Liz Cheney Defends Dad's Legacy, Builds Her Own

(March 8) -- The end of the Bush/Cheney administration did not mark the end of the Cheney political brand. Liz Cheney is working harder than ever to burnish her father's legacy and play a larger role in the family business.

This week's New York Magazine feature story about Dick and Liz Cheney says their "ubiquity on the national scene had surprised members of both parties." When he ended his vice presidency with approval ratings mired in the low teens, even Cheney himself predicted he would drop off the radar. But within months, he was back in the public fray, accusing President Barack Obama of being soft on terrorism and "dithering" about what to do in Afghanistan. As Cheney re-emerged, his elder daughter was always either by his side or working behind the scenes.

"She has spent nearly every day since her father's departure from the White House attempting to extricate him from the jaws of infamy by turning current events into a referendum on his policies. Casting herself as his defense lawyer, she has appeared on television 40-odd times in the last year," New York's Joe Hagan wrote.

In the process, Liz Cheney -- who's taken heat even from some conservatives lately for an attack on Justice Department lawyers -- may be preparing to run for office herself. While she might be seen as "the kinder, gentler face of Dick Cheney, a soft rebranding of the man some people called Darth Vader," Hagan noted, she doesn't "distance herself from her father's controversial actions, she embraces them, even revels in them."

Liz Cheney's Keep America Safe organization released an ad last week labeling Justice Department lawyers who once represented suspected terrorists as "The Al-Qaida 7" and demanding that Attorney General Eric Holder identify them. Cheney's critics accused her of McCarthyism. A few Bush administration legal officials also denounced the ad last week -- and a group of 19 conservative attorneys and policy experts issued a statement Monday calling it "shameful."

Bloggers piled on, too.

"Ten years ago, if some paranoid hysteric accused you of being an al-Qaida sympathizer or a jihadist, you could find a lawyer to help you make the case that you were not," railed Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, "But in the ever-expanding war on the Bill of Rights being waged by Liz Cheney, once you're designated a terrorist, you lose your Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Because just by representing you -- even if you're acquitted -- your lawyers become terrorists, too!"

The "Al-Qaida 7" video ends with this question: "Whose values do they share?" Online Journal's Michael Winship answered with a 2007 quote from former Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson, whose wife was on the plane that hit the Pentagon on 9/11: "The ethos of the bar is built on the idea that lawyers will represent both the popular and the unpopular, so that everyone has access to justice. Despite the horrible September 11, 2001, attacks, this is proudly held as a basic tenet of our profession."

Such pushback doesn't deter Liz Cheney. "She almost thrives in an atmosphere where the overall philosophy is discredited and she is a lonely voice," an official who worked with her at the State Department told New York Magazine.

Besides, there are signs that she is looking beyond day-to-day skirmishes like this one and is positioning herself to run for House, Senate or even a higher office.

In the New York article, Bush political guru Karl Rove predicted Cheney would run in her home state of Virginia or in Wyoming, her dad's home state. True/Slant's Michael Roston said Cheney needs to win election to a "credible political position" if her long-term goal is the White House -- and he pointed out possible pitfalls for her in both Virginia and Wyoming. Unlike her father, Roston added, Liz Cheney hasn't had to demonstrate "the complicated political decision-making that a person needs when they run for office, and later run our country."

One of her advisers at Keep America Safe, former John McCain presidential campaign aide Michael Goldfarb, acknowledged that the organization is run "very much like a campaign." He also compared Liz Cheney to another outspoken, telegenic, conservative mother of five -- Sarah Palin.

"I was excited about Palin; I'm more excited about Liz," Goldfarb gushed in the New York article. "You see that response across the activist portion of the party. It's the response you saw to Palin ... She gets people worked up. She connects to people."

The ex-vice president's daughter will get the chance to continue making her case for her father -- and herself -- when she speaks at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans next month. Also on the program: Sarah Palin.