Tom Friedman: This is your brain on drugs

In his recent op-ed, Friedman suggests that if Obama wins the nomination he should consider having Cheney, or a Cheney-like psycho, for vice-president to deal effectively with Iran.

And that brings me back to the Obama-Cheney ticket: When it comes to how best to deal with Iran, each has half a policy — but if you actually put them together, they’d add up to an ideal U.S. strategy for Iran. Dare I say, they complete each other.

You should really sit down for this next bit. Tom's ideal strategy for Iran is basically a police drama. Good cop/bad cop. Dragnet.

If she were taking advantage of Mr. Cheney’s madness, Secretary Rice would be going to Tehran and saying to the Iranians: “Look, I’m ready to cut a deal with you guys, but I have to tell you, back home, I’ve got Cheney on my back and he is truly craaaaazzzzy. You guys don’t know the half of it. He thinks waterboarding is what you do with your grandchildren at the pool on Sunday. I’m not sure how much longer I can restrain him. So maybe we should have a serious nuke talk, and, if it goes well, we’ll back off regime change.”

Instead, we just have Mr. Cheney being Mr. Cheney, but the Bush team neither carrying out his threats nor leveraging them to drive meaningful diplomacy with Tehran. There’s no good cop, it’s just a bad cop/bad cop routine — a big reason our Iran policy has been a failure. It has not stopped the Iranian nuclear program or changed the regime.

In case you haven't noticed, Tom, the country is basically sick of anything remotely associated with this administration. That would include one Dick Cheney. None of the candidates should be channeling anything from the lot of them, if they have any hopes of winning the election.