“In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir” is former Vice President Dick Cheney’s foray into a congested and largely talentless void that belongs almost exclusively to the political autobiography.

For Cheney, the events detailing his rise, his eight years in the White House and his numerous confrontations with other members of George W. Bush’s cabinet are chronicled with an admitted note of vitriol.

His accounts are nothing if not a codicillary rumination attempting to exonerate him of any “presupposed” wrong doing all while attempting to refashion his identity from that of the “unfeeling, robotic overseer” to that of an actual thinking, feeling human — a mission he fails to accomplish.

“In My Time” is largely devoid of any humanity in that Cheney, at no point, (save for a slight mia culpa regarding his misconception that the prolonged violence in Iraq was waning in 2005) ever addresses indiscretions (e.g. The Iraq War, Scooter Libby, Syria, etc.) with any sort of meditation on the negative legacy the Bush administration has left.

Cheney attempts to construct a dramatic recollection of events that draws the reader into his life, but when it’s all over, he only succeeds in authoring a 576-page treatise that could be more easily condensed down to a single statement: “I was right and everybody else was wrong.”

More specifically, Cheney’s heated encounters with Gen. Colin Powell, the administration’s first Secretary of State, over the War on Terror and the nation’s post-9/11 foreign policy are often tinged with a smattering of passive-aggressive enmity that culminates in his almost rapturous admission that Powell’s eventual resignation was “for the best.”

Overall, the memoir is loaded with mind-numbingly unapologetic admissions that Cheney pushed for war in Iraq before any solid evidence could be discovered, that his time at Halliburton yielded him millions in profit at the expense of political objectivity, and that individual liberties can be justifiably suspended or destroyed in favor of a paper-thin semblance of “national security.”

If you are a supporter of Cheney’s then the work will do nothing more than rehash the same topics that most FOX news programs have already done for years now and will only repeat the same talking points we are accustomed to hearing from Cheney.

If you disagree with Cheney’s politics then the book makes an excellent projectile for those random spiders that invade your room.

Rating: D-

To contact Sean M. Tolbert, email sportswriter@occc.edu.