Did Cheney Doze Off During Bush’s Farewell Address?

Posted by Staff, Huffington Post at 1:45 PM on January 16, 2009.

Vice President Cheney may have dozed off during Bush's apparently somniferous farewell speech last night. Courtesy of Examiner.com:

As Bush said, "But we must reject isolationism and its companion, protectionism. Retreating behind our borders would only invite danger..."

Cheney's eyelids briefly fluttered shut. He immediately roused himself and sat up straighter and shifted in his chair.

ThinkProgress notes that this is not the first time Cheney has inopportunely caught up on sleep. In their video here, he make his narcoleptic tendencies even more obvious during a cabinet meeting to discuss California wildfires in 2007.

Perhaps this is an unfair leap to judgment on Cheney though. As Time notes today, the East Room of the White House was hardly the place to be last night, with far more exciting events taking place. Think of it as having to work the graveyard shift on New Years Eve. From Time:

President George W. Bush said farewell to the nation, but the nation wasn't paying attention. TV barely cut to him in time for his first words Thursday evening and couldn't wait to cut away when he finished 13 minutes later. Something unexpected and awesome had happened to shoulder him out of the picture: a jet gliding to a stop in the middle of the Hudson River, with everyone emerging safe. The departure of President Bush, by contrast, had become part of the world's mental wallpaper some time ago.

Much like Bush's final press-conference, where White House interns were conscripted to fill vacant seats left by a disinterested press corp, the farewell address was predictably anticlimactic--a final past-due dying breath for an administration already cast into the dustbin of "short term" history.

Tagged as: dick cheney, george bush, farewell address