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By Mike Allen "A man of my position, I could talk to anybody I wanted," Dick Cheney told me, winking a conspiratorial eye, "but I choose to talk to you."   I wondered - not aloud, mind you - whether this was true. Could the former vice president really talk to anyone? Could he, for example, get in contact with Javier Bardem? My colleague Michael Calderone and I are working on a script, and Bardem would be perfect as the wayward Wisconsin congressman. How about Sting? Could Dick Cheney really summon Sting? It seemed unlikely, but then I recalled this powerful man's audience with Bono and I wondered no more. How about Barbara Brummet, the girl by whom I was secretly smitten in high school, the girl who never even took the time to sign my yearbook? I seriously doubted that Dick Cheney could have talked to her, but I did not challenge him on the matter. "I like you guys from Politico because you never challenge me on anything," Cheney revealed, guffawing like a creature that guffaws. "I can call you up and tell you any bullshit that I want, I can say that Obama is accommodating the enemy and that my administration bears no responsibility for the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, and you guys will just type it up and call it an interview." It was an interview, wasn't it? At least technically? The three of us alone in the room. Well, Cheney was on the phone, but we had a picture of him beside the speaker to add dramatic realism. And we were quite capable of springing up and asking him a question without a moment's notice, although, as the former president had deftly demonstrated on previous occasions, he was quite capable of hanging up. And after all, it's a reporter's duty to not get in the way of the news. "I can even tell you guys to strike that last paragraph except for the part about Obama, and you'll do it, won't you? I like you guys... Say, I was talking to Javier Bardem the other day, and he said he'd like to see your screenplay. But back to the topic, I think it's becoming increasingly clear that Obama doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism - the idea that the United States is a special nation, that we are the greatest, freest nation mankind has ever known." What about ancient Athens, I pondered replying, the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy? I can visualize it now, Richard B Cheney gliding down the steps of the Parthenon, waving at the river maidens as he makes his way to sit beneath the olive trees and discuss drama and philosophy with Aristotle and Aristophanes, Sophocles and Socrates, all those guys. Would the proud leader not agree that Athens was indeed the pinnacle of a civilization every bit as great and every bit as free as the United States? Of course, that's ancient history, and it's quite possible that a lot of unpleasant details have been softened with the passage of time, a fact that Cheney would have reminded me of had I interrupted him with a question that he surely would have dismissed as irrelevant. "I think of America much as I think of ancient Athens," Cheney declared, "but let's not forget that Athens ultimately declined into a stinking shithole. And under Obama, our own troops are aware that the United States is faced with a similar fate. Every time he delays, defers, debates, changes his position, it begins to raise questions: Is the commander in chief really behind what they’ve been asked to do?" A good interviewer knows the difference between a rhetorical question and a request for information, and I pride myself in the quality of my work, so I quickly changed the topic and asked this great patriot if he would please run for president. "Why would I want to do that?" he shot back. "It's been a hell of a tour and I've loved it. I have no aspirations for further office. Now write this up nice like a good boy." With an exclusive like this, I certainly would waste no time in writing it up, but as a dyed in the wool journalist, no one would ever have the right to tell me to make it nice.