Bipartisan Decorum

Richard Reeves has put a useful historical perspective on Dick Cheney's recent attacks on President Obama, comparing the incident with John F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs.

President Obama must have been a bit surprised when, on his 54th day in office, the former vice president, Richard Cheney, decided to go on television and brand him a danger to the Republic. “ “He is,” said Cheney, “making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.”

That is not the way the game is usually played.

Richard Reeves, "Hail to the Chief--In Public, That Is," New York Times, 20 March 2009.

I have done some writing about the Bay of Pigs affair, with which Reeves compares the Cheney remarks, and so I found Reeves's history lesson especially striking: Thomas W. Benson, Writing JFK: Presidential Rhetoric and the Press in the Bay of Pigs Crisis (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003).