The Best Country

Former Vice President Cheney's speech today at AEI:

"The United States of America was a good country before 9/11, just as we are today. List all the things that make us a force for good in the world - for liberty, for human rights, for the rational, peaceful resolution of differences - and what you end up with is a list of the reasons why the terrorists hate America. If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field."

Excellent speech! Or in the words of the Weekly Standard magazine's Bill Kristol:

"Obama's [speech] is the speech of a young senator who was once a part-time law professor--platitudinous and preachy, vague and pseudo-thoughtful in an abstract kind of way.... Cheney's [speech] is the speech of a grownup, of a chief executive, of a statesman."