335: Vice with William Cooper

Dan LeFebvre  04:01

At the very beginning of the movie, there’s some texts that are quote here, it says, “The following is a true story. Or as true as it can be given that Dick Cheney is known as one of the most secretive leaders in history, but we did our f@*&! best.”

So with an opening like that, in the movie, I have to ask, if you were to give advice and overall letter grade for how well it did and telling the true story, what would it get?

William Cooper  04:25

I liked the movie. I think there’s a lot of nuggets of truth. But the overall grade would probably be a C, maybe C-.

Dan LeFebvre  04:35

For something like this, where it’s talking about specifically talking about how its secretive. We already know that governments are not the most forthcoming with things then that’s actually I was expecting a lot worse, to be honest.

William Cooper  04:48

Yeah, there were some errors that were quite extreme. But there were also a number of instances where I think they conveyed some important truths. and did so accurately. And so when you mix it all together, I don’t think it would be fair to say it’s an AF, because it wasn’t completely fictional by any means. So there’s a nice mix and somewhere right in the middle of the, of the continuum,

Dan LeFebvre  05:15

what the movie does start in 1963. And at that time, according to the movie, Dick Cheney, kind of seems to be a drunk who’s getting low C’s, D’s and F’s at Yale, and the movie points out, it’s a college that he’s really only able to get into because of his girlfriend, Lynn. So Lynn kind of gives Dick an ultimatum at the beginning of the movie, either straighten up and become someone or I’m leaving you. And then in the opening title sequence, we see footage of Daikon Lin getting married, and right afterwards, then it’s 1968. So we can see Dick Cheney in the congressional internship program in DC. So the overall impression that I get was that Lane was a very strong driver behind Dick Cheney, turning his life around and getting into politics. How well do you think the movie did setting up some of this stuff before the timeline of the movie itself for dictating?

William Cooper  06:07

I thought it was done well, from a theatrical perspective. I don’t know the intricacies of Dec and land and how that that phase of their life went. And I’m not sure if much of that’s in the public domain. I do know that lynne cheney was very much a partner to Dick throughout his career. She’s very intelligent in her own right and successful in her own right, and was certainly a driver for him and somebody focused on on his career. I think she valued his success quite a bit. So in that sense, I think he got it right. In terms of the the the true intricacy of how the couple was there in the 60s and exactly what Lynn said to Dec. I don’t want to overstate my knowledge. And I don’t know, I don’t know exactly how that went.

Dan LeFebvre  06:55

Right. And that makes sense. It kind of it sounds like to make sure I’m understanding it sounds like there were some nuggets of truth in there. But then the filmmakers probably had to fill in some of those intricate details and conversations, which makes sense that we’re not going to know all those intricacies of what was going on.

William Cooper  07:12

Absolutely. I think that filmmakers had nuggets of truth, they filled in blanks, and then they just manufactured their own nuggets as well. And that was the medley for the movie of those three elements.

Dan LeFebvre  07:27

In the movie, the first time we see Dick Cheney entering politics is working under Donald Rumsfeld in the administration of President Richard Nixon. Of course, that doesn’t really last too long because Nixon resigns after the whole Watergate scandal. But Cheney has gotten a taste of politics with this and it seems like he wants more so after that, we see Channing becoming the White House Chief of Staff for President Gerald Ford. While in that position, he opposes things like the undetectable Firearms Act to ban plastic guns that can evade metal detectors as well as voting nay on the Endangered Species Act, which it passed despite Cheney’s vote, according to the movie, but I was doing a little bit of research on it because it sounded like an important thing. And it says there’s only a few 100 I think nesting pairs of bald eagles were in existence in the 60s. And because of the bills passing, that was a big reason why they and other animals were able to be brought back from the brink of extinction. So the impression the reason I set all that up, the impression I got while I was watching the movie was, it seems like Cheney is voting on what could be considered some sensitive topics. But he must have had a strong belief in them. It seems like he has this strong belief. And then there’s this twist in the movie where there’s a scene where Cheney is asked Rumsfeld when he first starts he point blank as Rumsfeld what do we believe in? Then Rumsfeld just laughs at the question like it’s the silliest thing to ask. And so then I changed my perspective is like, Well, maybe it’s Dick Cheney doesn’t have any morals of his own. He’s pretty much just a yes man for whatever his boss wants. What do you think of the movies portrayal of Cheney, in his time with the Nixon and then Ford administrations?

William Cooper  09:06

I think the part of the movie that suggests Cheney has very strong convictions and personal views is accurate. I think the the scene where Rumsfeld suggests that they don’t really care about policy outcomes, and that way, was very false. Both Cheney and Rumsfeld, for better and for worse, depending if you agree with them on any given issue, have extremely strong convictions and beliefs. And that’s been a big driver of their entire careers, including Cheney’s I think he very strongly believes in all sorts of really big things. Now, he’s a politician, so he’s willing to sacrifice things to get other things done. He’s also never been President of the United States. So he has to be a lawyer, loyal soldier and in his administration’s at times, so I’m not saying that everything he’s ever said or done, has been consistent with his views. But I do think a really strong conservative worldview, both domestically and internationally, has driven his career and that he does believe in, in a lot of what he’s done and what he said. I think the same is true for Rumsfeld. Okay.

Dan LeFebvre  10:17

Okay. That is a different impression than what I get in the movie where it seems like they’re doing a lot of things just to I mean, they’re politicians, but it seems like they’re really letting that drive things more than their, their actual beliefs. And I guess that yeah, was that that line in a movie that really solidified that for me, it’s like, what do we believe in? Like, just tell me what to believe in? And I believe in that like, Okay, I

William Cooper  10:43

think they both that Cheney is studied history and you know, he’s a PhD candidate before he came in, and, and Lynn as well, I think they are very thorough, thoughtful beliefs. DIX, daughter, Liz Cheney. I think he’s showing that today in her politics, including, you know, the stance she’s taking against President Trump. Now, again, as politicians, you’re you always have to sacrifice you always have to say things in certain ways and to get things done, you know, in a legislative contest, you have to horse trade. So I don’t mean they never sacrificed in any given issue. But underlying it, I think there were very strong views was

Dan LeFebvre  11:25

with the movie be correct, then to suggest that a lot of Chinese early days in politics were under Rumsfeld as basically his mentor is kind of what it seems to be in the movie. Absolutely.

William Cooper  11:37

Rumsfeld hired him. The movie got that right. Congressional Relations for Rumsfeld in the Nixon administration, and then the to hit it off, you started what was going to be a multi decade, friendship and collaboration and politics. Cheney followed Rumsfeld to Ford, who Cheney knew she’d be Rumsfeld and Ford were friends when Rumsfeld and Ford were both in Congress. And then when Ford came into the presidency, he asked Rumsfeld to come back from NATO in Brussels and be his chief of staff. JT was Rumsfeld’s deputy. And then when Rumsfeld moved to the Department of Defense under Ford, Cheney stepped in as chief of staff. And you’re exactly right, those two very strong, long lasting relationship. And that’s what led Rumsfeld to come back as Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush.

Dan LeFebvre  12:26

You met mentioning bush there. we fast forward a few years in the movies timeline to when George HW Bush was the vice president under Ronald Reagan. There’s some scenes in the movie that I wanted to ask about, because we start to see Cheney trying to secure a new level of power for the presidency. And there’s a few times where that comes up. The The first is a meeting between Cheney and a lawyer named Antonin Scalia, where Cheney tries to find out if an American president can have as movie puts it, absolute executive authority. And there’s another time after a chat between Cheney and then Vice President George HW Bush, when Cheney tells his wife Lynn that he respects a lot of what Reagan has done, but no one has shown the world the true power of the American presidency. And that’s a quote from the movie. And the movie doesn’t call it this. It doesn’t use this terminology. But as I was watching that, I couldn’t help but think of a single word to describe what is like when a country has a leader that has absolute power. That’s a dictatorship. Do you think the movie was correct to imply that Dick Cheney was trying to find a way to give an American president unlimited power?

William Cooper  13:41

No, I think that was very inaccurate. I think the the range of debate about presidential power is very cabined. In in this country, even among conservatives and liberals and scholars, nobody, including Dick Cheney thinks the President, for example, should dominate the judicial branch and start ruling on disputes. Nobody thinks the president and conservatives particularly focus on this know, nobody thinks the president can legislate without having both houses of Congress passed legislation. Dictators do everything. They dictate the workings of government across the board. What Cheney was advocating was a very strong president, a very strong executive branch and the Constitution says that the executive power I’m paraphrasing, but it’s close to the the executive power is vested in a President of the United States. So it doesn’t say it’s vested in a President and his administration or president and her administrative bodies. It’s very clear that the President has all that authority in the Constitution. Now what Cheney and others William Barr I think is another Example of this that’s more recent. They’ve advocated for really expanding presidential powers. But nowhere in any argument whether it’s Cheney or bar, or Rumsfeld, or George W. Bush, or John, you, or any of these scholars and government officials, is an argument that the President should cover all of government the way a dictator would, that’s just not not on the table at all. Okay,

Dan LeFebvre  15:24

okay. Well, that’s that’s a good thing. I agree. Maybe for listeners who are not in the United States not familiar with the way politics works here, can you give a little more context around how the presidential power is now versus other people in power, like, for example, with Cheney in the movie, like, he’s not the president at this point, but he’s looking to gain power for the presidency. And then, as a little follow up to that, there’s also some scenes where we see, you know, as Cheney starting to go for vice presidency to get too far ahead of that movies timeline. But we start to see that he’s looking for some similar sorts of power for the vice presidency, which then implies that that position also doesn’t have as much power as maybe some others, or can you kind of clarify all of that for our listeners?

William Cooper  16:13

Yeah. One thing to keep in mind about Cheney is he had a very formative experience, he had very formative experiences that led to his views of executive power by the time he was vice president. So he saw Nixon, get impeachment proceedings against him and resign, he saw Ford have a really hard time taking the mantle there. And then in Congress, he was very heavily involved in the Iran Contra affair where Ronald Reagan was investigated by Congress. So so he had all the all of these experiences, in his view, right or wrong was that there was an imbalance and the President didn’t have enough power. And so he was trying to shift it back where it was supposed to be not, according to Cheney not expanded beyond where it should be. He was just trying to basically write the constitutional ship, if that makes sense. Now, the Vice President, how the vice president fits into this vice president does not have a lot of formal power. The Vice President is a constitutional officer certainly has a lot of authority. Compared to many other government actors, for example, the Vice President cast the deciding vote in the Senate, if there’s a tie. As we saw, in 2001, January 6, the vice president can be involved to varying degrees in electoral certification, things like that there’s arguments in that domain about what the right role is for the vice president. But in general, the Vice President’s authority is derivative from the President. So what what is the President delegate to the Vice President, and it can be enormous, as we saw with Cheney, it can be quite large, I think Joe Biden was a good example when he was Obama’s president. And it could also be very small and ministerial. And, and we’ve seen a number of vice presidents in that category as well. But in terms of the formal power from the Constitution, there’s nowhere near as much in the vice president as there isn’t the President, the authority really does come from the President. Okay.

Dan LeFebvre  18:24

Okay. So to feed that back is in relation to the movie, then Cheney was trying to add not well, add is the wrong word term, because as you were suggesting, you’re saying, you know, it’s not there, and it shouldn’t be there. But to get it back to where it was not only for the presidency, but also for the vice presidency as well.

William Cooper  18:43

I think what change? Yeah, I think that’s right. And the way I might phrase it would be Cheney was advocating for very strong executive power, there’s no question about that. And how he fit into that equation was the more power Cheney was arguing for that the presidents had have when George W. Bush was president. Therefore, in turn, the more power George W. Bush could delegate to him, If Bush chose to do so. Now, there’s a lot of disagreement among people and a lot of a lot of different versions of the relationship between Bush and Cheney. And I’ll caveat everything I say by Dick Cheney is a huge lightning rod in American politics to this day, very strong opinions about him. And just about everything I say your you could find very easily find people who would disagree and most of them would probably disagree you’ll find him much more extreme, you know, very, very, very good or very, very bad. I’m, I’m more in the middle with Cheney than than any extreme so I’ll just caveat the whole the whole show with that, that he’s very controversial. But one thing I was gonna say is the relationship between Bush and Cheney, I think very strongly was nowhere near as simple as a lot of people think a lot of people think in the movie, I think portrayed this way that Bush was, in some ways, almost following Cheney, even though Bush was president and Cheney had this incredible influence over him. There’s lots of examples that are established facts in the historical record that undercut that narrative to two of them. I’ll give you now one is Cheney pushed very hard for Bush to pardon Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, who was convicted of a crime flowing from political events in Washington, DC. And Bush refused to do it. He didn’t he didn’t do it. It was a very strong rebuff of Cheney. And it’s also understood that Cheney was advocating very hard in the second term for the United States to do much more with Iran. terms of military action and activity, and Bush pushed back, you know, and rejected changes advice. So the idea that Bush would just do whatever Cheney said, is far too simple. Yeah,

Dan LeFebvre  21:17

and that’s, uh, I’m glad you brought that up. Because I did definitely get that sense. Where Bush was the newcomer to politics, I think, you know, we saw a scene where with it was HW Bush and with chaining, and then the younger Bush makes makes a scene at that at that party. And that was, you know, before he was running for president or anything like that. But then when that time came in the movie, I definitely got the sense. Okay, Cheney is the guy who’s been around the block, and he’s kind of gonna show this young Bush how to how to do politics, that kind of thing. Yeah,

William Cooper  21:50

I think there is some truth to that. I think Bush looked up to Cheney. I think Cheney was very influential, but the caricature in the movie, and in a lot of people’s minds, just this extreme version of of their dynamic, I don’t think is true. I will also add, I think Cheney was much more intelligent and knowledgeable about politics and government, then Bush, Bush wasn’t a complete novice, he was the governor of Texas. He, his father was president. But Cheney’s experience, you know, very deep in in Nixon and Ford administration’s a decade in Congress. And so I think, and then, you know, Secretary of Defense after that, so, so he was he was the senior figure in a lot of ways, but just not the caricature of the extreme version of that. The it’s quite an accurate, according

Dan LeFebvre  22:47

to the movie, one of the reasons why Cheney leaves politics and because he’s got all this experience going up, but then the impression is that okay, Cheney is going to be in line to be president. But then, in the movie, we see one of his daughters, Mary comes out as gay. And at that time, Channing being the White House Chief of Staff seems like it’s time for him to run, but be running as a Republican and having a lesbian daughter seems like something is not going to work for a Republican presidential candidate. So instead of putting his daughter through, what would happen if he ran for president, Cheney decides to leave politics, and he becomes the CEO of an oil services company called Halliburton. And then, in this part in the movie, this credits just start rolling and talk about how Cheney never entered politics again, you know, regularly ran the Iron Man, and things like that, obviously, obviously, a joke. But what’s the movie right, in showing the reason why Cheney left politics?

William Cooper  23:47

That’s a great question. I don’t I don’t know. And I’m not sure if the public domain is clear on that. It may be I know, what I do know is that Cheney certainly supported his daughter, and didn’t take positions contrary to, you know, her her views. And, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he made some decisions about what he was going to do in order to keep that respect for his daughter. And then Liz, of course, chose the different route. And they there was a some fallout there where Liz initially came out against lesbian rights, but then changed her mind. And, and, and my understanding is that that there was some dissension among the family as a result of that. So I don’t know all the nuances there. But it certainly would not surprise me. If, if that was a big part of the equation.

Dan LeFebvre  24:41

With with the move to Halliburton, then because the movie doesn’t show any of this. Can you fill in a little bit more context around detainees time as CEO of Halliburton? Yeah.

William Cooper  24:53

So he, he actually went to Halliburton after being the Secretary of Defense. So he was chief have staff quite a bit in the 70s, in when Carter beat four, that’s when he stopped being Chief of Staff and then he ran for Congress. It wasn’t until he was after Secretary of Defense under HW bush that he went to Halliburton. I think he went in 95. So it was a couple years after Clinton, beat Bush came into office. And it was, you know, really obvious sort of open example of the military industrial complex. I mean, he was the Secretary of Defense. A lot of people in those roles try to go into some unrelated area, so that they’re not accused of, of capitalizing on their government service. Donald Rumsfeld, for example, explained that he went into pharmaceuticals, because he didn’t want to go from Secretary of Defense to being some CEO of a company that would benefit from you know, the United States, foreign policies. Cheney swatted that aside, waltzed right in and, and right as CEO, and, you know, made a ton of money. And Halliburton that whole time was a big part of their business was, you know, military and oil and things of that nature. So he didn’t show any shame with taking that job and earning a lot of money.

Dan LeFebvre  26:19

In the movie, since we don’t really see any of that the assumption is that he’s basically just leaving politics. But it sounds like maybe he still had some sway in politics, even as CEO of Halliburton, at least, to the point to where he benefit from it monetarily?

William Cooper  26:38

I don’t know if he is I don’t I am not aware of anything in the public record that would suggest that he would influence policy in some sort of sinister way like he would go into, you know, the Bill Clinton’s administration and and try to argue to people that we should invade this country and hire Halliburton. I don’t think it was like that direct. But there were enormous things in motion already, some of which he set in motion. That that he and Halliburton profited from while he was there. No question about it. So. So I don’t think it was illegal. I’m not aware of any illegal activity or lobbying that was crossed any explicit Legal Lines. But there’s no question that, that he benefited from the very thing, a lot of the very same things that His fingerprints were all over from being Secretary of Defense. And that’s true. If you’re Secretary of Defense, for several years, the ripple effects in the pond from your service are going to last for four years. And if you jump right into a government contractor in that space, you’re going to be benefiting from decisions you made.

Dan LeFebvre  27:53

Yeah. And that’s something that I’ve always, I mean, not not just with the Secretary of Defense, but with any any political position of that we’re, when they leave, it’s like, not like, their decisions that they made. Stop right then and there. And so you know, they leave and then they, if they go to a company, like like Halliburton is CEO, and they’re benefiting from that. Okay, I could see how that would be a gray area, for sure. Yeah,

William Cooper  28:20

I personally, I don’t it’s it’s not illegal, you’re allowed to do it. My personal views is that it’s a mistake. And somebody who’s secretary of defense can get a lot of jobs. And they can make a lot of money in a lot of different ways. And I think it sends a better signal to society, and it’s more healthy for society to do something unrelated. That’s just my personal opinion.

Dan LeFebvre  28:42

What in the movie, Dick Cheney’s departure from politics doesn’t last long. We see that the former president George HW Bush, his son, George Bush, as we mentioned before, he calls up Cheney and asks him to join his ticket as the Vice President, but Cheney being the Vice President on the presidential ticket for for Bush, and according to the movie, Cheney agrees, but he also pushes to handle some of the more mundane jobs like military energy, foreign energy. Oh, and Cheney also tells bush that, you know, he’s not going he’s not going to basically deal with any of the anti gay messaging that is in Bush’s campaign. And Bush agrees to this, as long as Cheney is okay with the messaging being in the campaign to begin with. He seems to be okay with it. And so that’s how the movie shows Dick Cheney becoming the VP candidate with George W. Bush. And that messaging thing was kind of a throwback to what we were talking about earlier, where he talks about, you know, tell me what to believe. And I almost had this idea of well, at first he has this moral stance, and now he’s like, Well, okay, I’m, I’m okay with just pushing that to the side for this in this case, you know, running for vice president. Then the movie makes a point to mention there’s no medical records, no tax or corporate filings revealed nothing. Is that really what happened for Cheney joining the FBI? Presidential candidacy. My

William Cooper  30:02

understanding is that he did not turn over documents that were requested. He didn’t break the law and doing so but but he did depart from tradition. And as far as his daughter goes in the anti gay messaging, they must have just drawn that line and said, I’m not going to do it myself, but I’m okay. We’re okay. Participating in an administration. I think the the impulse behind that line drawing might be back to what we talked about the very beginning. I think the Chinese as a family are very, very strong beliefs. And they really care about making an impact. I mean, there’s Dick served and all of these roles, and Liz followed in his footsteps. And so I think, I think it may have been the case that there was a understanding that Cheney himself would not say anything that was anti gay, but if he could go in and be an influential vice president, they could get a lot of conservative objectives achieved that they wanted to, and that was a trade off that we’re willing to take.

Dan LeFebvre  31:10

Okay, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, if that’s especially talking about, as you were saying earlier, you know, being a politician, I mean, sometimes you have your own personal beliefs, but you’re gonna go with something else. Yeah. Something else.

William Cooper  31:23

If you’re already is not, you don’t it’s just not virtue you get to keep if you go and Paul and politic, and one of the one of the things I liked a lot about the movie is I think it did, dramatize and accentuate some of that, but it’s important to, to show that, you know, if you’re being hypocritical as a politician, you know, you should be criticized, even if there’s no way around it. And I think the movie served a good purpose. In some of that highlighting some of those hypocrisy ease.

Dan LeFebvre  31:54

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think we also see that with Bush as well, I know, he’s most mostly focused on on Cheney, but I couldn’t help but also get the sense that Bush was maybe inspired by Cheney, because we saw Cheney earlier with Rumsfeld. You know, as we talked about, you know, tell me what to believe in. And now, getting the movie was kind of pushing that bush is following Chinese leaving the bushes running for president and Chinese Vice President, but then I get the idea that bush also is like, Well, I’m gonna have this, you know, messaging against gay marriage in my campaign. But okay, it’s okay. If you kind of don’t agree with that. I’m just doing this to get the votes is the impression that I got was I was watching the movie. Is that a very fair impression to get? Or do you think that’s just the movie being the movie?

William Cooper  32:40

I think that’s a fair impression. That was mine to my I think, especially if you’re running for president, you have to have your constituencies. And Bush, probably the math was probably pretty clear that if Bush did not take that position, it would harm him at the polls. And so if you’re gonna run, you might as well try to win. Right. I mean, that’s sort of the whole point is to win the election and to get your constituents. I, again, personally, strongly disagree with that position of Bush’s but I do my sense is the same as yours, not something that he cared about deeply. But something he was really, it was really easy for him to get behind. Because Karl Rove and others were explaining to him how important it was.

Dan LeFebvre  33:25

Yeah, yeah. We’ll do what it takes to to get the vote. That’s politics. That’s

William Cooper  33:30

the game. Don’t play baseball. You don’t want to hit the ball. You know, don’t play politics. If you don’t want to, you know, cobbled together votes, however you need to. Yeah,

Dan LeFebvre  33:41

exactly. Speaking of votes, if we go back to the movie, it shows the election nights on November 7 2000. Everybody is waiting to find out the results between the two presidential candidates, Republican George W. Bush and then the Democrat Al Gore. And we see a few things happening that night in the movie I want to ask about the first is the vote tally itself. There’s controversy as Al Gore concedes the race. And then he rescinds his concession when the count in Florida seems to be very close. We also see Dick Cheney getting a $26 million exit package from Halliburton. The movie doesn’t say specifically what it is. But the impression again, that I get is this is a move that seems to be a company trying to cozy up with somebody who might be the future vice president. And then we also see Cheney having a heart attack that night. Can you fill in some historical details on how much of what we see happening movie on election night is actually accurate?

William Cooper  34:34

I looked into the heart attack. From what I saw from repeated sources, it was a few weeks later, so it wasn’t on election night. So not an outright fabrication or invention in the movie, but dramatizing things and that’s a nice example of how the movie does that moving things around. To make it more exciting, but not necessarily always creating everything out of whole cloth. The Halliburton package, my mind is Standing is was a legitimate package. The impropriety there, if there was any would have been him taking that job to begin with having been Secretary of Defense, which we talked about, not, not nothing illegal, but something that that a lot of people try to avoid. But if you’re a CEO of a company, and you do really well and your stock is vesting and and you have agreements in your contract with that company for a certain amount of money, taking that is not either something that’s illegal, or necessarily a sign of, of a company cozying up, I’m not aware of Halliburton paying him extra. My understanding is they paid him what he was owed. And so it was a big windfall, but I don’t think it was some sort of implicit bribe, or that they patted it in order to get, you know, get him to, you know, to curry favor with him, things of that nature. And then the election itself, of course, was very close. And I don’t know exactly what the various counts were on election night, but it was extremely close. And as we all know, at least those of us who lived through it or studied it dragged on for quite some time.

Dan LeFebvre  36:13

Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that. Because we do see in the movie, that boy from earlier, Antonin Scalia, he comes back as now he’s a member of the Supreme Court, and he helped stop the recount in votes in the state of Florida. For the younger generation, who might not remember the controversy of the 2000 election, can you give a little overview of what happened?

William Cooper  36:35

Yeah, so it was this long, drawn out scenario where the local courts in Florida were going up and down their judicial system and flopping around in their, their results and their rulings. And then the US Supreme Court would hear the case and send it back down and hear the case and send it back down. It was this big, huge circus, all to determine who is going to be President of the United States. The way it ultimately came down was in a five, four decision where the five justices on the Supreme Court are known as conservatives ruled in favor of Bush. And the four justices who were known to be liberals voted in favor of gore. And it was a very hard for the American people to take, right. I mean, if you’re, if you’re a Democrat, and you lose the presidency, and all the incredible influence and consequences that flow from that, because of a one person majority on a court, that’s supposed to be simply applying a law that’s very difficult to take. And I think a lot of the reverberations from Bush v. Gore, were still feeling a lot of the, you know, the anger over justice Cavanaugh confirmation, for example. Because what George W Bush was able to do as a point, he didn’t just win the presidency from the Supreme Court, he in turn, appointed John Roberts, and appointed Samuel Alito, to the court. And that whole series of events is just dramatically reshape the court and the legal system and our society as a whole. I mean, you can trace that back to Roe versus Wade, being overturned by one of George W. Bush’s appointee, Samuel Alito was incredibly controversial and hard for the country to take. But I will say on the other side, the Supreme Court was in a difficult position. Florida was not handling it, particularly well, they had to make a ruling, whatever ruling they made was going to inflame half the country or the other. But that’s how that played out. And the younger people today that aren’t familiar with all those facts, I think you’re still seeing consequences from them today and still well into the future is a very momentous decision.

Dan LeFebvre  38:44

The so what was the the initial cause to take it to the Supreme Court? Was it just that that Florida couldn’t figure out what the actual count was?

William Cooper  38:53

Well, there was lots of disagreements in Florida. And the appeal to the Supreme Court was the argument that Bush made, essentially was, and I’m not an expert in election law. And I have not studied this closely or recently. But my understanding is that in general, the argument was, this is just a mass. There’s no intelligible standard for determining, you know, what we’re going to do here. And that’s inconsistent with due process. And if you can’t, if you can’t find a solution that’s uniform. That makes sense. There’s a violation of due process. And that’s what the Conservatives went with. Now, a legal scholar who is immersed in that jurisprudence would do a much better job than I did explaining that. But the I think, to me, the most impactful part in the movie, certainly shows it is just five, four. And all of the things that people think when they see that right that even if it’s not True. They draw inferences of partisanship. The movie makes the thing about Antonin Scalia. Right? Cheney and Scalia knew each other for a long time. They were influential in each other’s careers. They had a strong relationship. They were intellectually aligned, you know, the movie gets into all of that. And then all of a sudden, Scalia, his vote was determined every justice on that court that voted in favor of Bush was a determinative vote, right? If they had changed, if any one of them would change their vote, it would have gone to Gore. So I think that that narrative is a little too simple. I think Scalia was on the court. He was appointed by Reagan, Cheney wasn’t in the Reagan administration. I think it’s coincidental that they’re finding themselves in the same orbit at a later time. But, but that sort of the inference was drawn by lots of people, because it was such a partisan decision.

Dan LeFebvre  41:00

I can see that and it sounds like the movie is doing something similar to what we were talking about with the the exit package from from Halliburton where, okay, this may be an actual thing people get that when they leave a company. That’s, that’s normal. But the way that the movie makes a point to have that be one of the one of the things that it focuses on happening at that time, it makes it seem like it is much more well, not coincidental, but not a coincidence of something, you know, purposely happening like Scalia coming back. And, you know, helping the guy that he knew before is when it kind of seems like he’s helping Cheney get the get the win.

William Cooper  41:37

I strongly agree. I think the movie does that repeatedly. In some ways, it’s hard not to do that with a movie when you’re condensing a 50 year career and an hour and a half. And it needs to be entertaining. And conspiracy theories are more exciting than random events that just happened to have some overlap. But I agree, I think the movie does that repeatedly. It makes for great theater. But it doesn’t capture reality. accurately.

Dan LeFebvre  42:09

Sure. Yeah. That makes sense. That’s movies in a nutshell.

William Cooper  42:15

Even documentaries can be very misleading.

Dan LeFebvre  42:17

Yeah, that’s that’s very that’s that’s true. I mean, they are our the editor, right? It’s very true. Well, if we do go back to the movie, we see, Dick Cheney is now the vice president. And he kind of seems to be all over the place. And I mean, that literally, he has offices in the House of Representatives, the Pentagon, the CIA, a couple offices in the Senate, the White House, of course. And if we’re to believe the movie, Cheney was everywhere, and in everything, in cluding, in anti tax group funded by the Koch Brothers, Big Oil, big tobacco, all these, you know, big names that we see in the in the conspiracies and things. And there’s a scene where he was helping to try to figure out how to do things like getting tax cuts for the rich, changing the term global warming to climate change, because it sounds nicer. And so this is kind of a two part question. First, was the movie correctly showing Dick Cheney’s involvement in a lot of areas of government beyond what seemed to be normal for a vice president? And then the second is kind of an extension of that, again, for those who aren’t familiar with what is normal for a vice president? Was this unique to Cheney, or was this unique for any American vice president? Or how do you think the movie did are portraying that?

William Cooper  43:33

I think the movie did a good job of highlighting that and making that point accentuating it. Cheney was extraordinarily influential as a vice president, I think his influence waned with time. Cheney, the the eighth year of Bush’s administration, I think was much less influential than the first year. One of those reasons for it, I think, very well may be although I don’t think George W. Bush has said this, but I think all of the problems with the Iraq War made Bush second guessed, change his judgment. Cheney was a huge Hawk for going into Iraq. And it didn’t go well. Bush conceded it didn’t go well. And I think that colored perhaps, Bush’s view, and made him less deferential and maybe even had some friction between the two as a result, Cheney was pushing to go into Iran, much more forcefully in Bush’s second term and Bush really, you know, rejected that, that initiative. But in general Cheney was very influential, even though it waned over time. I don’t think it was normal. I think it was. I think it was quite broad and unusually broad. He was very powerful. Again, derivative of buff it came from Bush’s delegating that authority and deferring to Cheney Um, and but that can be very powerful. If the president says you, you know, you run with this, you’re de facto the most powerful person on that subject. And Bush did that with Cheney, particularly in energy Cheney was, you know, coming from Halliburton who really understood energy markets, coming from Texas as well. But he did so in foreign policy. And he did so in other areas. The big tax break in the beginning of Bush’s first term, Cheney was huge driver behind that. Paulo Neil, the Treasury Secretary has a great book called The price of loyalty where he gives his perspective and is very uncharitable to Bush and Cheney, and he talks about how Cheney, you know, really was the driving force behind a lot of big ticket items. So I think the movie was consistent with that. inflated it a little dramatize it a little. But but but it is true, Cheney was very influential, especially in the beginning.

Dan LeFebvre  46:00

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And some of that kind of sounds like it goes back to what we were talking about earlier with just the way the movie makes it seem like Bush is following Cheney a little bit more than than the other way around, even though, you know, Bush is the President Cheney’s the Vice President, but because of their past, and the experience that Cheney has, the impression I got from the movie was okay, Cheney is kind of leading, leading the thing and a lot of stuff.

William Cooper  46:26

My sense, from what I’ve, what I’ve learned is that Bush was the boss, and he was deferential to Bush. Bush didn’t just sort of follow Cheney and do whatever he wanted. But Bush had a lot of respect for Cheney. He liked them, he trusted them. Cheney was much more interested in certain things than Bush was, Cheney was much more into policy than Bush. And so the result was that chaining was very powerful, even though Cheney wasn’t telling Bush what to do, or making the final judgment. And I think Bush would override Cheney, even from the beginning in certain areas. So Cheney was very powerful, but it wasn’t anything close to absolute.

Dan LeFebvre  47:12

We talked a little bit about some of the different column conspiracies, but some political elements going on. And about this point, in the movies timeline, there was a scene that stood out to me, it’s the only time in the movie where we see faces are blurred, and they bleep out names. Obviously, being movie, they’re all actors portraying the events, so they could have shown whatever they wanted to show, but the filmmakers chose to blur out the faces, and even Chinese dialog asking about how’s your business at blank? And bleeping out whatever the name of the company is? They reply, oh, good, are sock blank. And California has really been really blank since deregulation. It just kind of feeds back into this idea of there’s something more sinister going on here. Do we know anything is going on there? As far as what we seeing in the movie? I’m

William Cooper  48:01

quite confident that Enron okay, it’s changed speaking to the Enron leaders. And Ron is very famous for, among other things, manipulating the energy market in California and profiting immensely because of that. Cheney and Ken Lay, who’s the CEO of of Enron, we’re friends, I think Ken Lay was the maybe even the chairman of the Energy Commission that Cheney set up initially. And, and so that is pretty clearly in my view, an allusion to Enron.

Dan LeFebvre  48:35

Okay, and you had said Cheney was kind of in charge of all the energy stuff, so he would have been the one to go to in the US government for anything energy, right.

William Cooper  48:45

He was, from what I understand, he really wasn’t the lead in energy. Bush delegated that to him in a big way. He convened with business leaders, and constantly and there’s big fights over people getting that data, getting those that information and transcripts and minutes from the meetings. So who’s very immense, immersed in the energy industry with leaders, including Cadillac. So I think that’s what the movie is getting at. I’m not aware of any information, however, suggesting Cheney played a role in any of Enron’s illegalities. I think he had very favorable posture towards industry, in the NFL in the energy sphere. And so he was Cheney was pushing for regulations and legislation that Enron wanted. But I’m not I’m not aware of any instance where Cheney somehow contributed to the illegal apps that ultimately caused Enron to fall and its leaders to be prosecuted. It’s,

Dan LeFebvre  49:53

I can see, I can understand both sides of it. I understand. I mean, Cheney having this background and energy with Halliburton has experienced, so it makes sense that he would be in charge of that I can also see how it looks really suspicious that, you know, there’s these things that are going on that, you know, benefit these big energy companies and such. And then, of course, you know, with the downfall of Enron, it just becomes even more suspicious. You know, what, who was talking to who? So I can understand both sides of it. I guess that’s why politics is so sweet is

William Cooper  50:24

both sides have all this fodder for, for believing what they believe? It’s an interesting question, because you want to have your government officials have expertise. You don’t want them regulating industries, they don’t understand. And a lot of the the, most of the people that understand industries, understand them, because they’re in them. And so it is, it is hard, and it’s a fine line. But I agree that and the movie, I think rightfully highlights some of these sensitivities, when you have a Secretary of Defense who goes and runs a military company, and then you have a, you know, he comes back into government and is looking at the energy industry, which was a big part of that company as well. It raises red flags, and it’s far better to just separate yourself from that and not have those conflicts, even if it’s only the appearance of impropriety. Because that says distrust in the government. Yeah,

Dan LeFebvre  51:23

yeah, it definitely does. And the movie doesn’t really show any of this at all, because it really does focus mostly on Cheney, but was there any public perception of this public negativity or anything going on? Before? You know, things like Enron crashing and all of this, but just some of this back and forth? Or was it just assumed? Okay, that’s just how it goes. And everybody’s done it?

William Cooper  51:47

No, I think there was a lot of outcry about Cheney’s Energy Commission. Yeah, I think a lot of people were upset about it. Well,

Dan LeFebvre  51:54

if we go back to the movie, there is something that happens 911. And that kind of throws everybody off. Nobody expected that. In the movie, Secretary of State Colin Powell and the CIA, along with an international coalition, they topple the Taliban and take Afghanistan in a matter of weeks. But the movie shows that Dick Cheney wanted more. And that’s when we see Cheney, meeting with another attorney named John you about executive authority. The first legal opinion from you is to let the US government monitor every citizens phone calls, texts and emails without a warrant. He also went on to essentially make torture illegal thing they call it enhanced interrogation instead of torture. And in the movie, we see Cheney talking about how well it’s if the US is doing doing it, then it’s not torture, because the US doesn’t torture. So by definition, it can’t be torture, it’s enhanced interrogation. That sounds crazy to me. Of course, you know, no country in the history of the world has ever done anything until they do it. But did the Cheney really believed that it was okay to torture people just calling it by another name or some of these other things that we see going on with the surveillance and some of the things that happened in the post 911 world? Yeah,

William Cooper  53:13

there’s, this is another one where I don’t want to act as though I have a better understanding than I do. There’s extreme nuance in detail in the legal memos. John, he was also my professor at law school at Berkeley. And he’s a really nice, intelligent person, even if he there’s areas to disagree with him. But I think it’s definitely true that Cheney took a really strong view in this area. I think it’s also definitely true that you can’t get around anything by just naming it something else. That’s ridiculous. And even in areas where there’s reasonable minds can differ. Nobody would say, Well, if we call it enhanced interrogation, it’s no longer torture. What happened from what I can gather is, especially after 911, there was just incredible fear. I think that’s the right word, emanating from Bush and Cheney, and Rumsfeld all the way through government, impacting people like John, you and others. And the Jack Goldsmith, who came in and was the lead lawyer for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. After John, he was the deputy and after you and his, and the lead counsel left, Goldsmith came in, and he reversed a lot of it, or at least he tried to reverse a lot of that. And his view was that it was fear as well, that that they were they were so impacted by 911. That they were they were basically incapable of balancing interests in a rational way, from a legal perspective and also from an intelligence gathering perspective. On the other side, I think if you were to talk to Cheney Hear You. They they wouldn’t say, well, we just had a blank slate, but we called it enhanced interrogation. I think they would concede my senses. They would could see certain things work torture, right. If you were to, you know, chop somebody’s arm off, they would say, yeah, that’s torture if you were to, but I think their argument would be the measures we took. Were not. And they were justified, and they were proportionate. So that’s the I don’t think Yeah, so it’s not it’s not as extreme as the movie made it out to be. But it certainly was very aggressive and got a lot of pushback. And, and a lot of people disagreed with. There was even lawsuits surrounding the memos and things like that, which are very uncommon.

Dan LeFebvre  55:47

Okay. Yeah. In the movies, it was kind of a throwback to me. Earlier, when we talked about how I think it was when when Cheney was first working under Rumsfeld, you know, ask him about what he should believe in. And he says things like, Oh, we’re not we weren’t going to call it global warming anymore. We’re going to call it climate change, because that sounds nicer. It’s it’s not kind of sounds like a similar almost a marketing message, which, you know, politicians message of how do I phrase this? So it sounds not as bad as as what it is. And so that was the impression I got from the movie was That was another example of how politicians politicking and change it changing the names of something just to make it sound better. Yeah.

William Cooper  56:27

And lawyers do that, too. Even in courtrooms not not in the public square. And I think I think there was absolutely some of that. But again, I don’t think it was quite as extreme as it was portrayed and has been portrayed us, right? I think it the argument is not we can do anything. By simply renaming it. The argument is we weren’t doing things outside, there are things beyond enhanced interrogation that are torture. And we weren’t doing that. That would be the argument. You mentioned

Dan LeFebvre  57:01

this earlier. And we just touched on briefly, but I want to come back to it. Because in this timeline, this is the timeline in the movie, when we see Cheney and Rumsfeld really being behind the push to invade Iraq. There’s voiceover that says 70% of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was involved in 911. Then we find out intelligence on an associate of the Taliban, Abu Musab al Zaki, where he wasn’t that intelligence was not acted on, according to the movie. And so he starts causing carnage in Iraq by starting ISIS. Also, no one can find the weapons of mass destruction or WMDs, or nuclear programs going on in Iraq that were supposedly there. The movie suggests that Saddam Hussein and his sons, just like cocaine and American movies from the 1980s. And then another side of this that the movie points off with the Iraq Iraq invasion is similar to what we were kind of talking about a little bit earlier. But it seems like Halliburton had been receiving some no big contracts of sizable amounts for work in Iraq. So in the movie, this invasion of Iraq just really seems to be a dark spot on Cheney’s career kind of results in a quick demise of his political career, doesn’t mean we do a good job showing how that happened.

William Cooper  58:18

I think it’s true that Cheney’s career reputation took a huge hit because of the Iraq War, among a huge percentage of people with opinions about Dick Cheney, that was the nail in the coffin, no recovery, he’s a villain, he’s evil, and there’s no redemption possible. And I think, even among lots of people who aren’t, you know, strong zealots in any direction, and are more moderate, have to concede that I rack What did not go well, that Chinese statements about weapons of mass destruction proved to be wrong. I mean, Cheney was very clear and speeches before they attracted to them. So I’m just saying had weapons of mass destruction. He went, you know, far be Colin Powell, at least, you know, hedged his assertions at the United Nations were Cheney went right out with it. And it wasn’t true. We also live in a political space where no matter what you do, some of your loyal followers are going to still like you. Donald Trump is the ultimate example of that my opinion. And so there are a lot of people that still like and respect Cheney, but I definitely agree if you look at the totality of opinion, you know, Iraq was a huge hit for Cheney and it should be what it was a they didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, and in some ways, even more importantly, their objective of of turning Iraq into a well functioning democracy and getting there without too much carnage. was just wrong. It just they failed to do that. And Cheney was a leading advocate and bears a lot of responsibility. Okay,

Dan LeFebvre  1:00:08

okay. Yeah, I mean, each each of those could be an entire podcast series by itself. So we’re not digging into the details of, of the war in Iraq. But it sounds like from what you’re saying there that Cheney himself was a big driver behind the whole weapons of mass destruction thing. And so it would make sense then that the way the movie implies it is Cheney was the next one to be president until he left and went to Halliburton. And then now that he’s vice president, the impression is, okay, he’s probably going to be the next in line to be president. He has all this experience. And then all of this stuff happens with with Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction. And was Was he kind of the one to take be thrown under the bus or what sounds like if he was one actually saying a lot of it, then he was just held accountable for?

William Cooper  1:01:02

I think it was. I think he was held accountable. There’s no hiding his statements on weapons of mass destruction. He said, I think, years before the war, turned in a positive direction that the enemy was in their last throes. That was a famous quote that was quite wrong. He drove it, he advocated it, he owned it, and it didn’t go well. And there’s no escaping that. I think the movies, portrayal of Cheney has this great politician who was, you know, the next in line to be president was not right. I mean, Dick Cheney was a boring, bald, gray haired secretary of defense from Wyoming that nobody really knew much about. And the idea that his electoral prospects were bright. After Clinton took the Oval Office, I think is pretty far fetched. Run thought actually ran for president in 86, or 87, he announced his campaign for the ATA. election, and he couldn’t get any support. So these guys were very effective at being government actors, and Cheney, of course, in Wyoming was able to be a congressman. But I don’t think Cheney was ever going to be a standalone presidential candidate. And, of course, he didn’t. Ron Bush had two terms. Cheney did not run. In 2008. McCain did. And Cheney always said he did not have ambitions to be president. That was one of the reasons why a lot of people think Bush gave him so much authority because there wasn’t a rivalry there in a political sense. Cheney wasn’t trying to build his brand for a future run. So I don’t think the movie got that part. Right. But laying a lot of the blame for Iraq at Cheney’s feet and having that be a big part of his legacy. I think that’s spot on.

Dan LeFebvre  1:02:57

Something else I want to ask about that we see there with the invasion that I talked about was Halliburton is involvement. And so do we know if there’s any connection there? Again, this is another area where the movie just really implies that one of the reasons for Cheney pushing the invasion of Iraq has to do with their oil. And of course, Halliburton is an oil company. So the movie doesn’t specifically talk about this. But it’s not hard to put two and two together to make that sort of assumption. But as we talked about before, maybe there was some impropriety and what it looks like to go from government to, you know, an oil CEO, but nothing illegal. Nothing really that we know of his add another instance of that.

William Cooper  1:03:41

Yeah, I don’t think Cheney was advocating for war in Iraq in order to make more money for from his holdings and Halliburton, B. Chain, he’s got $50 million in Halliburton assets, I don’t think he was wanting to murder 1000s of people to get it to 60. That’s a pretty extreme charge. I do think oil was important, but I think Cheney and Rumsfeld and others look at oil as a really pivotal pivotal geostrategic asset. And, you know, allowing oil to be funneled to dictators and empower them in dramatic ways is against the United States interests, in a lot of respect. So I think oil is irrelevant, but it was kind of amateur, in my opinion, to a freshman in college sort of conspiracy theory to implicate, you know, to make the implication that Cheney was just trying to enrich himself by starting this huge war. I don’t think that’s true.

Dan LeFebvre  1:04:55

Near the end of the movie, Barack Obama is sworn in as the next US President. Cheney has another heart attack, something we’ve seen a few times throughout the movie. Also throughout the movie, it’s narrated by a guy named Kurt that we see here and there that I haven’t talked about yet. But these plot lines in the movie coincide. At the end, you see Kurtz out for a run, and then he’s hit by a car. He dies, and his heart is given to dictate. He says movie shows this after Obama’s sworn in happened in 2009. And then the movie says, Kurt’s heart will give Cheney another 10 years. And as of this recording, Dick Cheney is still alive. So it seems like it’s lasted for more than 10 years. Did Cheney have a heart transplant, like the movie talks about happening?

William Cooper  1:05:37

He did. He had a, got a donor, the donor, had the accident, he got the heart, his heart had basically failed, he had a pump, going just to keep him alive. And I think he was on the donor list for 20 months or something like that. He got the he got the heart. He’s still alive. As you know, noted, I believe it was 2012. When that happened, that’s my understanding. Not 2009. But it is it is true. And actually, Cheney, you know, he There’s a book out about his heart and his health experience. He’s had this incredible political career, but he’s also this medical marvel, where he had five heart attacks and his heart, you know, barely functioning at all. And then he got a transplant. He was 71 when he got the transplant, so quite old for that. And, and he’s still kicking, having

Dan LeFebvre  1:06:39

health conditions are always always terrible, but in being in politics in such a stressful situation, and having that many heart attacks. And that’s, that’s surprising.

William Cooper  1:06:52

Totally agree. It’s, yeah, it’s a stressful place to be and, you know, yeah, you, you wouldn’t think somebody with that background and with help with would stay in those roles. But

Dan LeFebvre  1:07:10

at the very end of the movie, there are three different screens of text with lots of numbers and statistics. So I won’t quote all of those. But in a nutshell, the gist of these suggests that 1000s of US soldiers and hundreds of 1000s of Iraqi civilians died in the war, and also mentioned the Halliburton stock rose 500%, after the invasion of Iraq. And then Coincidentally, the movie also talks about the communications from the Bush, Cheney White House on a private server seem to just disappear. So we don’t know what they actually talked about internally. And then lastly, it talks about the memos from John you about torture and warrantless surveillance, saying that they’re still there for any American president to use if they choose to do so? Did the movie do a good job summarizing these things at the end?

William Cooper  1:07:58

I think it goes too far. It consistent with with it c minus grade, it’s not terrible, out of spun out of complete wholecloth. But I think it goes quite a bit too far. Certainly the the human toll of the Iraq war was very significant. I, I, as noted, I don’t think motive, Cheney’s motivation was just to go from being worth 50 million to 60, whatever it may be. I don’t also don’t know if Halliburton stock went up as much as the suggestion was, like it did very well. But my guess is its revenues and profits were associated with lots of different things, not just the Iraq War, and that wasn’t 500% In one year or anything like that. But I don’t I don’t know the precise performance of the stock. So I think I think it goes a little bit too far, in terms of the secrecy, which ties in with the opening quote of the movie, which I thought was quite witty and entertaining. And then and then the missing documents. I think it’s it’s absolutely true that we don’t know, a lot. And I think that’s common. I mean, it’s not, you know, Richard Nixon taped himself. But most presidents don’t, and nobody’s taping all of the players in the administration at all times. The memos, the things that get put into writing are not going to be comprehensive. Most people writing really sensitive important memos are well aware that they’re going to be public one day, the laws, you know, the National Archives and the laws governing classified documents, make them public and there can be leaks in the fear of leaks, I think pervades Washington actors. So all of that’s fertile ground for people to do things that people don’t know about at the time and that the historical record never actually catch was up with. And Cheney is a good example. And he’s a type of operator, smart person who wants to get things done. He’s not as concerned with public knowledge, I think it’s likely that over time, more and more will come out. And also, there’ll be things that were happening that we’ll never know about.

Dan LeFebvre  1:10:19

Yeah. And it makes sense that politicians who have been playing the game of politics for decades, know a lot of those loopholes and when to say things and where not to say things and how not to document things and things like that, to, which I don’t think is unique to Cheney. I think that’s a pulp political thing. But you know, for the concept of this movie, I think that it makes sense but it also sounds like the movie is pulling in, like we talked about, you know, even with the previous things with the the war in Iraq and the the texts and such, it’s pulling in some of the kernels and then filling in some of the dots. Like it’s not necessarily this, this is unique to Cheney, but some of it could have happened.

William Cooper  1:11:04

Yes, good way to put it.

Dan LeFebvre  1:11:08

After the movie is over, there’s a post credit scene that I have to ask you about the scene. It’s a focus group of people who have watched the movie, the movie that we watched vice, and one of the guys in the focus group talks about how the movie has a liberal bias. Someone else in the group says the movie is just presenting facts, how is that a bias, then they get into a fight talking about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump fight has nothing to do with the main character in the movie, or really the movie at all just showcases how divisive people have become around politics, though. There’s one thing I think people have a hard time believing the truth about. It’s politics. And I think that’s because everyone has their own version of what truth is, it’s being told in these echo chambers and social media and other places, where truth is something that they already know. And they refuse to accept any evidence that might contradict what they believe. So I have to ask, since we’ve been talking about a very political movie, do you think the filmmakers were biased in the way they presented the facts?

William Cooper  1:12:09

Well, let me step back a little bit. I mean, this the answer is yes. And I’ll elaborate. But I certainly I strongly agree that the current climate in the country and it’s been this way for a long time, but it seems to be getting worse, is very polarized, and it you share the same set of facts with different people, you’re gonna get unbelievably different interpretations. In my book, how America works and why it doesn’t. One of the main points of my overall thesis for why the country is not working right, is the extent of polarization. And the extent to which people are interpreting events through the lens that they come to those events with and interpreting facts through a biased lens. And it was definitely true and Bush was president. Definitely true when Obama was president. And in the Trump Biden era, it seems to be reaching, you know, ever greater heights. As far as this movie goes, I think the movie was biased. In some ways, in some ways, it was just sort of trying to be entertaining, and it’s a bias was to entertain. But I think it was too kind to Cheney in some ways. And also too harsh to Cheney, in some ways. So if it was, but it was, it was biased. You know, Cheney deserves a lot of criticism, particularly with Iraq. I mean, that was his defining initiative that was exponentially larger than anything else he did, at any point in his career, and inside or outside of government, and it was a disaster. And so that’s a, you know, somebody who really deserves a lot of criticism. But at the same time, it doesn’t mean he did it to line his pockets, doesn’t mean that he was an evil person. I mean, he made mis judgments. But his intentions, I think we’re, you know, hit Cheney is, above all out. A nationalist, I think he just, he only cares about the United States of America has his, he said numerous things to support that. And so he, you know, he’s not worried about casualties among Iraqis. He’s worried about protecting the United States. And there’s a lot to be critical about that perspective, in my view, if you think everything in life is equal, but it’s also the case that even under his own framework of trying to advance the United States interests, he really failed. And so the movie criticizes him in ways where maybe they shouldn’t or emphasizes things that are less important than others. But if it had a bias, and a pervading bias It was a good one for a movie. And that was to entertain.

Dan LeFebvre  1:15:03

Yeah, yeah. And that’s what movies are supposed to be is, is entertainment there. But I think you brought up a really good point of how I mean, with with when it comes to bias and specialists, specifically, political bias, it’s, it has become so divisive. And with, I’m trying to think of the right way to phrase this. Because it can be so, so divisive, but it’s good to have that. To hold people accountable, like, like with Cheney, like holding him accountable for when things are done wrong, because politicians, no matter how much you love them, no matter how much you hate them, they’re they will do some things, right. And they will do some things wrong. And I think it’s good to have whether, you know, a movie like this, or something that sparks some of these discussions of things like, Okay, I like this part. And but I don’t like this part. And that’s okay to have that discussion of what you like and what you don’t like, instead of just throwing it all out and being like, well, this person has this letter next to their name. So that’s, you know, who it’s going to be regardless of, of what it is. And I think that’s I don’t mean to get too quacks too political here. But, you know, I think that’s where a lot of things have have come in the past few years.

William Cooper  1:16:24

I totally agree. That’s well put, and I’m completely aligned with that.

Dan LeFebvre  1:16:31

While you did mention it there, at the end, there, you have a new book called how America works, and why it doesn’t make sure to put a link to that in the show notes for this episode for listeners to pick up their own copy. But can you share a sneak peek of your book for us? Yeah,

William Cooper  1:16:46

I think you did a nice job of of alluding to the polarization. So the book really focuses the first part of the book focuses on how America is supposed to work, the essential principles of our government, our society and separation of powers and free speech and what the current debates are, and also the historical trajectory of how we got here. And then the second part of the book focuses on how America is not working. And that the the main driver, there is the polarization. I think it’s a factor of social media echo chambers playing a major role. And then we also have some profound structural problems in our politics that exacerbate polarization, including a two party system. We’ve got two juggernauts and bitter rivalry as opposed to a more diverse set of views. The primary system favors zealots, as opposed to, you know, conscientious, more moderate people. Gerrymandering is a huge problem where it really disenfranchises lots of people, you can talk about not letting somebody vote at the polls, right. And maybe that happened several dozen times in a county or something. But gerrymandering condition franchise, hundreds of 1000s of people in one fell swoop even millions in the aggregate. So it’s a really huge problem. And when you add it all up, you see the the polarization and that polarization is leading to policy failures. I mean, it’s leading to our immigration policy or healthcare policy, even our economy not being run, as definitely as we would like to see it and our leaders not being as capable as they should be. I mean, in my view, Donald Trump was totally unfit for the job. And while Joe Biden is a reversion towards the mean, he’s not a reversion to the mean. I mean, he’s, he’s, well past his prime, and the President United States should be somebody who’s, you know, at the peak of their intellectual powers, we should be able to have somebody sort of in the top 1% of the population for managing the country. And we don’t have that. So the books very critical and but also offer some some solutions. But you, you touched on it, Dan, you know, a lot of what our problem is, is exactly what that the very last part of the movie shows, where people are just looking at the same set of facts and coming to totally different conclusion. And it’s hard to take that climate and turn it into good policy.

Dan LeFebvre  1:19:19

And then they’re not talking about it. Like I mean, people can have different opinions and that’s fine. But being okay with, it’s okay to not agree. And we’re agreeing to disagree, and that’s okay. But having that discussion, I think is a big,

William Cooper  1:19:33

big part of it. Totally agree. Yeah. Absolutely.

Dan LeFebvre  1:19:37

Well, thank you for coming on to have this discussion. And of course, I will include a link to your book in the show notes for this for anybody else who wants to pick that up and start the discussions of their own. Thanks again, so much for your time. Well,

William Cooper  1:19:49

Thank you, really appreciate you having me. It’s always a real fun time. So, thank you.