It’s an intriguing parallel: Father and daughter Republican political figures Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, insulted as warmongers and chicken hawks by different political parties, twenty years apart. But the coverage in the New York Times from 2004 and 2024 couldn’t have been more different.
When Donald Trump attacked Republican turned Kamala Harris supporter Liz Cheney as a “radical warhawk,” he was clearly, in his own crude way, making the same anti-war “chicken-hawk, warmonger!” argument that self-righteous liberals spluttered during the Second Persian Gulf launched by George W. Bush in 2003 – the idea that politicians who advocate for wars without having fought themselves are contemptible, or should volunteer to fight themselves.
Except that 20 years ago, the Times relished those “chicken hawk” attacks on Bush and Republicans, while…
