Speaking truth to the formerly powerful

You’d think Dick Cheney was an intimidating figure, what with all the warring and the swearing and the Syrianas, etc. Not for firebrand US Senator Joe Biden. Biden is a very direct individual, but he’s also a political survivor and someone I greatly admire. Cheney and Biden were just a few pixels apart on the Wolf Blitzer Show on CNN when this hilarious exchange occurred:

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The worst possible thing we could do is what the Democrats are suggesting, and no matter how you carve it, you can call it anything you want, but basically, it is packing it in, going home, persuading and convincing and validating the theory that the Americans don’t have the stomach for this fight.

BLITZER: All right. You want to respond to the vice president, Senator Biden?

BIDEN: No, I don’t want to respond to him. He’s at 20 percent in the polls. No one listens to him. He has no credibility. It’s ridiculous.

Joe Biden, you are my hero. You’ve found another way to say this to the Vice President, and in an entirely polite and factual manner. Cheney is a shell of an evil man, reduced to the Republican talking point bench-warmer circuit, and Biden justifiably left him deeper in the smoking rubble of his career. Hopefully one day he will share a pardon sheet with Scooter Libby.