Cheney Slams Obama, Big Government and Healthcare Law

Dick Cheney is back. The former vice president, giving his first interview since major heart surgery last year, predicts that President Obama will be a one-termer, but one who has learned the hard way that Bush administration policies worked in the war on terrorism.

In an interview to air Tuesday on NBC's “Today” show, Cheney said that the president’s big government approach to domestic policy will bring him defeat in 2012. He specifically cited Obama's "overall approach to expanding the size of government, expanding the deficit, and giving more and more authority and power to the government over the private sector."

Slamming Obamacare, Cheney said Obama has "enacted a program that a great many people are very worried about. And that there's a lot of support out there for the effort to repeal that health care package."

But the fiery Cheney, a fierce critic of the president over the last two years, did give the Obama administration a back-handed complement, saying they had finally moved away from an approach that treated the war on terrorism as a law enforcement problem, not a war.

“I think he's learned that he's not going to be able to close Guantanamo,” Cheney said in excerpts released by the network. “That if you didn't have it you'd have to create one like that. You've got to have some place to put terrorists who are combatants who are bound and determined to try to kill Americans.

“I think in terms of a lot of the terrorism policies -- the early talk, for example, about prosecuting people in the CIA who've been carrying out our policies -- all of that's fallen by the wayside,” Cheney continued. “I think he's learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate. So I think he's learned from experience. And part of that experience was the Democrats having a terrible showing last election.”

In other comments released by NBC, Cheney said:

• That the Arizona tragedy cannot be blamed on political discourse: "I think we need to be a little careful about assuming that somehow the rest of society or the political class bears the responsibility for what happened here when it was the act of a deranged, crazed individual that committed a crime."
• That his offer to quit the ticket in 2004 was solely based on strategy: "Well, I actually went in about three different times because I didn't think he took me seriously the first time. That it was all in that period right before the '04 campaign. And the reason I did it was I thought he needed to have the ability to do whatever was necessary-- to make sure he won."
• That he still hasn’t decided whether to have a heart transplant: "What's happened over time is the technology's gotten better and better and we've gotten more and more experience with people living with this technology. So I'll have to make a decision at some point whether or not I want to go for a transplant. But we haven't addressed that yet."