Why Would Dick Cheney Endorse Kamala Harris?
A shared commitment to American supremacy.
When something like Dick Cheney endorsing Kamala Harris happens, it is possible to see the limits of mainstream American political commentary. Attempts to explain this occurrence using traditional left/ right methods of analysis are sure to produce answers that quickly drown themselves in absurdity. Dick Cheney… is a man of honor? No. Kamala Harris… is the most right wing candidate? No. Personal grievance against Trump? A softening of the wily old war criminal VP in his old age? Anyone trained to see politics as a straight line in which the two parties are separated by substantial distance on policy will have to conclude either that Harris changed, or Cheney changed, or the parties have shifted permanently.
Though I try not to write too much about day-by-day campaign news, this particular endorsement is a good opportunity to reflect on the way that the American power structure operates. This is also a case where the explanations of the far right and the far left reflect the truth more than the explanations you will find on CNN and in the New York Times. The far right will shrug and say, “This is the deep state at work.” The far left will shrug and say, “One warmonger endorses another warmonger.” Neither of these explanations quite capture the underlying driving force in action, but each of them is much more true than MSNBC Republican-flack-turned- “news anchor” Nicole Wallace exclaiming that “hell has frozen over” with this mighty realignment.
In fact, allow me to say something surprising: I believe Dick Cheney’s own explanation that “We have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.” Before you scoff, please allow me to explain. Dick Cheney is one of America’s best living representations of the fluidity of establishment power. Congressional staffer, White House staffer, presidential assistant, White House Chief of Staff, Congressman, Secretary of Defense, corporate CEO, vice president. Dick Cheney is not so much “a Republican” as he is “a man in power.” He ascended the ranks of government power in a friendly administration and then when the administration was gone he got elected to Congress and then he leveled up in another friendly administration and then when that was gone he slid over to running a major corporation that was wholly intertwined with the United States government and finally he leveled up into the White House by standing behind a more likable patsy who he could control. If Dick Cheney, a draft dodger who oversaw two major wars and happily caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to try to solidify US power over oil, causes revulsion in you, understand that that revulsion is less about the Republican Party and more about The Unblinking Exercise of American National Power. It’s easy to think that Dick Cheney sucks because he’s an asshole Republican. It’s harder to grapple with the fact that Dick Cheney did the work that this entire nation implicitly expects to be done, in order to maintain our status in the world.
Dick Cheney would prefer lower taxes on the rich and fewer corporate regulations and a more conservative social policy than Kamala Harris would prefer. So what unites them? What unites them is this: a settled commitment to American global supremacy. That is something far more important to Dick Cheney, the human embodiment of the existing global power structure, than a few points on the tax rate or a little more diversity in government hiring. Kamala Harris, in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, promised that “I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” This is enough for Dick Cheney. In this sense, she is a traditional Democrat.
All of us who vote for Democrats need to understand what we are getting. Our feeling of moral superiority on domestic policy—we are the ones against racism and poverty! We are the ones who protect women!—is at all times floating atop an unmentioned sea of weapons pointed at millions of less powerful people outside of our own borders. Republicans are bastards on domestic and foreign policy and Democrats are nicer on domestic policy and very, very close to Republicans on foreign policy. Even among Democrats, the baseline assumption that America must have enough guns to exert our will on the entire world is not questioned. Kamala Harris may push for paid family leave, but she is not going to dismantle the United States intelligence agencies. Kamala Harris may raise taxes on capital gains, but she is not going to meaningfully slash military funding. Kamala Harris may protect abortion, but she is not going to stop sending weapons to Israel, or remove America’s drone bases in Africa, or Give Schools All The Money They Need and Make The Air Force Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber. The harshest things that America does, its most uncompromising violence, its rawest assertion of pure power over weaker people, is always done overseas, far away from where we can watch it. For generations, there has been a mutual agreement from both major parties to do what must be done to protect America’s ability to militarily dominate the world—the gun that protects our concurrent ability to be richer than everyone else, the velvet fist that allows us to extract trillions of dollars in value from the Global South and use it to raise our own national standard of living. This commitment to maintaining the global order, people like Dick Cheney understand, is more important than all the other, smaller issues that voters get worked up about. This is the tree, not the branches.
It’s not that Donald Trump has any ideological opposition to this commitment, which the Republicans have always embraced with relish. It’s just that he’s insane and an unpredictable egomaniac and therefore cannot be counted on to fulfill his role on this matter. Trump has found himself in a feud with America’s intelligence agencies strictly out of personal vanity and prickliness. He is the sort of man who might undermine the CIA or fuck up the Army’s plans for the stupidest, most childish reasons imaginable. This possibility is more than the sort of people who live in that world can tolerate. They may prefer a Republican, but they need, above all, someone predictable. Someone who will not try to undermine the entire system. In this race, that person is Kamala Harris. And so Dick Cheney and the men like him will support Kamala Harris.
If you are a Democrat who shares, at least broadly, progressive values, this fact should make you nauseous. Mostly, Democrats deal with this reality by not talking about it. I was at the DNC, and yeah it was cool when Lil Jon and Stevie Wonder were partying and everything, but a very important key to putting on a good party is “don’t talk about all the dead bodies overseas.” We, as Democratic voters, pretty much just ignore this stuff. We may come out against specific wars that are particularly bad ideas, but we, as a party, have almost zero will to confront the military industrial complex and its global tentacles and the way that it maintains, at gunpoint, the complex system of global economic power that allows us to live nice lives. I am not offering some grand solution to this bedrock injustice, here. I’m just pointing out that Democratic voters and Dick Cheney are both on the same side of it.
The binary Republican vs. Democrat, left vs. right, red vs. blue method of thinking about “politics” is a very good way to protect and maintain the underlying things that do not change from administration to administration. This binary allows Democrats to feel happy and triumphant when we win elections even if the most consequential and brutal aspects of American policy towards the rest of the world do not change. This is one of those disturbing cognitive dissonances that adults mostly solve by waving them away as juvenile, unrealistic thinking, utopian bullshit for kids—a reaction which is, ironically enough, a childish way of pretending things do not exist if we choose to ignore them. Donald Trump is an awful piece of shit who should not be voted for under any circumstances, but that, of course, is not why Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris. Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris because both of them are committed to the basic premise that America will protect its standard of living by maintaining the ability to unleash more violence than anybody else on earth.
“So?” you ask. So, nothing. I offer nothing today except the tiny step of being clear about what exactly is being offered in this election. It is going to be very hard to uproot this tree without acknowledging that you and me and Kamala Harris and Dick Cheney are all sitting in it, together.
Related: Patriot Games; Nationalism Is Poison; Hearts and Minds at Gunpoint.
More: The Hammer Never Stops
In nicer news, I have been on the road doing events for my book about the labor movement, “The Hammer.” A few days ago I was in Las Vegas with the mighty Culinary Union, who are the subjects of a chapter in the book. They recorded the event and also made the very nice photo montage which you see above. Please remember to tip your room cleaner the next time you stay in Vegas, or anywhere.
“The Hammer” is available for order wherever books are sold. I have a few more events coming up this month. If I’m in your area, come through and say hey:
Wednesday, September 25: St. Augustine, Florida. I’ll be speaking at Flagler College at the Ringhaver/ Gamache-Kroger Theatre at 7 pm.
Thursday, September 26: Gainesville, Florida. At The Lynx Books at 6 pm. In conversation with labor activist Candi Churchill. Event link here.
Sunday, September 29: Brooklyn, NY. At the Brooklyn Book Festival.
The last thing I would like to say today is “thank you” to all of you who subscribe to How Things Work. Here is how How Things Work works: I do not have a paywall. I keep this site open for everyone to read. In exchange, I ask that if you can afford the (modest) cost of becoming a paid subscriber, please do so. As long as enough people are willing to become paid subscribers, we can continue to keep this site available for everyone. It’s a simple system that works as long as you make the choice to support this place, if you can. I appreciate all of you.
I worked in international human rights for 11 years, moving on to a more domestic orientation in 2019. The one thing I noticed right away, is that Latin American pro-democracy and human rights organizations equally despise both parties. They understand that the US will always aggressively defend the right of its corporations to exploit valuable resources within the region, that it will always put these short term interests over and above the democratic aspirations of the many millions of Latin Americans. I recall being an election monitor in Honduras during the 2013 general election. The Obama administration was pulling out all stops to support the right wing candidate , Juan Orlando Hernández, over the progressive opposition. One evening I remember hearing a collective gasp in the hotel I was staying in, as the American Ambassador came on the television to urge people to vote for Juan Orlando! This is the same leader, by the way, who is now a convicted drug trafficker, along with his brother. Most Americans are clueless as to the behaviour of their own government in other countries—behaviour that persists whether the government is red or blue.
Great piece. I agree with fellow Dems that Cheney endorsing Kamala is an indictment of how far the Republican Party has fallen under Trump. But it is also an indictment of how far the Democratic Party has fallen in thinking that stopping Trump is the sole and overriding moral struggle of our time. All it takes for someone who has inflicted unspeakable evil on the world to be redeemed in the eyes of Democrats is to say an unkind word about Trump.