Ted Kennedy was a smart guy. When advising Democratic candidates in the south, an apocryphal story has it, he’d tell them, “Let me know if you want me to campaign for you or against you.” He wasn’t so vain as to think that his unpopularity among a segment of white southerners should get in the way of electing Democrats who either actively shared or implicitly advanced his social-justice agenda.

Compare that with John Hannah, Dick Cheney’s former foreign-policy aide. Matthew Yglesias doesn’t go as far in denouncing Hannah as he should. Because Hannah whined that Hillary Rodham Clinton was a big meanie to the Bush administration during a talk with students in Pakistan: “Does anyone advising President Obama and the secretary of state really believe that this kind of partisanship and trash-talking abroad about another American president is really going to buy us much long-term goodwill among either our friends or our adversaries?” Yglesias: “Hannah can’t really be so dumb as to not realize that there’s enormous, enormous, enormous good will to be gained through bashing the despised and discredited Bush administration.” He softens the blow with some sarcasm, ironically.

But look: the dirty not-so-secret is, indeed, Barack Obama is continuing the drone war against al-Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal areas that George Bush began. The Taliban’s miscalculations have bought some time in the court of Pakistani public opinion for what remains an unpopular operation. But George Bush remains a despised symbol of American ugliness — thereby presenting a strategic opportunity for the Obama administration. Unless Hannah has suddenly developed some hidden Exumite/Kilcullenish tendencies, he wants the drone war to continue. Well, the short term strategy is obvious: cheer the Obama administration in denouncing Bush! If he doesn’t do that, we should freeze his bank accounts on the suspicion that he’s actually helping al-Qaeda. You know, the Cheney way.