Melville House Books

 

Dick Cheney: Rarin' to write ... soon as he gets enough money

Despite a massive plebiscite renouncing everything about the Bush-Cheney administration, Dick Cheney, you’ve no doubt noticed, is everywhere, including a “sustained blitz of television appearances and speeches” attacking critics of his torture policies and everything about the Obama administration, as Jim Ruttenberg and Motoko Rich observe in a New York Times report. So what’s he up to?

“[A] multimillion-dollar book contract,” according to the Times report. It says “Cheney is actively shopping a memoir about his life in politics and service in four presidential administrations, a work that would add to what is already an unusually dense collection of post-Bush-presidency memoirs that will offer a collective rebuttal to the many harshly critical works released while the writers were in office and beyond.” Cheney is reportedly asking for a minimum of $2 million.

Shocking enough, but there’s more: Ruttenberg and Rich report that not only Cheney but the raft of other Bush administration officials already working on books — including Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Paulson, and both Laura Bush and her husband himself — “are in regular contact as they seek to jog their memories, compare notes and trade stylistic tips in their new lives as authors, according to friends and current and former aides.”

What they’re all up to, it seems, is getting their stories straight.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.