THE NEW COMEBACK KID - AT 8:43 A.M. ET:  Bill Clinton billed himself the comeback kid in 1992, when he resurrected his presidential campaign after revelations of an affair with a woman named Jennifer Flowers. 

Now we must ask, do we have another comeback kid?  Is his name Dick Cheney?

Even some Republicans are horrified.  They don't want Cheney as a symbol of their struggling party.  But Cheney not only refuses to go away, he's emerged as the most articulate spokesman in the party for a strong, tough, uncompromising national-security policy.  Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt compares him to Churchill:

Scorn did not deter Churchill from using his immense visibility to sound the alarm about Hitler from 1932 forward, and his vast array of contacts within the government continually provided him with the updates he needed to push first Stanley Baldwin and then Neville Chamberlain to do more to attend to the U.K.’s defenses.

I thought of Churchill when Democrats and their partners in the mainstream media denounced former Vice President Dick Cheney last week. I remarked to Newsweek’s Howard Fineman on air that the left greets every Cheney appearance as Grendel escaped again from its den, but their defensiveness is extremely revealing.

Cheney isn’t appearing in order to advance his own career, or even to serve his party (as many unnamed Republicans are eager to tell their pals in the Beltway media). Cheney is talking directly to the American people about national security and the fecklessness with which the new president is taking decisions on matters of the utmost importance. 

COMMENT:  I've always thought of Dick Cheney as a superb public servant, willing to sacrifice popularity to do what he thinks is right.  Yes, he represents a risk for Republicans because he's so unpopular right now, but that can shift dramatically, as it did with Churchill.  I think Cheney is performing a valuable service, and I hope he continues to speak out, no matter what The New York Times might think of him.

May 18, 2009