Donald Trump is the most-disliked presidential candidate since polling firms started tracking Americans’ distaste for major-party contenders. While Hillary Clinton is the second-most-loathed candidate of modern times, she’s still no competition for the Republican nominee. Is there anyone on this or any other planet who’s sufficiently disliked to lose to Trump in a one-on-one election? In the runup to Nov. 8, we’ll attempt to answer that question by presenting a series of hypothetical presidential matchups. First up: Dick Cheney vs. Donald Trump. Read the arguments in favor of both candidates below, then vote in the poll at the bottom of the story.
Vote for Cheney: Ugh! The only thing that matters is that Dick Cheney is an adult politician who has experience managing the federal government. He understands how the government and all of its branches work. We could get cute here and litigate who would be better or worse on any particular issue. But those are secondary questions. The only reasonable way to frame this debate is, which one of these two men is qualified and capable to serve as president? Cheney is. Trump isn’t.
Just for kicks, let’s get into those secondary questions. The biggest concern with Cheney is that he would get us into another war within hours of taking office. That’s not great! Despite his unearned reputation for dovishness, Trump seems more likely than Cheney to nuke some country because it looked at him funny. Beyond foreign policy, the only other policy issue that Cheney really cares about is deregulating energy, so he and Trump are in the same ship there. Neither Cheney nor Trump cares about spending, so there wouldn’t be some major push to gut the welfare state in either president’s regime.
Speaking of getting too cute: The argument that a competent authoritarian (Cheney) would somehow be scarier than an incompetent authoritarian (Trump) is stupid. You want a competent person in charge of something as critical as the United States government, duh. —Jim Newell
Vote for Trump: The question here is not whether it would be a good thing to give Donald Trump unlimited despotic powers. It would not. The question is, given our system of checks and balances, which of these people would do more damage as president? Dick Cheney is the answer.
First, the current GOP nominee has been a failure at everything he’s tried other than being a clownish showman. There’s no reason to think he will become hyper-competent as president of a divided Washington, where the courts and a likely Democratic filibuster in the Senate—not to mention a contentious relationship with important members of the House—would prevent him from enacting his unconstitutional and impractical agenda. Cheney, meanwhile, has shown himself to be an effective bureaucrat. The former vice president would get more bad stuff done.
Second, Cheney is a hyper-partisan, hyper-conservative politician who is determined to score points for his team at all costs. Trump’s positions, meanwhile, have changed with the wind, and he has shown little interest in actual governing. Trump will get bored on Day 1. Cheney will govern with ferocity for four years.
Finally, and most importantly, the next president will exert enormous influence over foreign policy. Despite his ugly rhetoric about Muslims, Trump is at heart a fairly typical isolationist. Cheney is America’s arch-interventionist. He has said “I was right” about the Iraq war, has repeatedly suggested we need a large troop presence to fight ISIS, and has long advocated military action against Iran. With a President Cheney, American aggression in the Middle East would reach new heights, with consequences much more disastrous than the already extremely disastrous invasion of Iraq. That is the scariest thing either man would be able to accomplish as president, and only one of them has the capacity and the desire to pull it off. —Jeremy Stahl
