The phrase "overweening arrogance" popped into my mind when I was watching Cheney on a television interview the other day. That is a word one doesn’t see much these days, but it seemed to suit what I was seeing. The dictionary defines "overweening" as,
1. Overbearing; arrogant; presumptuous.
2. Excessive; immoderate; exaggerated.
One hardly would expect that the President, Vice President or Secretary of Defense of these United States would be persons of a shy and retiring nature. Actually, I daresay one would not want them to have such nature.
Bush has made the statement that he does not "flipflop" in accordance with each latest poll and I have no argument with that; doing so would not be leadership. But the elected leaders of this country are still accountable to the people, or should be.
As Keith Olbermann put it last night in his Special Comment, our founding fathers designed a government with "..checks and balances so that no one man may govern as he alone sees fit."
Yet Cheney baldly states that, to paraphrase as I don’t have the exact quote at hand, "The American public may not like it, but that doesn’t matter. We’re not running for election." He added that the election "..might change Congress, but it won’t change what we do. Once elected, he feels, his coterie may govern as, to paraphrase Olbermann, "..they alone see fit."
Unaccountable to Congress, unaccountable to the American people.
Overweening arrogance.
Bring them to account today.
I think an excellent example of overweening arrogance would be to spotlight a dramatic statement from a politician and place in in quotation marks while admitting that one has no accurate record of what was actually said.
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