First Condimania, Now "Draft Cheney"?

The Los Angeles Times (via Newsmax) has "picked up" on the conservative boomlet calling for Dick Cheney to run to succeed President Bush in 2008.

Like Fred Barnes in the Weekly Standard and Lawrence Kudlow of National Review Online, Tod Lindberg of the Washington Times has taken up the theme of the growing phenomenon of "Cheneymania.”

Unabashed Cheney-ites argue that the Veep with gravitas is the perfect candidate to preserve Bush's legacy.

The Cheney fan club, says the Times, fears a repeat of the George H.W. Bush administration, in which, they feel, an ideologically fainthearted successor betrayed the purity of the mighty Reagan revolution.

Barnes points out that Cheney would be perceived as the ideal keeper of the Bush flame since he "helped Bush formulate” his agenda.

And if Big Time sticks to his long-expressed disinclination to oblige his supporters?

Says Barnes, "If the president let it be known he thinks Cheney would be the best person to succeed him - that would be enough to release Cheney from his promise not to run.”

As to the famous disinterest by Cheney in following his boss into the Oval Office, here is Lindberg’s very personal take:

"If there were no realistic possibility of the vice president going along, the person I was sitting next to at dinner the other day would surely have taken my mention of the Barnes article as occasion to knock the idea down. That didn't happen. On the contrary.”

Even the NY Times' Jonathan Chait, no fan of Cheney or his drafters, thinks it could happen:

"It may have seemed to the outside world that we all woke up one day, long before the first Republican primary, to discover that the entire GOP establishment had coalesced all at once around Bush. In fact, Bush's anointing resulted from just the sort of subterranean machinations that we're seeing today.”

I think it's another pipedream.

Just as I am dubious of a Condoleezza Rice candidacy in 2008, so I am of a Dick Cheney run. As with Condi, the veep has repeatedly indicated that he will not run. Maybe he'll change his mind at some point, but there's no reason to believe that will happen. Second, just as Condi is severely handicapped by her never having run for any elective office, so Cheney has one, and potentially two, big drawbacks working against him.

One is that, let's face it, the man has no charisma. The veep would be arguably the dullest, dryest personality to head a major party ticket since Michael Dukakis. And for all that some (like Rush Limbaugh) argue that presidential elections are decided on issues, the truth is that issues only matter to the extent that the "beauty contest" aspect is a wash. And given the extreme likelihood of Hillary Clinton being the Deathocrat nominee next time around, poor old Dick would be completely outclassed.

The other, far from certain but a possibility to be taken into consideration, is that by late '07/early '08, the public will be suffering from political fatigue borne of the DisLoyal Opposition's endless warfare against George W. Bush and the GOP majority. After eight years of constant upheaval and acrimony - to say nothing of any major setbacks in the GWOT like another al Qaeda strike inside the U.S. - the electorate may be ready to "pull a Spain" and pull the proverbial covers over its head, just to "take a breather" of peace and quiet for a few years. And in that equation, just about any Republican would be standing on the wrong side of the voters' mood, to say nothing of George Bush's designated successor.

What this "fantasy politicking" suggests to me is that the GOP base is looking at the likely candidate field for '08 and isn't impressed with any of them. If there were any obvious names, like Ronald Reagan was in 1980 and Dubya was in 2000, it seems to me there wouldn't be this indulgence in dreaming about candidacies that will never see the light of day.

And if Dick Cheney - essentially Phil Gramm without the twang - is now the "dream" pick....

Well, there's one more reason to get ready for President Hillary.