My political career was a wild ride. We toppled statues, we rearranged the middle of the world like a game of Tetris, and I managed to shoot a man in the face and get him to apologise to me. If that isn't the American Dream, I don’t know what is.
People often asked what it was like working with George W. Bush. I liked the man. Truly. He had the enthusiasm of a Golden Retriever and the attention span of a moth in a lantern shop. My job was simple, I was the guy who told him which way the wind was blowing, and then go out and buy a massive industrial fan to make sure the wind blew exactly where I wanted it to.
George liked things to be simple. I remember sitting in the Oval Office while he’d go on about bringing democracy to Iraq and I’d just nod, sip my lukewarm coffee, and think, George, you can’t even bring a consistent syntax to a prepared speech, but sure, let’s go with the democracy thing.
Now, let’s get to the elephant in the room, or rather, the missing WMDs in the desert. People say we lied to go to war. That’s such a grubby, pedestrian word. Journalists are so unimaginative. I prefer to think of it as proactive reality-shaping.
When we were looking at the intelligence, it was a bit like an abstract painting. Some people saw a smudge while I saw a nuclear centrifuge.
Sure, the aluminum tubes weren't for uranium. Sure, the yellowcake from Niger was basically a fan-fiction novel written on a cocktail napkin and Saddam was not mates with-Al-Qaeda but does that really matter in the grand scheme of things? We had a feeling and more importantly, we had a lot of Halliburton stock that wasn't going to increase in value if we just sat around the Rose Garden eating pretzels.
I remember watching the Shock and Awe campaign from my office. It was beautiful. It looked like the world’s most expensive Fourth of July display but did the Iraqi's greet us with sweets and flowers? Well, they threw things. Shoes mostly but the lack of gratitude from the Iraqi people was disappointing. We gave them the gift of total chaos and the opportunity to rebuild their entire society from scratch using nothing but grit and American-funded contractors who didn’t speak the language. If they couldn't make that work, that’s on them. I was a big picture guy.
When you’re the Vice President, you realize that laws are more like enthusiastic suggestions. Waterboarding? Please. If you can’t handle a little moisture in your lungs while we ask where the hidden trigger for the imaginary bomb is, maybe you shouldn’t be a terrorist. Or a suspected terrorist.
Or a perfectly innocent non white person.
We have to talk about the 2006 quail hunt. Poor Harry Whittington. There I was, just trying to enjoy a quiet afternoon of killing small birds, and Harry decides to jump right into my line of fire.
The media went nuts and made it sound like I did it on purpose. If I’d done it on purpose, Harry wouldn't have been able to give a televised apology to me afterwards for getting in the way of my gun.
I didn't even send him a "Get Well" card. I sent him a bill for the ammunition he wasted by stopping it with his cheek but that’s the kind of manners we’re losing in this country nowadays, today if you grazed a guy with a few pellets of 28-gauge lead and he sues you for emotional distress and starts a
GoFundMe.
I always knew people thought of me as some sort of cinematic antagonist part Darth Vader, part Ebenezer Scrooge, but with a better security clearance but I may not go down in history as the most likable guy, but I was never running for Prom Queen. They talk about the trillions of dollars spent and the million dead Iraqis and the loss of thousands of American soldiers but I find that kind of math boring.
The world is a messy place. Someone has to be the one to stand in the shadows and make the hard, incredibly profitable decisions that the simple folk can’t handle. While George was out there trying to find the right words to describe a crusade, I was in the back room making sure the oil kept flowing
and the defense contracts were signed in triplicate.
As for the Iraqi people? I hope they’ve enjoyed the last twenty years of… whatever that is over there. We did our part. We removed a dictator, we lost the receipts, and we left behind a lovely Mission Accomplished banner that George really, really liked.
I remember when that Vice movie came out with Christian Bale. My grandkids told me he gained forty pounds to play me. Forty pounds? For Pete’s sake, I’ve had heart attacks that burnt more calories than that. Bale did the sneer alright, I’ll give him that, but he lacked the quiet, simmering joy I get from reading a well-drafted oil lease agreement.
My heart had been giving me problems for years which surprised many as until then even I didn't think I had one, but until the end I spent my last days fly-fishing in Wyoming where the air was crisp, the kind of cold that reminds a man he’s alive which, given my medical history, was something I try to
acknowledge at least once an hour. The fish don't ask about weapons of mass destruction. They don't bring up the insurgency. They just bite the hook, much like the American public did in 2003. It’s peaceful.
I lived in the world as I wanted it to be. And if I had to lie, cheat, and shoot a lawyer to get there? Well, that’s just a Tuesday in my book.
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