seemed like a fine republican candidate, honestly the country was so well and truly over george w. bush and dick cheney, any republican candidate was going to have a hard time after that. cheney in particular left office with so much antipathy against him he could have floated home without an airplane. riding the -- chris christie is leaving office with a 14% approval rating in new jersey. vice president dick cheney would have killed or died for numbers that good. his numbers were even worse than that when he was finishing his time as vice president. but despite that, despite the way that bush and cheney were going out, this new democratic president kept on one of the bush cheney cabinet members. kept on bob gates. and that had really strong political resonance because of how unlikely it seemed in the abstract.