Anni, You're Breaking My Heart!

Wow, Steve Hayes reads an awful lot into Hillary Clinton's light joke about Dick Cheney being "Darth Vader." As the author of Cheney's definitive biography, he's well-equipped to prove that Cheney isn't a Sith Lord.

Calling Cheney "Darth Vader" is certain to get her lots of media attention, even if the rest of her comments were, in their own way, a backhanded compliment. (Even Republicans on Capitol Hill have long regarded Cheney as the Bush administration's enforcer. "When I'd get a phone call from the vice president that was bad news, because he wanted me to do something," former speaker of the House Dennis Hastert told me. "When I'd get a call from the president it was an attaboy or a slap on the back for getting something done. Dick was going to call—there was a tough deed to follow.")

I don't think this anecdote makes Cheney look much better. "All of those awesome achievements of the last Republican Congress? That was Dick, baby. You're welcome." (And who do you figure is easier to boss around: Denny Hastert or Grand Moff Tarkin?)

A better line of attack against Clinton might be her selective cultural illiteracy. Darth Vader is, of course, a tragic figure pushed into a career of planetary genocide by evil men who exploit his naive love of power. Both men are bionic, true, but Vader's first technological enhancements were the result of wounds suffered in battle with the Sith. When his nation called on him to fight in the Clone Wars, Vader didn't have "other priorities."

A long time ago in a Weekly Standard issue far, far away, Jonathan Last made the definitive case for the Empire.