Again when he was a Home member from Wyoming, Dick Cheney was a part of a congressional delegation that visited the Soviet Union within the Nineteen Eighties. Throughout a lull within the schedule, Cheney and his colleagues have been sitting round making an attempt to entertain themselves when considered one of their wives determined to manage persona assessments. The outcomes included professions for which the members can be effectively suited.
Cheney’s supreme job? A funeral director.
I briefly fearful that telling this story at this second is perhaps in poor style, on condition that Cheney, the highly effective and polarizing former vp, died Monday at 84 of issues from pneumonia and coronary heart illness. However he was at all times amused by the vignette, which was oft-told in his circles. It was additionally per the “Prince of Darkness” caricature that Cheney readily embraced. In life or loss of life, he wouldn’t have cared a lot both manner.
That was at all times considered one of Cheney’s extra defining charms, or anti-charms: Of all of the political figures I’ve ever written about, I don’t assume any of them paid much less consideration to what anybody else stated or thought of them. Cheney was absolutely safe in what he believed, what he wished, and finally who he was.
He cared, I suppose, about public opinion insomuch because it mattered to his political standing, the promoting of his concepts, and the development of his agenda. However he was detached to self-promotion, and had no want for cheering crowds and fawning protection, sometimes the mom’s milk of political ego. He was actually some of the sheepish and least flamboyant figures ever to skulk via the facility alleys of the capital.
May this learn to some as conceited, disdainful, and callous? Positive. Do you assume it mattered to him—in any respect? Throughout Cheney’s vice presidency, I requested his longtime pal and profession patron, then–Protection Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to evaluate Cheney’s want for public love and appreciation in a job that may be thankless to start with. “Nearly zero,” Rumsfeld instructed me, and I bear in mind questioning why he had bothered to qualify his response with “nearly.”
Within the early phases of Cheney and President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection marketing campaign, I used to be assigned to write down a profile of Cheney for The Washington Put up Type part. It had turn into clear by that time that Saddam Hussein had not harbored weapons of mass destruction; the Iraq Warfare was headed south, and American troops had not, in reality, been “greeted as liberators” in Baghdad, as Cheney had predicted. The vp’s approval scores have been someplace down within the underground bunker (or “safe, undisclosed location”) the place Cheney was typically stated to be housed through the tense post-9/11 years of his vice presidency.
“You by no means get in hassle for one thing you don’t say” was considered one of Cheney’s political mantras, first attributed to Sam Rayburn, the longtime Democratic speaker of the Home from Texas. The veep not often granted interviews, particularly as regards to himself. However for some cause, he let me hold round him a bit. Our first encounter was in his Air Pressure Two cabin, en path to a fundraiser within the Seattle space. “In my expertise, those that have had essentially the most influence are individuals who hold their very own counsel,” he instructed me. “They don’t spend time worrying about taking credit score.” In his personal case, Cheney stated, “It’s not a lot a strategic choice as a lot because it’s what I’m snug with.” This was as shut as Cheney ever got here to unburdening himself in public.
He provided not one of the small discuss or icebreakers that sometimes litter these workouts, though there might need been one apart about how we had the identical haircut. The press had modified a terrific deal, Cheney instructed me once I requested him why he nearly by no means made himself out there. “As an establishment. Developed. Type of factor the place it’s nearly not possible to meet up with a foul story. Factual errors.”
He went on.
“No person goes again to test the accuracy. May be irritating.”
He was not essentially the most expansive interviewee.
However Cheney might show an exceedingly dry, even absurdist humorousness every now and then. Throughout his and Bush’s marketing campaign in opposition to Democratic nominee John Kerry and his operating mate, Senator John Edwards, Cheney had a bit in his stump speech evaluating himself to his VP opponent. “Folks hold telling me that Senator Edwards obtained picked for his attractiveness, attraction, and nice hair,” Cheney would say. “And I say to them, ‘How do you assume I obtained this job?’”
The road at all times obtained large laughs, however it was additionally a sly dig at Cheney’s deeply tanned and closely hair-sprayed counterpart. Cheney had little use for slick characters equivalent to Edwards. And this was lengthy earlier than the latter’s profession imploded over a nasty intercourse scandal leading to a love baby Edwards had along with his marketing campaign videographer.
Cheney’s deep suspicion of peacocks and sycophants was only a sliver of why he despised Donald Trump, his bootlicking MAGA entourageand what typically has turn into of the get together by which the Cheney household was royalty for practically half a century. “In our nation’s 246-year historical past, there has by no means been a person who’s a better risk to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney stated in an advert for his daughter Liz’s unsuccessful reelection marketing campaign in Wyoming in 2022.
Cheney’s contempt for Trump was deep, visceral, and clearly private, contemplating Liz’s fierce resistance after the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and the general public vendetta it stirred in opposition to her. He turned the highest-ranking Republican official to sentence Trump and warn in opposition to his reelection. He did so unequivocally, and conspicuously, in distinction to the decided muteness of the president he had served as deputy. Cheney even endorsed Kamala Harris earlier than the 2024 election, a step that lots of Trump’s most fervent Republican critics couldn’t deliver themselves to take. Contemplate John Bolton, who condemned Trump nonstop after serving as his nationwide safety adviser: Bolton stated that though he couldn’t vote for Trump, he would nonetheless vote Republican. He wrote in Dick Cheney’s identify as a substitute.
Though Cheney was unlikely to maneuver many swing voters at that time (not to mention dislodge many Trump voters), his endorsement of Harris was nonetheless a unprecedented transfer, given how loathed he had been by Democrats when he was Bush’s vp. There was no better boogeyman than Cheney in an embattled administration that was stuffed with them by the top. Cheney made it comically simple at instances. He as soon as instructed a Democratic senator to “go fuck your self” on the Senate flooring. (“Neatest thing I ever did,” he stated later.) And sure, there was that point he shot a pal with a 28-gauge Perazzi shotgun whereas they have been quail looking in Texas. Cheney barely acknowledged the incident, although he did say it was an accident.
Cheney made considered one of his final public appearances in August 2021 at Rumsfeld’s funeralon the grounds of Arlington Nationwide Cemetery. In eulogizing his longtime pal and mentor, Cheney recommended Rumsfeld as being a real Washington authentic. “Nothing about Don was typical or by-product or standard-issue,” he stated.
Nothing about Cheney was by-product or standard-issue, both. Whatever the hatred he drew from Democrats within the aughts and from Trump world publish–January 6, he was bipartisan in his indifference to each. He didn’t care what you thought or want your applause, grudging or in any other case.
