CHENEY

I wonder how Cheney is doing, how his family is doing. Not because he's a favorite person of mine -- on the contrary. He and President George W. Bush changed America in ways that still reverberate, that still need to be fixed.

But he was our vice president for eight years, part of today's world, and not a person to ignore.

On September 2nd, Cheney's daughter, Liz, told Marie Stroughter, a host on African American Conservative radio, that her dad was doing a lot of physical therapy, hoping to go fishing real soon.

Now that the doctors have implanted a pump in Cheney's heart to compensate for increasing congestive heart failure, the 69-year-old former vice president is, according to his daughter, "Hard at work on his memoirs, putting his legacy with the George W. Bush administration into perspective."

Liz said: “He’s doing really well. He is back at home here in Virginia and he’s hoping to get back to what we really consider home, which is Wyoming, as soon as he can. His left-ventricular assist device is essentially a pump that helps his heart function, helps his heart to pump more effectively. And that’s working wonderfully. He’s doing a lot of physical therapy. He was in the hospital for about five weeks. So when you’re in the hospital for that long, it does take time to recover and come back. So that’s what he’s focused on very much now.”

Liz, an attorney who's had held key roles in the State Department under President Bush, explained further: “We’re looking forward to having the book come out, and also to having him get back to Wyoming. I think what he’d really like to do is get back on a drift boat on the Snake River and do some fishing. Hopefully that’ll come soon.”

Will Dick Cheney, once again, be giving comments to the media and offering advice to the White House about terrorism, war, and taxes? Or will lawyer Liz find ways of representing and promoting her father's ideas, as well as her own?

I have to say I HOPE NOT. The media grabbed onto anything they said, the more negative the better, and by repetition and news alerts, made Dick and Liz Cheney's remarks important, when they were NOT.

Yes, there's a part of me that revengefully hopes that book will never get written.

I can't help thinking that Cheney chatter/opinion helped to make Palin chatter/opinion muddier, messier, and therefore have some value. And Liz is a clever, ambitious politician -- she'll come up with new anti-Obama attacks and wedge herself into Republican no-saying, negative politics.

All I can do is hum the "September song."
...Oh, it's a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn't got time for the waiting game ...

Oh dear ... I have to say it.

I find myself waiting for bad news about the Cheneys, both of them fading, fading away.