Even his harshest critics admit Vice President Dick Cheney is a plenty smart fella.
One proof is his mastery of the "Big Lie." Early on in life he learned the con man's trick -- if you're going to lie, make it a whopper. The more audacious, the longer it will live.
His most famous Big Lies, of course, were his claims -- debunked more times than Bill Clinton has sinned in his heart -- that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks and Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was ready to use them. On us.
It was all hooey, of course. But Cheney and other members of Bush's neo-con posse said the same things often enough and loudly enough to lead us into a five-year (and counting) war in Iraq.
Last month, Cheney was up to his old tricks, this time passing along a fairy tale that has made the rounds of every Republican rubber-chicken picnic in the nation.
Speaking to a meeting of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- which for Cheney was like visiting the old frat house during homecoming week -- he repeated a claim made by syndicated columnist George Will that "drilling is under way 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are."
In his speech the vice president -- the canny oil man who certainly knew Will was full of natural gas -- embellished a bit. He said the Chinese were cooperating with the Cubans and, "Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to higher prices means more supply." He went on. "But Congress says no to drilling in ANWR, no to drilling on the East Coast, no to drilling on the West Coast."
Even those dumb ole commies know more than Congress, eh boys?
It's hard to say where the story came from -- Will's correction only said "no Chinese company has been involved in Cuba's oil exploration that close to the United States." But on the very next day, June 12, Cheney's office admitted it was bunk.
"It is our understanding that, although Cuba has leased out exploration blocks 60 miles off the coast of southern Florida, which is closer than American firms are allowed to operate in that area, no Chinese firm is drilling there."
"Our understanding." Riiiight.
Predictably, lots of people have repeated the claim, which of course is the whole point of the Big Lie. Fox News talking head Eric Bolling repeated it three times on the air and didn't correct himself until almost a month after Cheney's office fessed up.
All politicians at some point embellish or even puree the truth. But it takes real talent to carry off the "Big Lie."
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