Dick Cheney is a strange creature. For public consumption he is the cool, principled champion of the American people willing to take hard public stands on their behalf. Even when he does not explicitly voice it, Cheney’s every public pronouncement bears the pious implication that the reason – the only reason – for his actions in the public sphere is this: that he is possessed of a servant’s concern to do what is best for the American people. Despite his outward calm and cool, however, it is clear that Dick Cheney has a smoldering contempt for the everyday Americans whose public interests he claims to serve.

I’m not just talking about the disdainful “So?” he let slip when told that most Americans oppose his ill-conceived war in Iraq. I’m not just talking about the backroom deals he hatched in the White House that lined the pockets of his Halliburton cronies at the expense of thousands of American lives and huge chunks of the treasure of the rest of us. I’m not even talking about his latest attempts to defend the indefensible. What I am talking about is something that even the loudest claims of executive privilege cannot hide, a chronicle set down in black and white by Cheney’s own hand, an accounting of his decisions and actions that reveals what those who benefit from his machinations would rather the American people not see: the real Dick Cheney. I am speaking of Cheney’s voting record as Wyoming’s congressman from 1979 to 1989. Below is a representative sampling of that record. Read it and weep.

While a member of the U. S. House of Representatives as the at-large congressman of Wyoming, Richard B. Cheney:

• Repeatedly voted against programs designed to provide assistance to displaced workers.
• Voted against legislation requiring factory owners to notify employees before closing their plants.
• Cast 10 separate votes against funding nutrition programs for children, including one vote opposing a move to protect food programs for women and infants from budget cuts.
• Repeatedly voted against maintaining funding for Head Start programs.
• Voted against a measure that granted time off for federal employees to care for sick family members.
• Voted against the Hunger Relief Act, which expanded eligibility for the federal food stamp program.
• Voted against providing mortgage assistance for low income home buyers.
• Opposed college student aid programs contained in the Higher Education Act.
• During the recession of the early 1980s, voted to block extension of unemployment benefits, including a provision that would provide health insurance for unemployed workers and their families.
• Voted against the Equal Rights Amendment.
• Voted for Ronald Reagan’s veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act.
• Voted to limit Social Security cost-of-living adjustments for retired Americans living on fixed incomes.
• Was one of only eight members of the House to vote against renewing the Older Americans Act, which provided nutritional and other support services for elderly Americans. (If Cheney’s opposition had succeeded, the entire nutritional program would have effectively been shut down).
• Voted against limiting out-of-pocket expenses for Medicare recipients, most of whom were senior citizens. His votes were so consistently counter to the interests of the elderly that a Cox News Service headline declared, “Senior Groups Call Cheney’s Voting Record a Disaster.”
• Not only did Cheney’s votes tend toward unfairness on domestic issues, he actually voted against sanctioning South Africa’s apartheid regime for its repressive policies. He was also a vocal opponent of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.

From any angle Dick Cheney’s congressional voting record presents a clear window into who he is and has been throughout his public life. Rather than one possessed of a servant’s concern for the American people, he is a man apparently possessed by a startling but consistent contempt for senior citizens, for poor and needy Americans and their children, for desperate workers stripped of their only source of income, and for everyday Americans struggling to educate their children, put food on their tables, and maintain decent homes – in other words, for almost all of those he claims to serve. Cheney’s callous dismissal of the sufferings of others goes far to explain his willingness to sanction the torture of human beings without the least hesitation. Indeed, it may well explain how he could deceive our nation into sending our young into a terrible war based on assertions that he almost certainly knew to be false.

Thus, although he presents himself as a principled champion of the American people, Dick Cheney’s record is in no way the record of a public servant; indeed, he has shown no sign that he cares enough for the real needs and aspirations of the American people to serve us. What is clear, however, is this: Because of his demonstrated contempt for the common folk of this nation, Dick Cheney’s campaign to exonerate his shameful role in the destructive policies of the last eight years deserves not the ear of the American people, but our outrage  — no matter how many flags he drapes himself in.

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. is Professor of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary and the author of The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted (Doubleday, 2006).