Former vice president Dick Cheney says President Obama will be a one-term president, blaming his commitment to controversial policies such as health care reform.
“He embarked upon a course of action, when he became president, that didn’t have as much support as he thought he did,” Cheney said in an interview that aired this morning on NBC's Today show.
“Health care reform, expanding the size of government, expanding the deficit – those are all weaknesses as I look at Barack Obama,” he added.
Nevertheless, the former vice president praised Obama for the way he handled the Tuscon shooting and its aftermath last week.
"I'm not an Obama supporter by nature, but I thought it was one of his better efforts," he said. A new poll from ABC News and The Washington Post shows that Obama’s popularity seems to have benefited from it. The poll shows that 54 percent of the country now approves of Obama’s job performance, his highest rating in more than a year, a 5-point jump from last month, and an 8-point climb from September, when Obama’s numbers were at their all-time low.
On the rhetoric debate sparked by the tragic shooting, Cheney argued that while “our politics can get pretty rough at times,” political fights are “one of the strengths of our democracy.”
He did not, however, want to make any predictions about where our political fights will bring us in 2012. When asked about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Cheney said she “has a strong following" but dodged the opportunity to assess her as a candidate.
All Cheney had to offer was an assessment of her reality show, which he said is “very good."
He also addressed the difficulties of his battery-powered heart pump, but told NBC that he has not yet decided whether to seek a heart transplant.
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Ben Terris contributed.
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