Dick Cheney confirmed yesterday what Washington had long assumed: that when President George Bush stands for re-election next year, the most powerful but least visible vice-president in US history will be standing by his side.
Cheney’s place on the ticket was not always a foregone conclusion. After all, this is a man who has had four heart attacks and carries a piece of plastic and metal known as a ”pacemaker-plus” inside him to give his heart an electric shock should it lose its normal rhythm.
But the vice-president insisted yesterday that his health could make it through another campaign and another presidential term.
”It’s good enough. Everything is fine,” he said. ”If I ran into problems where I felt I couldn’t serve, I’d be the first to say so and step down.
”I’ve got a doc with me 24 hours a day who watches me very carefully. There’s one outside there now,” he added by way of reassurance, pointing to a nearby door. ”He’s part of the entourage who supports me. The president has one and I have one. So everything looks good to go.”
As rallying cries go, it was less than inspiring. Particularly as the bionic vice-president has other flaws as a running mate. In polls, Americans appear evenly divided over whether to trust him or not. His recent past as chief executive at the Halliburton oil services company at a time when it dabbled in questionable accounting make him an embodiment of America’s corporate ills.
Now, Halliburton’s prominent role in rebuilding Iraq’s oil industry has become a serious embarrassment for an administration trying to project an image of altruism in the Middle East.
Moreover, Cheney is no natural politician. When he joined the Bush campaign, its organisers had planned some traditional meet-and-greet events, only to be told by his minders that ”Mr Cheney does not like to shake hands”.
His public speaking sometimes betrays the less huggable side of Bush’s ”compassionate conservatism” and borders on snarling. Two years ago, he famously derided environmentalism as ”a personal virtue” which had no place in policymaking. He also broke the White House ”no-gloating” rule after the fall of Baghdad, jeering at critics of the military strategy.
As a rule, the White House lets him loose in the media when it wants to bare its teeth, and the rest of the time it keeps him out of sight.
Cheney more or less conceded as much yesterday when he said: ”From time to time, they trot me out when it makes sense to do so. I’m sure as we get closer to the campaign, I’ll be more visible.”
Ari Fleischer, the White House representative, confirmed that Cheney had been signed up for 2004, pointing out that the president had asked him to run again as long ago as last November. Bush clearly believes that, for all his political flaws, Cheney is indispensable.
”He chose Cheney to get help in governing, not to win the election,” said Thomas Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Before being elected president, Bush had five years experience as a state governor; Cheney had been White House chief of staff and defence secretary for the first President Bush in the 1991 Gulf war.
In 2000, the presidential candidate originally asked his father’s trusted aide to help pick a running mate, before apparently coming to admire Cheney’s businesslike demeanour.
That ability to exude quiet solidity had secured jobs for the Nebraska-born, Wyoming-bred Cheney in the past. Legend has it that he was asleep on a fishing trip in 1994 when his executive travelling companions decided that he would make a great chief executive for Halliburton. They told him the news when he woke up.
Bush has been happy to delegate much of the day-to-day running of the government to the vice-president. He was put in charge of the incoming administration’s transition team, allowing him to pick a lot of the new White House staff. In government, he was immediately given the job of running a task force to put together a long-term energy plan, a flagship programme.
The new vice-president was given a staff to match his responsibilities, and his people command respect in the White House. His chief of staff, Lewis ”Scooter” Libby, attends deputy-level meetings with the Pentagon’s Paul Wolfowitz and the state department’s Richard Armitage.
”He’s the most influential vice-president in history,” Mann said. ”He has assembled an extraordinary talented team. Scooter Libby is part of the deputies committee and is actively involved in crucial levels of decision-making. His staff apparatus allows him a role in foreign policy matters and domestic policy.”
Cheney has become steadily more influential since September 11 because, when disaster struck, he had a ready-made plan: one which we have come to know as the Bush doctrine, but which in fact came along in the vice-president’s baggage.
Hawkish
Back in 1992, when he was defence secretary, he asked his two hawkish policy aides, Wolfowitz and Libby, to draw up a long-term vision for national security, known as a defence planning guidance document, which stated that the world’s only superpower should not be cautious about wielding its authority.
”Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival,” it said, and played down the role of the UN in global management: ”The world order is ultimately backed by the US.”
The document, when leaked in 1992, caused embarrassment for the elder Bush and was toned down. But it has been reborn in its original extra-strength version in the younger Bush’s doctrine of strategic pre-emption. The Iraq ”project” was enthusiastically pushed from the moment the younger Bush came to office; Cheney had always regretted not pushing on to Baghdad during the Gulf war in 1991.
But he does not always get his way. He advised Bush against taking his campaign against Saddam Hussein to the UN; in the president’s eyes, that makes him all the more reliable in retrospect.
And he has an additional quality that endears him to the president. He does not covet his job. That partly explains why he is so seldom seen. Vice-presidents are usually keen to be on television because they plan a run at the top job. Cheney suffers from no such impulses.
Then there is his uninspiring public speaking manner, and the security concerns since September 11, which mean that the vice-president has recently spent a good deal of time in the famous ”undisclosed location” — a bunker somewhere in Pennsylvania.
Cheney appears content to wield power in a less visible manner. As long as his heart does not give out, he will continue to be the administration’s hidden hand, and his ideas of America’s role in the world will continue to hold sway.
Rightwinger who had the ear of five presidents
Born: January 30 1941, in Lincoln, Nebraska
Criminal record: Two arrests for drunk driving at age 21 in Wyoming
First big break: Hired in 1969 by the White House office of economic opportunity after he wrote an unsolicited letter of advice to its new boss, Donald Rumsfeld
Big jobs: Youngest White House chief of staff in history (at age 34) for President Gerald Ford, defence secretary for the first President George Bush, chief executive of Halliburton Inc 1995-2000
Things he voted against while a congressman: Equal Rights Amendment, Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, busing to desegregate schools, abortion even in cases of rape or incest, a holiday to commemorate Martin Luther King
Heart attacks: June 1978, September 1984, June 1988, November 2000.
Bionic spare part: Implantable cardioverter defibrillator, known as a ”pacemaker-plus”, installed in June 2001
Famous quotes
”Yeah – big time”, in reply to the current president George Bush informing him on the presidential campaign trail in September 2000 that a certain journalist was a ”major-league asshole”.
”Conservation may be a personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy strategy,” he said at a speech in May 2001 – Guardian Unlimited Â