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In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir…
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In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir (urspr publ 2011; utgåvan 2011)

av Dick Cheney (Författare), Liz Cheney (Primary Contributor)

MedlemmarRecensionerPopularitetGenomsnittligt betygOmnämnanden
4051061,909 (3.84)8
"In his unmistakable voice and with an insider's eye on history, former Vice President Dick Cheney tells the story of his life and the nearly four decades he has spent at the center of American politics and power"-- "A memoir from the former Vice President of the United States"--
Medlem:lizgross
Titel:In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir
Författare:Dick Cheney (Författare)
Andra författare:Liz Cheney (Primary Contributor)
Info:Threshold Editions (2011), Edition: First, 576 pages
Samlingar:Biography & Memoir, Ditt bibliotek, Ska läsas
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Taggar:Ingen/inga

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In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir av Dick Cheney (2011)

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I have read some vice-presidential memoirs (see my reviews of “The Education of a Public Man” by Hubert Humphrey and “The good Fight” by Walter Mondale) recently and “In My Time” is among the best. This may be explained by its author’s extensive career as White House Chief of Staff under President Ford, Member of the House of Representatives from Wyoming and minority whip, Secretary of Defense under President George H. W. Bush and vice-president under President George W. Bush as well as the skilled writing style of both Dick and Liz Cheney.

The tale begins with probably the most intense day of his career, September 11, 2001. Working in the White House while the President was traveling around the country, the Vice-President became the nerve center connecting the President with the other agencies of the government.

Cheney then steps back to his family and youth, education and series of jobs in the private and government sectors that prepared him for service. After abandoning his plans for a career in academia, he held responsible position in the government during highly significant periods in our recent history. As White House Chief of Staff he was at the core of the recovery from the Nixon resignation. His rise in the House leadership gave him influence beyond that of a routine Representative and made him a partner with the Reagan Administration in advancing his program. As Secretary of Defense during Desert Storm he is able to introduce the reader to the diplomatic and military challenges and accomplishments of the Liberation of Kuwait. As Vice-President he was at the heart of the formulation and execution of administration policy.

I appreciate the Cheney’s openness about his life and outlook. He discusses his hobbies (fishing), tastes in music, heart problems and acknowledges his failure and Yale and DUI incidents and the hunting accident in which he shot his friend. His wife, Lynne, and daughters Mary and Liz and grandchildren are presented as delights of his life. Like Hubert Humphrey in his memoirs, and perhaps even to a greater extent, Cheney shares his disagreements over and policy and his assessments of major figures with whom he interacted including the presidents he served, Donald Rumsfeld whose career often intertwined with his, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and others.

Cheney has been called the most powerful vice-president, the master of an Imperial Vice-Presidency and the culmination of the enhancement of the office that had taken shape under Vice-President Mondale. Mondale and historian Joel Goldstein contend (in my analysis) that the Cheney Vice-Presidency took a turn away from the Mondale model of being a generalist advisor to the president to become a decision maker in his own right. Readers of “In My Time” may come to a different conclusion. We do see a Veep requesting briefings on his own and taking responsibility for making decisions under some circumstances. One incident often cited in support of the claim of an overreach is Cheney’s 9/11 order to shoot down any aircraft that would not comply with orders to land. The vice-president, on his own, lacks authority for any such decisions but Cheney writes that he had discussed the question with the President and had been given authority for the order.

“In My Time” is a fascinating tome that provides valuable insights into the people and events that shaped our time. We have heard extensive critiques of Dick Cheney from others. On these pages we read his account of his time. ( )
  JmGallen | Nov 14, 2020 |
This is an unapologetic review of the Cheney Vice-Presidency who for better or for worse turned out to be one of the most active administrations in American presidential history. Oddly enough, Cheney is a low-key, moderate political type and not at all the hated figure that he became in the Bush hating American press. Time and again, he understates or did not say much in the crucial debates throughout his career. Nonetheless, he was a figure with firm convictions and his reserved nature underscored his solid notions based in traditional American values by and large. He takes Obama to task for his grand-standing and narcissism, though he is also critical of the McCain presidential run. As with Bush, Cheney's major mistake was the TARP bail-out which reveals the extent to which both Republicans and Democrats agree that they know what the American people need most. Both parties work against the interests of We the People, and the last days of the Bush administration demonstrate how now both the Republicans and the Democrats both cooperate to increase statism against the people.
  gmicksmith | May 10, 2014 |
Found this book very easy to read and learned a lot more about Cheney than I ever knew. The VP has seen a lot in his time in politics and I'm glad he was willing to share a small portion of that with us. He is frank but does his research before making decisions for himself or others.
Even if you think you hate him it is worth reading for the political history he provides. ( )
  gopfolk | Sep 13, 2013 |
I'll be honest: I only read this up until the chapter when Cheney starts his account of 9/11 and its aftermath. At that point, I decided that his most recent history--relating to September 11, 2001 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--was sufficiently loaded that it would be difficult to read without some extratextual reading...fact checking, as it were. Too often I've seen Dick Cheney compared to Darth Vader (or worse), and while I do not agree, even a bit, I would have a hard time taking his perspective on the events in the post-9/11 world without a grain of salt. Ergo, I'll postpone judgment until I can read more on inner history of the time (which, admittedly, I've been living through...).

So I stopped reading there.

Now, to rewind, a bit, and to look at the rest of the memoir for what it is: a memoir. Dick Cheney's lived a life most would count as remarkable, especially for a guy who started out as a college dropout from Wyoming (granted, that college was Yale, but who's keeping track?). Eventually earning a Ph.D. in political science, he ended up in Washington advising congressmen and Presidents, including Donald Rumsfeld and Gerald Ford. Over the course of a career that began during the Nixon Administration, Cheney served the country variously as White House chief-of-staff, Congressman, Secretary of Defense, and finally Vice President (and perhaps the most powerful man to hold that office, yet).

Yet, for all his years in government service, the memoir provides astonishingly little detail, seemingly only giving a burnish his reputation, such as he would like it to appear. Don't get me wrong; in many respects, I like Dick Cheney. However, as a look back at a very long and distinguished career, it is short thrift, skimming through decades of dramatic changes in American government and politics. While it was interesting to hear about his time and the events in which he had participated, as well as some of the insider politics of the campaigns and party conventions of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Cheney sacrifices detail for brevity. It keeps the story moving, and so the "In My Time" is readable. However, it left me feeling like I had read the Cliff's Notes version, not the full memoir.

That said, and I return to my first caveat: I've not finished the book's final chapters, yet, and I would surmise that this last section on 9/11's aftermath will prove to be the interesting and volatile. Cheney's legacy will, in the end, be determined by the outcome of what has been called by some the "long war" against Islamic terrorism and its attacks on the United States. That, however, remains to be seen, and may not even be clear for decades to come. ( )
  publiusdb | Aug 22, 2013 |
This was a mildly interesting, albeit quite frustrating book.

Cheney himself now shows his humanity pretty well, with nice quotes, reminiscences, and little details about his life and mortality. He obviously is quite the family man.

Like many political memoirs, it doesn't completely change the whole perspective you see events - but it is informing, still. Also, like many political memoirs, it is also very self-serving. But this is not a vice unique to Cheney. Everybody there does this. They praise their friends as wise and courageous, and their enemies and misguided, misinformed, and foolish.

I was interested in Cheney's long view of politics. His lengthy career, from Nixon onwards, is quite interesting. On the other hand, his memories of the Bush years seem cherry picked and contradictory, and a little frustrating in nature. He is unapologetic, as always, about Iraq and the WMDs most of all. I was particularly amazed at how much intelligence the man received, at an equal or even greater basis than the President did.

Read it anyways, if you have the stomach for reading about American politics and a reminder of the Bush years. It's no tablet from the Mount of Sinai, but if you're interested in recent events at all, it'll be an interesting change in perspective. ( )
  HadriantheBlind | Mar 30, 2013 |
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The supposedly controversial Cheney memoir is not as provocative as the media hype accompanying its initial release; most controversies focus on just two chapters concerning the response to 9/11 and the Korean nuclear crisis, where he is at odds with both of Bush’s Secretaries of State. . . .

Cheney’s contention is not that his administration colleagues were not good public servants, but that specifically during the hysterical times between 2003 and 2007, they were less willing to confront critics or they pulled punches in order not to incur any more of the crazed invectives of those times. Such tentativeness, Cheney argues, ultimately hurt the administration. Cheney clearly believes that strong-willed people, not just policies, make or break a government. . . .

Cheney, as is the habit of nearly all prominent statesmen, has written an apologia pro vita sua covering some forty years of public service. Most of his narrative is a workmanlike account of working for Presidents Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, and serving in Congress for a decade. A few oddities arise—there is far less detail about George W. Bush or the background politics surrounding the Wall Street crisis of September 2008 than one might expect given Cheney’s tumultuous eight years of service following 9/11. More importantly, anyone who completes this 565-page memoir would have liked to have fathomed the inexplicable mystery of Cheney’s life: How exactly had a once beloved public servant—a soft-spoken conservative who worked with Gerald Ford to defeat rival Ronald Reagan—been reduced to demonic status during the furor that erupted after 9/11?

Cheney, remember, before 2001 was praised for his sobriety, his close congressional friends of both parties, his intimate ties to the centrist Bush family, and his unease with partisan rancor. By 2000 he had achieved "Wise Man" status even in the liberal media. . . . Yet by 2008, Cheney was routinely defamed in the major papers as a ‘war criminal’ and ‘traitor,’ and his own approval ratings sunk below even those of George W. Bush.

We find the answer only by reading between Cheney’s lines. A brilliantly conceived removal of Saddam Hussein led to a bloody and unexpected insurrection in Iraq. That growing violence in turn raised controversy over why we had attacked that country, especially when no weapons of mass destruction, the apparent casus belli, were found. In this regard, Cheney had recommended the water-boarding of three known al Qaeda terrorists and, when the war went badly, was far more easily dubbed a "war criminal" for doing so. Take away Iraq and water-boarding, and Cheney would be as highly regarded in retirement as George H. W. Bush is. . . .

The Cheney of the first 328 pages of the memoir certainly does seem a quite different man from the one described in the last two hundred pages, in ways not wholly explicable by greater age, experience, and office. Again, the younger Cheney was circumspect and bureaucratic—he was politically astute in winning the respect of his peers. Cheney 2.0 was far bolder.

He did not care much for what people said about him, and was not shy in promoting his tragic views to his president and cabinet: Katrina was an inevitable screw-up, given that the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans were clueless; bad things happen in war, the winner makes the fewest rather than no mistakes; thugocracies like North Korea cannot be reasoned with or coddled, only deterred and corralled; Arafat was and would always be a thug you could never do business with; the suffering of three known terrorists is not worth much worry given their murder of 3,000 innocent civilians and the fear they instilled in millions of Americans; Arab dictatorships talk grandly of counsel and multilateralism, but privately calibrate their interests in terms of Thucydidean honor, fear, and self interest. . . .

Cheney’s liberal critics have derided In My Time; apparently so will many of his former conservative friends. As historians acknowledge his earlier record of selfless public service, they will nonetheless become far more fascinated with—and ultimately impressed by—Cheney’s final tumultuous eight years as vice president. In his last office, Washington’s ultimate insider forcefully did what he thought his imperiled country needed—and let others worry about whether he had become a shunned outsider.
 
Those who hoped to see in this 576-page volume a contrite and compromising Dick Cheney will be sorely disappointed. But readers interested in understanding the decision-making and dynamics of the Bush administration will find a compelling examination of those eight years, which spans nearly half the book. The rest, an account of Cheney’s life and early career, provides a fascinating look at the events and experiences that shaped the man who would become America’s most powerful and controversial vice president. While Cheney does not engage in much second-guessing of the Bush-era policies with which he is most often associated, In My Time nonetheless includes candid and sometimes surprising assessments of the debates surrounding the decisions that led to those policies, and those in the Bush administration who participated in them.
tillagd av TomVeal | ändraThe Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes (betalvägg) (Sep 12, 2011)
 

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Cheney, Dickprimär författarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Cheney, Lizmedförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
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"In his unmistakable voice and with an insider's eye on history, former Vice President Dick Cheney tells the story of his life and the nearly four decades he has spent at the center of American politics and power"-- "A memoir from the former Vice President of the United States"--

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