The Wall Street bailout: Where's Dick Cheney?

It's been established that Vice President Dick Cheney doesn't do touchy-feely.

As Countdown to Crawford reported last week, he was adamant in turning down President Bush's request three years ago that he hurry down to the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, according to Barton Gellman in the new book "Angler."

And of course he doesn't do that old standby of vice presidential work: Funerals.

No, Cheney's well-known specialty has been intelligence. National security. Foreign policy. He travels the world quietly, with but a few reporters relegated to the back of Air Force Two. He meets with foreign leaders and then, when forced, holds a very brief news conference at which he effortlessly sticks well within the parameters of his talking points.

He does crises -- but he's particular about his crises.

Which brings up the crisis du jour, or, really now, du mois and more, and this question: When it comes to the economy, Wall Street bailouts and financial meltdown, where's Dick Cheney?

Please, if anyone sees his fingerprints, let us know.

As for his thinking about the economy, the top of a Fortune magazine story last November is telling:

To be sure, the magazine's Washington editor, Nina Easton, noted, Cheney is a well-known worrier and so might be "thinking dark thoughts about the economy."

But, she observed, his real concern was not the emerging catastrophe growing out of the subprime mortgage meltdown, but "Washington's impulse to fix it."

Looking into the vice president's work, she found back then that he was playing "a surprisingly major role in shaping the administration's economic policy."

And like so much in Cheney World, that role was well hidden -- and guided by his overall philosophy:

Leave well enough alone.

"The fact is," he told Easton last year, "the markets work, and they are working."

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press

Comments

[SaMo]

He's not allowed to wear his Darth Vader mask in Congressional Committee meetings, so he doesn't go there.

[George]

Thank god it's almost over