Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
February 03, 2012 at 07:06 AM
TD Ameritrade Institutional President Tom Bradley sat with former Vice President Dick Cheney at the company’s annual conference on Friday for an interview largely centered on foreign policy. However, it was Bradley’s opening question that drew the biggest surprise of the conversation.
“I hear you are related to Barack Obama. Is that correct?” Bradley asked to laughter.
Cheney responded that yes, in fact, he is related to the president, although he noted that if he were to look back far enough he was probably related to everyone in the room.
“I am a distant cousin of Barack Obama,” he said. “My grandmother and Barack Obama’s mother have a common ancestor. It’s something I’ve admitted to, but he hasn’t.”
“Family holidays must be tense,” Bradley added.
Moving on to more serious topics, Bradley raised the issue of perceived gridlock in Washington and the resulting public frustration.
“We have a very significant problem in that our debt is out of control,” Cheney said. “We have an administration that has no plan to deal with this problem and I feel that’s a significant mistake. They’re taking cuts out of defense, but not out of entitlements.”
The vice president told the story of visiting Ronald Reagan after the first Gulf War and thanking him for the military spending he achieved during his presidency, noting that it takes that long to ready the military.
“I’m not a Barack Obama fan, although I’m not partisan,” he said to more laughter from the audience. “I listened to the State of the Union speech and felt he was playing ‘small ball.’ He wants to limp along to the next election. There was no mention of entitlements. We’re putting our country’s credit rating at risk, our senior citizens at risk, our children’s future at risk and the ability to fund essential government services like defense.”
The solution, he said, is to vote, as it “is up to us.”
Turning to foreign policy, Cheney praised the Obama administration for its use of drones in killing suspected terrorists. He added that the single greatest worry he has is that “it won’t be airline tickets and box cutters, next time. It will be a nuclear weapon.”
He said the sophistication level needed to transport nuclear weapons is not very high, and can be loaded onto a boat or truck.
“We’ve got a proliferation problem,” he added. “North Korea has [a nuclear device], Pakistan, India, Saddam Hussein almost got one but we put him out of business. But in my mind this is the biggest threat.”
