Editorial Smackdown

Regular readers know I'm reticent to get behind the current Executive Branch. For all the unprecedented challenges W and Co. have had to face, they have not put the puck in the net with the frequency I expect.

That being said, former VP Walter Mondale went off his medication and submitted a real clinker to Minneapolis paper.

I've never seen a former member of the House of Representatives demonstrate such contempt for Congress -- even when it was controlled by his own party. Nor does he exhibit much respect for public opinion, which amounts to indifference toward being held accountable by the people who elected him.

Fortunately, an adult has chimed in to offer a better-reasoned counterpoint:

Far from being the caricature of Dr. Strangelove that Mondale makes him out to be, Vice President Dick Cheney has proven to be a formidable and reassuring presence in an era of danger and tumult, only a fraction of which virtually paralyzed President Jimmy Carter's administration.

For Mondale to now give in to the partisanship afflicting his contemporaries and complain because Cheney is performing the job more ably than he did makes the former vice president appear no better than the petty leaders who now populate the Democratic Party and diminishes his lifetime of public service.

Shoot . . . score!