Tacitly conceding this weekend that Fred Armisen’s Barack Obama is just heinous, and even if it weren’t they probably wouldn’t have the guts to actually go after Obama, SNL went back to making fun of George W. Bush. In this skit, Will Ferrell reprises his impression of W. by admonishing Darrell Hammond’s Dick Cheney for his public defense of the administration’s position on enhanced interrogation techniques. Acting as the popular font of liberal conventional wisdom, SNL thinks the Republican MVP is damaging the Republican Party and Bush’s legacy.
Cheney is making arguments that the Bush administration largely avoided throughout the second term. Aside from an occasional, defensive speech about its war on terror policies, the Bush White House allowed its opponents to level harsh attacks with little or no response… Democrats have made the assumption that because Cheney is personally unpopular, the policies he has advocated are, too. Obama did not become president because voters supported his positions on national security and the war on terror. They don’t. In a widely overlooked Pew poll on “torture” released late last month, respondents were asked: “Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?” (Cheney would no doubt object to the wording of the question, insisting that the policies used by the Bush administration were not “torture.”)… A stunning 71 percent of those surveyed said that the use of torture could be justified–with 15 percent saying it is “often” justified, 34 percent saying it is “sometimes” justified, and 22 percent saying it is “rarely” justified. Independents fall decisively in what most journalists might characterize as the “pro-torture” camp. More than three-quarters of independents–77 percent–said that torture could be justified: with 19 percent saying it is “often” justified, 35 percent saying it is “sometimes” justified, and 23 percent saying it is “rarely” justified. The phrasing of the question also likely resulted in underreporting the support for what Cheney calls “enhanced interrogation,” since some of the respondents might be hesitant to admit to a random telephone caller that they favor “torture.”
It’s too bad SNL apparently didn’t couple this skit with one spoofing Nancy Pelosi’s horrendous press conference (or, not that I can tell online; correct me if I’m wrong), which demonstrably damaged public opinion of the Democratic Party and Obama’s message on enhanced interrogation techniques. Kristin Wiig’s Pelosi is far better than Armisen’s Obama, and Nancy’s a more comfortable target. I guess when you’ve still got Cheney and W. to kick around, it’s irresistible. Good thing Darth Vader is impervious to comedy.
