Karl Rove To Obama: Dick Cheney Had Guts

Politico

Republican strategist Karl Rove says President Barack Obama is right about one thing: He’s not Dick Cheney.

Calling the former vice president a close friend, Rove criticized Obama’s interview with Charlie Rose on Sunday, saying the comparison to Cheney shows how Obama lacks guts.

“He’s right, he’s not Dick Cheney! Dick Cheney at least had the guts to step up and defend these National Security Agency programs, where the president was sending out underlings in order to defend it himself and then going on a talk radio program, a TV talk program, as he fled the country for the G-8 meeting,” Rove said Tuesday on Fox News’s “On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren.”

Rove said if Obama wanted to bring up Cheney, he should have run for vice president with John Kerry in 2004 instead of running for Senate. Also criticizing the president for taking credit for the FISA court overseeing the programs, which Rove said was started in 1978 and continued under the Bush administration, Rove said the comparison Obama made illustrates his shortcomings.

“Dick Cheney understood how important this was and offered himself up as a defender of a program, which was begun under the Bush years and continued under President Obama,” Rove said.