Why have we never given him his due before? We have a good excuse and a less good truth to share. The excuse, which is valid, is that the leftists were so determined to portray him as the real president of the United States, manipulating the idiot puppet Bush, that to make him the center of any post was to authenticate the false notion that he was something more than a particularly hard-working and involved vice-president. We didn’t want to seem to be exalting the lie that President Bush was not the man truly in charge.

The less good truth is that the left succeeded so spectacularly in demonizing Cheney that it was simply easier, even for those of us who trafficked in satire, to forfeit that game. They ran the score up so unfairly but amazingly high against him that defending him in any but the most cursory way felt like a self-destructive wound to our own credibility. That one’s on us. We should have defended him personally, just as we defended Bush for quite similar reasons. We chose not to, because we were being more political than honorable. A bitter pill to swallow, especially when it’s administered by a liberal journalist who doesn’t agree, as we do, with most of Cheney’s positions over the years.

As I said. We’re embarrassed.