A Tale of Two Speeches: Obama Uplifts, Cheney Uses Old Arsenal of Fear-Mongering

By Leslie Savan, The Nation. Posted May 23, 2009.

Remember: Not a single major banking chief has been fired for the financial scandals yet; Geithner recently announced that no caps will be placed on executive salaries; and his nominee for the number-two post at the Treasury Department is Neal Wolin, who helped write the bank deregulations that triggered the capitalist collapse in the first place. If the people can't feel certain that Obama's going to defend them from such gimlet-eyed sharks, they're going to be less likely to stand up to Cheney when he plays scary organ music about our physical safety.

Of course, neither Obama nor Cheney spoke directly about the banking bailouts or rising unemployment Thursday morning. But the back-to-back speeches make clear how much of Obama's foreign policy depends on the success of his domestic economic agenda, and vice versa. Sure, Cheney's lies were preposterous, as Lawrence O'Donnell energetically noted immediately after the speech:

But Cheney's aura of authority -- complete with rising poll numbers! -- is no lie: It stems not only from his masterful fear-mongering, but from the fact that he still speaks from the commanding heights of the ecomony. The former CEO of Halliburton who devised U.S. energy policy with a secret cabal of oil executives represents the industrial and financial elite, whose largesse paid for the microphone he used at AEI. What many of us heard as Cheney talked about "enhanced interrogation techniques," 9/11, and security for das Homeland was the suggestion that, ultimately, he could still hire or fire us all.

We're beginning to see the limits of Obama's moderation, the checks it puts on just how effective a Chief Protector he can be for the middle-class, much less for the poor. While we look on enthralled by Obama's elegance and calm reason, Cheney waits like a troll under the bridge, watching for the slightest misstep. What I fear is that Obama hasn't made enough of a change from the Bush-Cheney-Paulsen economic model to keep us from falling back into a financial Charybdis.

See more stories tagged with: cheney, obama

Leslie Savan is the author of Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics, and, Like, Whatever.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Politics! Sign up now »