Betty Bowers: John Edwards Vs. Darth Cheney

Wonderful little message from our Dearest Betty.

As Brit Hume pointed out at a convivial cocktail party last week, a lady blessed with my quality jewelry and shapely figure would be safer in an alley of Fallujah than on the sidewalks of Cleveland (or, if my memory serves, the couch in the Governor's office in Sacramento). As such, I decided to play it safe and stay home to watch last night's Cheney/Edwards debate with Jesus -- but only after exacting a rather reluctant promise from Him not to hurl invective and popcorn at my new plasma TV every time the cameras turned on our wonderful Vice President.


Being so inexplicably liberal (with His "turn the other cheek" peacenik pacifism and, even more galling to us Republicans, His "give all your tax-sheltered money to the poor" socialism), much to my temperately conveyed annoyance, Jesus volunteered a rather stinging appraisal of Mr. Cheney's brave disinclination to become a slave to facts. To which I sardonically responded, "What a friend you have in exegesis!" After several painful minutes of hearing Jesus spouting lib nonsense, I resorted to a little trick I picked up from Peggy Noonan at a dinner party where she was seated at the place of dishonor -- between two Demoncrats. (You know I never gossip except to save a soul or a conversation, but word had it that our hostess was retaliating for Peggy making a clumsy play for her husband after three refusals and five Cutty Sarks.) At the first sign of insight, I put my fingers in both ears, smiled beguilingly and said with patrician cadence (although, unlike New Jersey's Peggy, mine was real), "La la la la la I CAN'T HEAR YOU JESUS! La la la la la" until I wore the Almighty into a satisfactory, if somewhat sullen, silence.



One thing, however, that both Jesus and I agreed upon (other than trailer parks being absolutely ideal venues for tornadoes), is that it is clear that Mr. Edwards does not enjoy Mr. Bush's relationship with Mr. Cheney. That is, Edwards is neither cowered by Cheney's simmering glower nor obedient to his rather optimistic regard for the tensile strength of veracity. But let's face it: in a country where even reality shows are scripted, when it comes to virtues that are verbally touted on the condition that they not be actually practiced, only chastity outranks honesty.



So I don't know why people are scoffing at Mr. Cheney for stating that he never tied Iraq to 9/11, he'd never met John Edwards or that things are going swimmingly in Iraq. Yes, to those obsessed with facts, such statements would appear to be brazen lies. But it is like I always say to myself when filling out that rudely inquisitive "age" box on forms: If you repeat a lie, it becomes your truth. And if you repeat a lie often enough, you become a Republican.



I know we say we do, but do we really want honest people in the White House? I think this War on Terra calls for a more crafty approach. After all, liars are inherently sneaky people who stand a better chance of getting into the minds of unscrupulous terrorists than those fettered by either niggling fact checkers or conscience. In fact, if I were William Bennett I'd wager that when it comes to anticipating what an angry, politically extreme zealot might think of next, Mr. Cheney can draw more information from his most benign daydream than the CIA and FBI could ever hope to get out of a roomful of DeVry graduates trying to learn Arabic from watching Uday Hussein's confiscated girl-on-goat porn.



But a mental agility that renders reality more flexible wasn't the only inspired tactic brought to the table by Mr. Cheney last night. While Mr. Bush's "Ah, he forgot Poland" injection last week was a rather winning Don Knotts impression, it did seem to risk underscoring that, except for one person in England (who, fortunately for us, just happens to answer the phone at 10 Downing Street), America has been put on the "do not call" list by any country with a checking account, much less an army. Indeed, under Mr. Bush's "you're either with us or I never liked you anyway" approach to foreign policy, we have become so universally unpopular among that catty clique of diplomatic suitors, we are left looking somewhat like the lonely jerk who had to take his mom to the high school prom -- only to have her leave with our flask of Canadian Club for a access road motel with the yearbook editor. So, I was pleased to hear Mr. Cheney announce last night that the newest, if not most willing, members of America's exclusive coalition, if only for the convenience of already being there, are the Iraqis themselves. I guess instead of leveling with foreign countries to win allies, we are simply going to level foreign countries.



Dear Sister-in-Christ Ann Coulter, who has single-handedly proved that a steady diet of crap will lead to emaciation cheaper than meth and quicker than Atkins, thinks we need to bring Christian love to the people of the Middle East and/or kill them. Between us, apart from being uncertain if Ann is a wickedly devious liberal performance artist or -- less inventively – simply mentally ill, I'm having second thoughts about this whole "bringing democracy to Iraq" raison d'etre. As hostess gifts go, this one may turn out to be tantamount to bringing a bottle of vodka to Liza Minnelli's. You just never know what crazy thing will happen next.



While the general notion of giving all of a nation's citizens the power of voting seems appealing in theory, it might be a good idea for the U.S. Supreme Court to test the concept in Florida first. Besides, a newly wrought Iraq may turn into a Pyrrhic victory for Americans in the long run if the majority of people use their new voice to take to the streets and scream "death to the infidels," a stress-releasing activity more popular in Islamic countries than even yoga. Indeed, once the Iraqis are subjected to the torment of relentless, mendacious political ads from all parties that will inevitably interrupt their new Islamic-style reality TV (beheadings), the cries of "Death to the Great Satan" may grow slightly more strident and heartfelt.



With this in mind, I prefer Islamic terrorists and their possible protégés to be under the thumb of a deeply religious dictator who doesn't want to do anything that might jeopardize his ability to get a visa to visit the Bellagio in Las Vegas twice a year. Furthermore, if our goal is to make the Middle East more like America, why go to the trouble of boxing up the mountain and sending it to Mohamed? It would be less costly simply to allow something that also has few allies -- time -- to make the two regions of the World more similar. After all, if the United States has four more years of our handsome President and continues with our commendable trends of governmental intrusion, curtailed freedom, misinformation, vote suppression and religious fanaticism, I have a feeling we will be just like Iran in no time.