9/11 Occurred When "Mr. Nobody" Was Vice-President?

Pat Buchanan brings us this rather... astonishing observation about Obama:

There is a high probability, if not a near certainty, that, one day, al-Qaeda is going to conduct some spectacular attack on this country or its allies, and Americans will say, “This didn’t happen when people like Cheney were running the show.”

I guess I can accept that, if Buchanan means that Dick Cheney and G.W. were too busy giving away the country to the rich and to various special interest groups to actually be said to be "running the show", but if that's not what he means...

I recognize that when 9/11 is mentioned, some like to pretend that everything that happens under a President's first nine months (or year?) in office didn't occur under that President's "watch", due to it's somehow being attributable to the prior administration. I'm sure they're jumping all over people like David Brooks for falsely attributing the auto and financial industry bailouts to Obama. But even assuming that were an honest argument, Buchanan seems to be attempting to invoke the "Cheney's so tough and mean, nobody would ever do anything like that during 'his watch', while Obama's an effete liberal" line of nonsense so he has no excuse.