Politics Digest

Counseling Obama

Cheney offers Palin some advice on war

It had the ring of a mild rebuke -- one conservative to another.

Appearing on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, former vice president Richard B. Cheney offered a little unvarnished advice to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who recently offered some advice of her own to President Obama on how to improve his image among foreign policy hawks.

The show's host, Jonathan Karl, showed Cheney a recent clip of the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee commenting on the softness she has identified in Obama's foreign policy and the bellicose steps she said he needs to take to turn that around.

"If he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really to come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do," she began, "if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, 'Well, maybe he's tougher than we think he is today.' "

Karl noted that Palin appeared to be "implying that this would be a good political move for him." He asked Cheney: "What's your take?"

"I don't think a president can make a judgment like that on the basis of politics," the former vice president responded. "The stakes are too high, the consequences too significant to be treating those as simple political calculations. When you begin to talk about war, talk about crossing international borders, you talk about committing American men and women to combat -- that takes place on a plane clear above any political consideration."

Cheney himself has been accused of politicizing foreign policy. But he has been around for decades at the highest levels of wartime administrations, and his remarks had the effect of underscoring Palin's inexperience on matters of war and diplomacy.

Karl followed up by asking whether Cheney thinks Palin is qualified to be president, a question he chose to dodge.

"I haven't made a decision yet on who I'm going to support for president the next time around," Cheney said. "Whoever it is, is going to have to prove themselves capable of being president of the United States. And those tests will come during the course of campaigns, obviously.

"I think all the prospective candidates out there have got a lot of work to do if, in fact, they're going to persuade a majority of Americans that they're ready to take on the world's toughest job."