Nobody knows what Dick Cheney did all day — but whatever it was, it was certainly important. Whenever the government said the Vice President was in a secure, undisclosed location, we pictured Cheney racing through the tunnels under the Greenbrier resort, through the supposedly decommissioned fallout shelter and secret command center entombed beneathe that isolated swath of West Virginia, plotting and scheming and keeping terrorists awake at night, wondering when Darth Cheney would strike and how many of them would live to tell their tales the next day.

Dick Cheney, as Vice President, was the twisted, relentless, ruthless love child Batman and the Penguin biologically could never have. He may even be a robot sent from the future to keep us all from harm. He was, without question, the exact Vice President needed at just the right moment in history. Who knows what he was up to, but we’re certain, 100%, that it helped keep this nation safe for the last eight years.

It’s probably what he’s still working on now, from somewhere secure and undisclosed as you read this. 

And Cheney never needed to be babysat. Whenever he said strange things on television, there was clearly an alternative motive at work. Most of his oddball appearances on the Sunday morning shows were so ballsy that even though they often made steam shoot out of our ears at the time, we laughed at how utterly brazen and in your face they were.  Cheney was the master of the F-U, in a way we doubt we’ll ever see in politics again.  When one reporter, in March of last year, told Cheney that 3/5 of Americans thought the Iraq War wasn’t worth it, Cheney said, “So?”.

Great Merciful Zeus, that’s ballsy. Refreshingly so.

Joe Biden would have said something memorably ridiculous in response to the same question, but more likely than not he would have made up crazy nonsensical things, and contradicted himself as he stumbled and rambled his way to commercial.

We don’t know what Joe Biden does all day, but the amount of breakfasts he is required to have with Hillary Clinton each month seem to indicate Biden needs to be babysat by grown-ups. On days Clinton’s not watching him, we’re not sure who has that duty, but “breakfast with the Vice President” sure seems like “it’s your turn to keep him from embarrassing himself for part of the day”.

And for the love of Betsy Ross, keep that man away from the ice cream.  He gets after it like Rahm Emanuel after a strapping, new Secret Service agent on one of their movie dates. 

So, Mr. Cheney, in whatever undisclosed location you are in right now, just know that a bunch of Hillary Democrats here in Boystown who hated your guts for years now realize what remarkable service you gave this country when we needed your gruff Burgess Meredith meets Michael Keaton self. You were just the quiet badass genius strategist we needed, and we’re sure you pulled no punches and coddled no evil-doer on your watch. You also, we must remind the liberals of the LGBTQ community, were FAR MORE SUPPORTIVE of LGBTQ rights than any Vice President before you, Republican OR Democrat, and you have personally shown more willingness to advance our causes than your successor ever has — and you did this without a single word of thanks from ANYONE, including us. You are a decent man who won’t eat everyone else’s ice cream, because you’ve got more than enough of your own tucked away in whatever secret room you spent almost eight years keeping us all alive with whatever it was you were entrusted with.

Some day, we hope to have the honor of shaking your hand and thanking you in person, Mr. Cheney. Because you deserve not just our thanks, as people who FINALLY appreciate your efforts, but the thanks of the whole nation.

Go ahead and freak out in comments that we’ve gone and done it again, and are thanking the Bush Administration for keeping us safe all those years, but we just have a sinking feeling Hope, Change, and Joe Biden are setting us up for something awful before the summer’s out…and that very soon more than just those of us at Buzzquarters are going to realize what a great Vice President we had in Dick Cheney.

He may be a crotchety, gruff, surly, wiseass who shoots people in the face — but he was OUR crotchety, gruff, surly, friend’s-face-shooting wiseass…with great emphasis on the WISE part.

Unlike some people, whose emphasis rests ELSEWHERE.

joeicecream