Former vice president Dick Cheney sat with Politico for a wide ranging interview earlier this week, going on the record more forcefully than I expected to see just two weeks after the new team’s inauguration.

Cheney asserted that the Bush Administration’s controversial post-9/11 security policies were responsible for preventing attacks on the United States, and suggested that in planning to close Guantanamo and roll back authority for “enhanced” interrogation techniques, members of the Obama Administration might be acting more on the basis of campaign rhetoric than harsh reality.

The ex-veep also offered his (no surprise here) negative view of the nominee troubles President Obama has faced, seeing a potential “critical mass” of Democratic foul-ups that could be a juicy target for Republicans in 2010.

Given President Bush’s own pledge not to be on the radar in the months after leaving office, is Cheney’s willingness to go on offense kosher? I’m not sure. I tend to subscribe to the “bite your tongue” theory of leaving office – best to be neither seen nor heard, at least for a while.

On the other hand, Republicans are essentially leaderless right now and, with due respect to John Boehner’s and Mitch McConnell’s efforts to rein in the stimulus package in Congress, the party could use a fighter.

Few people are better suited to the job. Mr. Cheney’s historically low level of public approval – and the fact that he doesn’t seem even a tiny bit bothered by it – means that he’s got nothing to lose in full throatedly defending his record and the party’s principles.

And his experience in a variety of high level posts over the last 30 years gives him a perspective almost unmatched in modern politics.

If Vice President Cheney is going to be putting his thoughts on the record regularly, it promises to be, at the very least, informative and entertaining. He operated mostly in silence while in office. But on the few occasions when he let his guard down – for instance, telling Pat Leahy to “go f- yourself” or creating distance with President Bush on the issue of gay marriage – he offered glimpses of a guy not afraid to speak his mind with force, clarity, and humor.

He even assesses himself bluntly. Asked by Politico about the GOP’s big 2008 losses, Cheney said electoral defeats are healthy because they give a party the chance to “clean out a lot of the old underbrush – that’s probably me, this time around.”