Lynne Cheney enters the 'No Spin Zone'

Lynne Cheney enters the ‘No Spin Zone’

Lynne Cheney on Hillary, the Condi Rice situation, and her new book James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," May 6, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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INGRAHAM: In the "Personal Story Segment", Lynne Cheney, the wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney. Mrs. Cheney is the author of numerous best sellers and she's written a new biography out today about one of my favorite founding fathers, it's called "James Madison, A Life Reconsidered" and Mrs. Cheney joins us now from New York. There's a lot to get to.

But let's start first, before we get into the book, with Hillary Clinton, Mrs. Cheney because look she's back in the news. Obviously, the Monica Lewinsky essay in "Vanity Fair" but also of course, more importantly, is this Benghazi deal and her famous what difference does it make comment and now this e-mail emerged with this document dump from the Judicial Watch lawsuit.

What is your take on how this affects her 2016 run?

LYNNE CHENEY, FORMER SECOND LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: Well I think that the issue of Benghazi is devastating. She was Secretary of State, an ambassador is killed, three others, and then there's this huge effort to make it appear as though this has nothing to do with terrorism or an organization affiliated with al Qaeda.

Adding on to all of that, her television appearance, which will be played time and time again, when she was before the Congress saying you know what -- what does this matter anyway? Well, it matters a lot. If she wants to be a leader, she needs to take responsibility for what happened on her watch. And this is just, you know, one in a long series of foreign policy disasters in this administration, and she was Secretary of State.

INGRAHAM: What would you grade her, if you had to give her a grade as Secretary of State? What would it be?

CHENEY: You know Secretary of States are never that outstanding, it seems to me, in modern times in any case, they don't have a role to play that as important as in the past, so maybe average, C, C-minus.

INGRAHAM: Oh a C, oh you must be grading on a curve, Mrs. Cheney. That's an amazing grade C. I can't even, I mean gosh I want you as my professor when I'm in school. You know, one of the things that I'm getting now in e-mails is people saying, well, Bush lied and people died with weapons of mass destruction.

So you're saying they might have lied about a narrative, but the Bush administration was one big lie about Iraq. That's what we're getting on Twitter, by the way.

CHENEY: You know it's astonishing to me how this whole idea becomes distorted when it's about the Clintons. You're doing a section on Monica Lewinsky, I noticed, at the top of the show.

INGRAHAM: Yes.

CHENEY: I -- I really wonder if this isn't an effort on the Clintons' part to get that story out of the way. Would "Vanity Fair" publish anything about Monica Lewinsky that Hillary Clinton didn't want in "Vanity Fair"?

INGRAHAM: That's very interesting. I love the theory. That makes -- that actually makes perfect sense and I'm really mad I didn't think of it first. Who knows but --

CHENEY: Well you and it's decided, it happened at a time where Rand Paul has been criticizing the Clintons. It's happened at a time when Hillary is getting wrapped up to run. Getting it out of the way so we can say one more time it's old news seems to me like a strategy or a tactic, perhaps.

INGRAHAM: And Mrs. Cheney, very quickly on the Condi Rice. She withdraws as commencement speaker at Rutgers. I found it heart breaking but maybe she felt it was a gracious thing to do. Intolerance on campus, is that at an all-time high?

CHENEY: Well in case of -- in the case of ideologically intolerance, as ideologically intolerance it certainly is. It really hasn't diminished and it's not ever from the right. It's always from the left. It's usually commandeered by professors and then students who follow along like a bunch of lemmings. Madison being the father of freedom of conscience would be absolutely appalled at our great institutions of learning have become so intolerant.

INGRAHAM: And Mrs. Cheney and James Madison, such a critical and pivotal framer in our country's history, and to listen to people talking about partisanship today, partisanship is the problem. Everything is partisan. Well yes, some things shouldn't be partisan like national security, I agree with that. But partisanship serves a really important purpose. And you point that out in this terrific new book.

CHENEY: You're right. When the government in power is going in the wrong direction, you need to be an organized opposition. And that was Madison's insight. Parties were not any more highly regarded then than they are now, but he perceived that when Hamilton is trying to make the federal government into an unlimited power, when he's trying to run the national debt up beyond belief, that in that case, it's really important to set yourself in opposition, to be partisan.

INGRAHAM: Right.

CHENEY: And usually, you hear these laments about partisanship from the party in power, the Democrats in this case. The condemnations of partisanship come from Hillary Clinton, for example.

INGRAHAM: Yes I think the Republicans should embrace their obstructionist label and say, yes, we have been obstructing big spending. We tried to obstruct Obamacare. We're obstructing what is a lawless agenda. I mean that's what I would say. You're right, we're obstructionists. And I think James Madison would probably be proud of that. Mrs. Cheney, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

CHENEY: Thank you. Thanks Laura.

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