Though he has been out of office for almost five years, there are some in the mainstream media who cannot let go of their hatred for former vice president Dick Cheney. They see Cheney's book tour and his support for his daughter's campaign to be the U.S. Senator from Wyoming as an affront, and believe he has no right to comment on the politics of the day.

In her Wednesday New York Times column, Maureen Dowd lambasted former vice president Dick Cheney for offering his opinion about the [resident when asked by interviewers, and lamented the fact that doctors approved him to run for Vice President over 13 years ago.

One of the best things about the 2008 race was ushering out the incalculably destructive Dick Cheney. Except now, in 2013, he’s once more ominously omnipresent. Even blessed with the gift of a stranger’s heart, and looking so much healthier, he’s still the same nasty bully.

And suddenly, by contrast, George W. Bush becomes a saint in the deluded Dowd mind:

Yet even in this blissed-out state, he still can’t emulate the respectful restraint of his former partner, George W. Bush. He grabs every opportunity to snarl at President Obama, who is still mopping up from the Bush-Cheney misrule, as does his mini-me.

Finally, the ever-sensitive Dowd targets Cheney's heart problem as the savior-that-wasn't:

In his “60 Minutes” interview with Dick Cheney, Sanjay Gupta made it clear that Cheney had gotten special treatment to ascend to the vice presidency, given that he’d already had three heart attacks, the first one at 37. As Dr. Gupta noted, the Bush campaign was concerned enough to check with the famed Texas heart surgeon Denton Cooley, who talked to Dr. Reiner and then informed the Bush team — with no examination — that Cheney was in “good health with normal cardiac function.”

“The normal cardiac function wasn’t true,” Dr. Gupta said to Cheney.

“I’m not responsible for that,” replied the man who never takes responsibility for any of his dark deeds. “I don’t know what took place between the doctors.”

Four months after being cleared, Cheney suffered his fourth heart attack during the 2000 recount and had to get a stent put in to open a clogged artery.

If the doctors had not signed off on Cheney’s heart as “normal,” then Cheney would never have been vice president, and Donald Rumsfeld never would have been defense secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz never would have been his deputy, etc., etc. And W. wouldn’t have been pushed and diverted into Iraq.

In this alternative scenario, “It’s Not a Wonderful Life,” where Cheney is not peddling his paranoia, how many Americans would not have lost their lives and limbs?