Rudy Calls for Four More Years of Dick Cheney

Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress at 2:01 PM on January 3, 2008.

In an event in New Hampshire last night, Rudy Giuliani suggested that -- if he were to be elected president -- he would like to choose someone like Dick Cheney to be his Vice President. The AP reports:

Would a Rudy Giuliani administration be populated with a Cabinet of Republican rivals and a powerful, all-knowing vice president like Dick Cheney? Possibly, according to musings Giuliani shared in answers to questions from New Hampshire voters yesterday in Hooksett.

Giuliani pivoted from a question about potential picks for secretary of state to this: "Let me answer with the question of what you would look for in a vice president first - again without any presumption that I'm going to be the nominee."

In an answer that mentioned Cheney more than once, Giuliani said, "A vice president has to be a partner in the administration. The vice president has to know everything that's going on, just in case the vice president has to step in at a moment's notice," he said. He added that during a conversation with Cheney on Sept. 11, 2001, he felt the vice president "had a sense that he knew what he was doing."

This isn't the first time Giuliani has floated Cheney for Vice President. In a radio interview in November, Giuliani cited Cheney as "a good example of picking someone who is qualified to be president of the United States." Fortunately, Cheney has indicated he will not serve in a future administration. "I'm going to serve this president for the next four years, and then I'm out of here," Cheney told Fox News' Chris Wallace. "This is my last tour."

Cheney will leave office with a dark hanging over him, in the words of former special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Over 177,000 individuals have signed an active petition to impeach the Vice President, whose approval ratings hover near 30 percent.

Last year, the Washington Post reported there was a "GOP plan to oust Cheney," who was "viewed as toxic" by many in his party and had "the potential to drag down" candidates up for election. Instead, the right-wing has openly embraced the Vice President and aggressively pushed him to run for president.

Tagged as: cheney, giuliani

Faiz Shakir is the Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves as Editor of ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report.