In the days before his autobiography was published, perhaps to pump up sales, Dick Cheney predicted that his book would have “heads exploding all over Washington.” As it turned out, there were a few predictable tantrums – Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice bit back against criticisms directed at them on disputes familiar to students of the George W. Bush administration – but not much more.
There is one obvious reason for the calm response to the former vice-president’s self-styled bombshells. The so-called War on Terror and all the controversies around it – from the decision to invade Iraq to the use of torture, or “enhanced interrogation”, on detainees – seem so distant from the problems that beset the US today.
For a country mired in a deep economic slump and a generational crisis of confidence, Cheney’s dogged, dogmatic defence of the Bush administration’s record appears almost irrelevant, not to say tone deaf to the state of the country when he left office.