Dick Cheney in the Arena

On the late vice president, and defense secretary, and House leader, etc.

Vice President Dick Cheney speaks to the press in 2007, flanked by senators Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott. (Wikimedia)

Because I am a political journalist, and have worked since the ’90s, I have written about Dick Cheney a lot. (If you have worked since the ’70s, you have written about him even more, of course. Cheney served in the Nixon administration.)

I saw Cheney a bit in the 2000 presidential campaign, when he was the Republican vice-presidential nominee. I took a six-week leave of absence from my job, in the fall, to assist Governor Bush’s speechwriting team.

That was one of my two forays into politics. (In the 2016 Republican primaries, I was involved a bit with Ted Cruz, an old friend.) (Disclosing all the way, of course.)

In 2004, I took a ride with Vice President Cheney on Air Force Two to Bentonville, Arkansas, home of Walmart. The resulting piece, I can’t scare up, on the Internet. I see only the first few paragraphs. Maybe others will have better luck, here.

Dick Cheney died last night, at 84. This morning, I have been going over some things I have written about him, over the years. I would like to do a little excerpting, with a smattering of comments.

***

Cheney had a strange career, in addition to a great and multifaceted one. There came a time when he was villainized by the Left. Then there came a time when he was villainized by the Right. Through it all, he remained Dick Cheney.

***

Let me excerpt a column from 2004:

It’s amazing the extent to which Cheney has been demonized—I mean, become a bogey in Democratic eyes. Some people who have known and worked with Cheney a long time were marveling at this the other day. Cheney was always considered wise, measured, judicious, moderate (certainly in temperament), non-ideological. He was not obviously a candidate for Democratic and worldwide hatred.

But, in some circles, he has become the epitome of wild-eyed, reckless right-wingery. I mean, me, for example, I could understand—but Dick Cheney?

Such is the tenor of the times.

I give you Item No. 2 on David Letterman’s recent top-ten list of Things Overheard at Saddam Hussein’s Court Appearance: “Saddam is the most evil man the world has ever known—not counting Dick Cheney”!

And here is something from 2011:

For decades, Cheney was one of the most respected Republicans in the country. Respected by all sides and factions. This was true when he was with Ford, when he was a House member (and leader), when he was defense secretary. John Tower’s nomination went down, Bush (41) turned to Cheney, and everyone said “Hurrah.” You never heard a bad word about Dick Cheney. He was the ultimate in the sober, sensible, responsible politician-statesman.

But now he’s viewed as a right-wing monster: a Torquemada or Attila the Hun. What the heck happened? I put this question, about image, to Cheney himself.

That was in January 2009, in his last days as vice president.

Said Cheney, “There’s no question, and I’m well aware, that my image today is different from what it was before I took this job, and that I came out of my time—well, in the White House with Ford, or in the Congress, or as secretary of defense, with pretty good standing. A polling question would have been generally positive on who I was and what I’d done.

And yet, said Cheney, there was “no question” that his standing had been “diminished by the last eight years.” He said, “I account for that in a number of ways.”

Those ways are interesting. Instead of pasting a great many paragraphs, I think I will merely link to my article: here.

But let me quote what Cheney said at the end of his detailing, the end of his explanation:

“So it’s been a difficult environment in which to portray yourself as somehow warm and fuzzy. Hillary Clinton referred to me as Darth Vader. I joke that I asked my family if they were offended by that, and they said, ‘No, it humanizes you.’”

***

Cheney left office, with Bush (43), in January 2009. That same year, Rand Paul, soon to be a Republican senator, told a group of students at Western Kentucky University that Cheney had backed the Iraq War in order to enrich his buddies in industry—Halliburton, in particular.

I wrote about this here (among other places).

***

Here was a tweet of mine, in November 2024:

Life throws at you many surprises. I’ve had my share. And one of the biggest is that the Republican Party and the conservative movement would come to talk like Code Pink.

I was responding to this:

***

From a December 2023 post:

For years, when I heard “neocon” used pejoratively, it was mainly from the left. For the last many years, it has been mainly from the right. In the latest Republican presidential debate, Vivek Ramaswamy said, “You can put lipstick on a Dick Cheney—it is still a fascist neocon.”

Ramaswamy’s political views aside, what a repulsive human being.

***

In August 2022, I wrote the following:

I think I will long remember the sight of Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney, absolutely alone on the Republican side of the House chamber. This was during the commemoration of the January 6 attack on the first anniversary ...

***

Also in August 2022, I began a post like this:

A couple of weeks ago, Dick Cheney made an ad for his daughter, Liz: here. In all likelihood, it will be his last political ad. Concerning that ad, a few observations from me.

Let me now paste some of those observations:

It seems to many of us that Dick Cheney did not make that ad to help his daughter win her primary—that appears to be hopeless. Rather, he made it to make a statement.

The ad reminded me why so many of us conservatives admired, and even loved, Dick Cheney: as a congressman, as defense secretary, as vice president. Cheney has not changed at all. But the Right has, dramatically. ...

Cheney begins, “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” I take issue with this: What about the leading Confederates? Still, Cheney has a point, and a case.

Of Trump, Cheney says, “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.” Doesn’t everyone know this is true? Somewhere inside himself? Don’t even those who mouth support of Trump, or excuses for him, know it?

“He is a coward,” says Cheney. “A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters.” There has been a good deal of discussion recently about what constitutes real manhood. In a speech, the chairman of the Claremont Institute said, “Trump is a manly man.” A lot of people think that about Putin as well—swaggering around bare-chested and so on. ...

Says Cheney in his ad, “Lynne and I are so proud of Liz for standing up for the truth, doing what’s right, honoring her oath to the Constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so.”

Do not underestimate the degree of fear among Republicans—both in electoral politics and in the media. If you are anti-Trump, a lot of people will tell you that they agree with you, in whispers. But raise their voice, they are unlikely to do.

I concluded that post,

All of us have politicians we admire (though I know some people who have sworn off politicians altogether). My list is pretty darn short, I’m sorry to say. These days, a great many people on the right—the young, especially—admire Trump and his many imitators. Dick Cheney is my kind of pol, my kind of conservative. He is a dinosaur. But I hope that America produces more like him, for coming generations.

***

From a column in September 2024:

George W. Bush will not endorse Donald Trump. Mike Pence—who served as Trump’s vice president—will not endorse Donald Trump. Dick Cheney—who served as George W. Bush’s vice president—will not endorse Donald Trump. Neither will Cheney’s daughter Liz—who, as recently as 2021, was No. 3 in the GOP House leadership. The Cheneys, in fact, have endorsed Kamala Harris.

Republicans, many of them, are saying, “Traitors! Sell-outs! RINOs!” Trump himself called Dick Cheney a “RINO” (“Republican in name only”). I agree with Trump, in a way. The Republican Party is utterly transformed, inhospitable to the likes of Dick Cheney. It should be noted, however, that Cheney has been a Republican for a lot longer—decades—than Trump has.

If I were a Republican, I might ask: “What have we done, to get Dick and Liz Cheney voting Democratic this year?” But I doubt that many will ask that question.

***

Above, I mentioned questioning Dick Cheney in January 2009. A bunch of us were invited to the vice-presidential residence, at the Naval Observatory, to have lunch with Cheney and pose questions to him. I wrote up the lunch here.

For excerpts, I’ll start with this:

As we were chatting before lunch, we got to talking about the 1976 presidential campaign, for some reason: how Ford came from 30 points down and almost won. “If only you’d had a couple more weeks,” I said. (Cheney was Ford’s chief of staff.) “Yes,” said the veep. Then we talked about Ford’s Poland gaffe, in the debates—what a killer.

Cheney has what seems to be an extraordinary memory, by the way: remembers events and episodes in considerable detail.

Another, and related, excerpt:

... the vice president dropped a political tidbit I had never heard before—in all my reading, and all my asking and listening. We were back on the ’76 campaign. “Before the convention that year, we were searching for a vice president, because Nelson Rockefeller was out. ... And we had Teeter [Bob Teeter, the pollster from Michigan] do a poll on Ronald Reagan for vice president. And it showed clearly that Reagan was the best pick for Ford as vice president. And we took it up to Camp David to meet with the president to show it to him, and he threw us out. He didn’t want to hear it.”

In 2000, George W. Bush charged Cheney with finding a running mate for him. Of course, Bush would pick Cheney himself.

How do you like the following excerpt?

Somebody asked about Cheney’s conservatism—conservatives have always felt that they have a friend in him. Cheney answered amusingly:

“When the president first started talking to me about this job, one of the things I asked him to be able to do was go to Austin and sit down with him on a Saturday morning—and Karl Rove—and walk through all the reasons why we shouldn’t pick me, why I was a bad idea. Sort of a self-vetting process. We talked about the fact that I was from a small state with three electoral votes, which he was going to carry anyway; that I’d had three heart attacks; that I’d been kicked out of Yale twice—laid all the stuff out there. I also said, ‘I’m pretty conservative, you need to know that.’ And I said, ‘No, I mean really conservative!’”

Of interest:

Someone asked about regrets. Cheney said, “From a policy standpoint, I wish we’d been able to make more progress on the Social Security issue. We came out of the ’04 election and the president felt strongly about it, and we worked hard on it for a year—town halls all over the country ... But we could never really get any traction on it.

(Now, of course, neither party dreams of reforming entitlements, despite the fiscal threat to the country.)

Another question:

How about the incoming vice president? Smiling, almost chuckling, Cheney said, “Well, I like Joe [Biden]. He’s a—he is an engaging fellow. He and his wife came here and we had a very pleasant hour as we showed them around the house. ... I think it would be fair to say it was a lot easier, smoother, than when we came to call on the Gores eight years ago.”

Something else to consider—something biggish:

Near the end of our lunch, someone asked, “Is there a hand of Providence in American history?” Cheney said, “That’s a very interesting question. I guess I think—without answering your question directly, I think America is a very special place, that it’s unique in the history of the world; that there was clearly genius involved in the establishment of the Republic; and that it has been either extraordinarily fortunate from time to time, or one can find the hand of Providence, if you will, in what’s happened to the nation over the years.

“I just got through reading Tried by War by James McPherson, a great book about Lincoln and his generals, and what he went through ...

That little write-up—long write-up, actually—I concluded as follows:

I am one of those who consider Dick Cheney—Richard B. Cheney, to get formal—one of the best public servants of recent times. He is smart, decent, and versatile. He is thoughtful about big issues and impressive with details. He knows the government inside out. He is part politician, part policy wonk. He is also a leader. His opinions, and the ways at which he arrives at them, are utterly sound. He is a superb communicator (when he chooses to communicate). His temperament is so good as to be enviable.

And the widespread image of him as some sort of villain is sick. Sick.

I said I wished Cheney had had a chance to be president, and I wished he could be president still. “How about that?”

Yeah, how ’bout that.