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This book cover image released by Threshold Editions shows "In My Time: A Personal and Political...
Why is it not a surprise to learn that Dick Cheney's ancestor, Samuel Fletcher Cheney, was a Civil War soldier who marched with Sherman to the sea?
Scorched earth runs in the family.
Having lost the power to heedlessly bomb the world, Cheney has turned his attention to heedlessly bombing old colleagues.
Vice's new memoir, "In My Time," veers unpleasantly between spin, insisting he was always right, and score-settling, insisting that anyone who opposed him was wrong.
His knife-in-her-teeth daughter, Elizabeth Cheney, helped write the book. The second most famous Liz & Dick combo do such an excellent job of cherry-picking the facts, it makes the cherry-picking on the Iraq War intelligence seem picayune.
Cheney may no longer have a pulse, but his blood quickens at the thought of other countries he could have attacked. He salivates in his book about how Syria and Iran could have been punished.
Cheney says that in 2007, he told President George W. Bush, who had already been pulled into diplomacy by Condi Rice: "I believed that an important first step would be to destroy the reactor in the Syrian desert."
At a session with most of the National Security Council, he made his case for a strike on the reactor. It would enhance America's tarnished credibility in the Arab world, he argued, (not bothering to mention who tarnished it), and demonstrate the country's "seriousness."
"After I finished," he writes,
"the president asked, 'Does anyone here agree with the vice president?' Not a single hand went up around the room."
By that time, W. had belatedly realized that Cheney was a crank whose bad advice and disdainful rants against "the diplomatic path" and "multilateral action" had pretty much ruined his presidency.
There were few times before the bitter end that W. was willing to stand up to Vice. But the president did make a bold stand on not letting his little dog be gobbled up by Cheney's big dog.
When Vice's 100-pound yellow Lab, Dave, went after W.'s beloved Scottish terrier, Barney, at Camp David's Laurel Lodge, that was a bridge too far.
When Cheney and Dave got back to their cabin, there was a knock at the door. "It was the camp commander," Cheney writes. "'Mr. Vice President,' he said, 'your dog has been banned from Laurel.' "
But on all the nefarious things that damaged America, Cheney got his way for far too long.
Vice gleefully predicted that his memoir would have "heads exploding all over Washington." But his book is a bore. He doesn't even mention how in high school he used to hold the water buckets to douse the fiery batons of his girlfriend Lynne, champion twirler.
At least Rummy's memoir showed some temperament. And George Tenet's was the primal scream of a bootlicker caught out.
Cheney takes himself so seriously, flogging his cherished self-image as a rugged outdoorsman from Wyoming (even though he shot his Texas hunting partner in the face) and a vice president who was the only thing standing between America and its enemies.
He acts like he is America. But America didn't like Dick Cheney.
It's easier for someone who believes that he is America incarnate to permit himself to do things that hurt America -- like torture, domestic spying, pushing America into endless wars, and flouting the Geneva Conventions.
Mostly, Cheney grumbles about having his power checked. It's bad enough when the president does it, much less Congress and the courts.
A person who is always for the use of military force is as doctrinaire and irrelevant as a person who is always opposed to the use of military force.
Cheney shows contempt for Tenet, Colin Powell and Rice, whom he disparages in a sexist way for crying, and condescension for W. when he won't be guided to the path of most destruction.
He's churlish about President Barack Obama, who took the hunt for Osama bin Laden off the back burner and actually did what W. promised to do with his little bullhorn -- catch the real villain of 9/11.
"Tracking him down was certainly one of our top priorities," Cheney writes. "I was gratified that after years of diligent and dedicated work, our nation's intelligence community and our special operations forces were able on May 1, 2011, to find and kill bin Laden."
Tacky.
Finishing the book with an account of the 2010 operation to put in a battery-operated pump that helps his heart push blood through his body, he recounts the prolonged, vivid dream about a beautiful place in Italy he had during the weeks he was unconscious.
"It was in the countryside, a little north of Rome, and it really seemed I was there," he writes. "I can still describe the villa where I passed the time, the little stone paths I walked to get coffee or a batch of newspapers."
Caesar and his cappuccino.
Maureen Dowd is a syndicated who writes for the New York Times.