My first entry to the TPMCafe Book Club discussion of Angler is here, and in it I correct something I think I misjudged five years ago:

A couple years ago I co-wrote a profile of Cheney that contended that there was no Bush 41 or Bush 43 version of Cheney -- there was only ever different circumstances that constrained or liberated Cheney to put his instincts into practice. (Given that both Bart and court stenographer Steve Hayes generally agree, I think the contention has held up.) In retrospect, I wish we had gone further in developing a grand unified theory of Cheney. We reported too much that Cheney was a sort of early neoconservative, eager to utilize American power to promote a more democratic world out of a conviction that such a thing was necessary for U.S. national security. Since the piece was published -- and thanks to books like Angler -- I've come to believe we misread our evidence. Cheney will simply search for whatever rationale he can find for the usage of executive power. That's how he can, for instance, harmonize his early-90s-to-2000 opposition to invading Iraq with his late-2001-and-onward fervor for precisely such a thing.