter did, but I thought Mondale as Vice President was a good choice for him, and that the office began to have a more significant role in those days. And I think that's gradually grown over time. And I think, as I say, I do believe in this administration it's been a consequential post, because that's what the President wanted to have happen, and he's been true to his word for eight years.
Q As a former CEO, as you look out at the auto industry, an iconic industry of America that is struggling, so difficult, if you were going to wave a magic wand, what would you recommend? What needs to be done to change that industry? And also, can you give us some sense of what the Bush administration might still be able to do? Will the loans really occur before you leave office?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I can't tell you at this stage precisely what we're going to do, because the President hasn't decided yet. We're working on it, and we had a session just yesterday on it, looking at the options and so forth.
In terms of looking at the industry generally, I think that obviously it's a very, very important part of the global economy. I believe that there are a number of companies out there, some of them operate in the United States, who are profitable, who are producing products people want to buy. And increasingly, we're seeing in places like China and India, and so forth, a steady increase in the demand for the production of automobiles.
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