Adventures with Grandpa Dick . . .

. . . he’s back!  But, did he ever really go away?

Dick Cheney, the gift who keeps on giving courtesy of a battery-powered heart pump, broke the early morning light of  yesterday in an interview discussing the recent shootings in Arizona,  his views on Obama’s Presidency (one-term), security issues and points of potential resignation during his term as Vice President. All of which we will be able to read in greater detail in his new book due to be published in September.  He is writing the book with help from his fiercely protective daughter, Elizabeth Cheney.

The interview was riveting. For a man with his history of heart disease, five heart attacks over the past 30 years, his smooth, unlined face has been spared the lines and wrinkles which map the anxieties of the more common man. This is a man who so obviously sleeps well at night. Possibly even a man with no, or few, regrets.

A lucky man. Born in 1941 and coming of age in the 1960’s, he was a bit of a rascal having been arrested not once, but twice, for drink-driving.  A Wild One who learned the errors of his ways he married childhood sweetheart Lynne in 1964. This turned out to be a very smart move. He and Lynne are still together and I am not going to take that away from them but the marriage, as well as taking six years to finish a four year college course, kept him out of the draft for the Vietnam War. His 5th and final exemption sailed through on the grounds of pending parenthood when Lynne was 10 weeks pregnant.

Why, I wonder, did so many young men flee to Canada or even swallow the draft to go to Vietnam, when they could have flunked their way through college? Married someone, anyone?  In commenting on his 5 draft deferments, he stated simply that he had “other priorities in the 60’s than military service.”  This statement was made in 1989.  As Secretary of Defense.

The battery running Dick Cheney is transitional preparation for the next stage.  A heart transplant. So now we know what so many have long suspected.  Dick Cheney needs a new heart.