Monday, October 22, 2012

Dick Cheney: Son of the New Deal


Former Vice President Dick Cheney speaks about
national security in Washington, 05/21/09.
(photo: Reuters)
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
20 August 12

ormer Vice President Dick Cheney would agree that he is about as right-wing as an American politician can be, openly hostile to the federal government's intervention in society. But one surprise from his memoir, In My Time, is that Cheney recognizes that his personal success was made possible by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the fact that Cheney's father managed to land a steady job with the federal government.

"I've often reflected on how different was the utterly stable environment he provided for his family and wondered if because of that I have been able to take risks, to change directions, and to leave one career path for another with hardly a second thought," Cheney writes.

In that sense, Cheney's self-assuredness may be as much a product of the New Deal as the many bridges, dams and other public works that Roosevelt commissioned in the 1930s to get Americans back to work. By contrast, the insecurity that afflicted Cheney's father was a byproduct of the vicissitudes from laissez-faire capitalism.   READ MORE

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