Robert Parry, writing for Consortium News, takes a closer look at Dick Cheney’s autobiography, In My Time, to find that former Vice-President Cheney was a classic product of the New Deal era and its support for hardscrabble Americans, like Cheney’s family. How ironic, then, that Cheney, like Ronald Reagan, became a enemy of the New Deal and its public service programs in his political career.
As Parry puts it, “In [a] sense, Cheney’s self-assuredness may be as much a product of the New Deal as the many bridges, dams and other public works that Roosevelt commissioned in the 1930s to get Americans back to work. By contrast, the insecurity that afflicted Cheney’s father was a byproduct of the vicissitudes from laissez-faire capitalism. So, it is ironic that as an adult, Cheney has contributed as much as almost anyone to dismantling the New Deal, the social compact that pulled his family into the American middle class and opened extraordinary opportunities for him.”
Parry | Dick Cheney: Son of the New Deal