Auchtoon!

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, October 2, 2006

Dick Cheney has stopped in Michigan a couple of times recently campaigning for local GOP candidates. I don’t like Dick Cheney. There. I said it. And I mean it. I really, really don’t like the guy. Let the search engines spread the word: John Auchter does not like Dick Cheney.

It’s nothing personal. No… wait, maybe it is personal. I suppose it could be. With such a laundry list of reasons, it’s definitely possible for personal reasons to be in there. It’s hard to tell. I put Cheney somewhere in between Donald Rumsfeld (whose gross incompetence and deflection of responsibility infuriates me, although he has never — thank God — personally sent me to war without proper equipment) and Mike Greenlace (who was my caddymaster at Warwick Hills in 1977 and was a mean, patronizing, jerk-face SOB).

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have a healthy dislike for the current vice president even though I might not be able to quantify it completely. It’s a righteous dislike. I’m entitled to it. There’s nothing wrong with it.

However, at a certain point even a vigorous and justified dislike can start to cloud judgment. For instance, when the whole “ABC 9/11 docudrama blaming the Clinton Administration for failing to stop the terrorist attacks” broke, my very first reaction was to defend the actions of Bill Clinton. Not because it’s a good idea to reflexively defend the actions of Bill Clinton (um, it isn’t), but because it was the opposite view of a certain Mr. Cheney. I had no idea what the 9/11 commission had said about this subject or what the actual truth was. But I was willing to call into talk radio and try to sound like I did.

So that’s what I was trying to say with the comic: Dislikes are fine but not typically helpful when clear thought is needed.

Well, that and the fact that I really, really, really don’t like Dick Cheney.