The Role Of Dick Cheney
Bryan Bender, The Boston Globe, 03 Nov. 2004
Four years ago, candidate Dick Cheney was a reassuring presence as George W. Bush's running mate. A former secretary of defense and White House chief of staff, he provided balance to Bush's relative inexperience. Even his Democratic challenger for the vice presidency, Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, remarked in their 2000 debate that"I don't have anything negative to say about him."
This year, however, according to political analysts from both parties, Vice President Cheney was the most divisive politician in one of the meanest campaigns in modern history, stoking passions on both sides of the divided electorate. In the 2004 vice presidential debate, it took his Democratic counterpart, Senator John Edwards, only a few minutes to bore in:"Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people."
Cheney's transformation from rock-solid elder statesman to lightning rod is emblematic of the deepening doubts about the country's direction and the polarization of the electorate, several specialists said.
"Cheney has been very involved and influential and he has been the driving force behind some of the most controversial policies of the Bush administration," said Joel Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University and an authority on the vice presidency."It transforms him from being a figure who in 2000 provided some reassurance and gravitas to personifying many of the most controversial elements of the Bush first term."
In the view of many administration critics, Cheney epitomizes all that is wrong with the Bush presidency: ideologically driven, unilateral in dealing with foreign affairs, secretive, and beholden to the interests of big business. As a key architect and defender of the invasion of Iraq, the vice president became the poster child for liberal critics of the war.
"There is a sense on the part of the critics that there is a cabal there that plotted the feckless Iraq war and Cheney is the number one honcho," said William Luechtenberg, a presidential scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
However, Cheney remained a key weapon for his boss, attacking the Democratic ticket with some of the most vitriolic rhetoric of the campaign, such as when he suggested in September that a John F. Kerry presidency would bring more terrorism.
He served up a heavy diet of political red meat to religious conservatives and other members of the president's Republican base while making countless fund-raising trips around the country.
"For Republicans he has been the number one speaker, fund-raiser, and staunch symbol of the party," said Lee Edwards, a historian of conservative political thought at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
"He is looked upon as somebody who is there to offer advice and counsel and has been the president's right-hand man."
"For the Republican true believers, it is Cheney who is seeing to it that Bush will stay the course and he will not stray to the path of moderation as his father did," said Leuchtenberg.
Cheney reemerged on the scene in 2000 while serving as chief executive of Halliburton Corp., a Texas-based energy services conglomerate. Asked to head up Bush's search for a running mate, he instead became the vice presidential choice himself. He went to work convincing voters that Bush would have a top-rate, tested team in the White House. But he steadily became more and more controversial after the contested 2000 election was settled.
He was accused of pulling the strings in the White House. Democrats charged that he drafted a national energy policy behind closed doors with the advice of American's oil companies. And his role in the Iraq war and the economic boon it became for his old company was powerful fodder for the Bush administration's political opponents.
"Dick Cheney is a person who makes people dislike George Bush even more," said presidential historian Stephen Hess, with the Brookings Institution in Washington."Alternatively, the true believers in Bush probably feel good about the vice president."
Cheney is hardly the first controversial vice president. Hubert Humphrey was seen as the salesman for an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam under Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s. Spiro Agnew, vice president under Republican President Richard Nixon, unleashed some of the nastiest attacks on antiwar protesters in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
But while it is traditional for the number two on the ticket to go on the attack, Cheney ignited strong feelings on both sides like no other American vice president in decades, according to many analysts.
"Cheney mobilizes both bases," said Goldstein."That is really a unique development in the modern vice presidency."
Added John Zogby, a Democratic pollster:"In 2000, he played a pivotal role. He gave Bush seriousness, experience, maturity, a steady hand. This time, in a divided nation, he was the great divider."
Four years ago, candidate Dick Cheney was a reassuring presence as George W. Bush's running mate. A former secretary of defense and White House chief of staff, he provided balance to Bush's relative inexperience. Even his Democratic challenger for the vice presidency, Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, remarked in their 2000 debate that"I don't have anything negative to say about him."
This year, however, according to political analysts from both parties, Vice President Cheney was the most divisive politician in one of the meanest campaigns in modern history, stoking passions on both sides of the divided electorate. In the 2004 vice presidential debate, it took his Democratic counterpart, Senator John Edwards, only a few minutes to bore in:"Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people."
Cheney's transformation from rock-solid elder statesman to lightning rod is emblematic of the deepening doubts about the country's direction and the polarization of the electorate, several specialists said.
"Cheney has been very involved and influential and he has been the driving force behind some of the most controversial policies of the Bush administration," said Joel Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University and an authority on the vice presidency."It transforms him from being a figure who in 2000 provided some reassurance and gravitas to personifying many of the most controversial elements of the Bush first term."
In the view of many administration critics, Cheney epitomizes all that is wrong with the Bush presidency: ideologically driven, unilateral in dealing with foreign affairs, secretive, and beholden to the interests of big business. As a key architect and defender of the invasion of Iraq, the vice president became the poster child for liberal critics of the war.
"There is a sense on the part of the critics that there is a cabal there that plotted the feckless Iraq war and Cheney is the number one honcho," said William Luechtenberg, a presidential scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
However, Cheney remained a key weapon for his boss, attacking the Democratic ticket with some of the most vitriolic rhetoric of the campaign, such as when he suggested in September that a John F. Kerry presidency would bring more terrorism.
He served up a heavy diet of political red meat to religious conservatives and other members of the president's Republican base while making countless fund-raising trips around the country.
"For Republicans he has been the number one speaker, fund-raiser, and staunch symbol of the party," said Lee Edwards, a historian of conservative political thought at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
"He is looked upon as somebody who is there to offer advice and counsel and has been the president's right-hand man."
"For the Republican true believers, it is Cheney who is seeing to it that Bush will stay the course and he will not stray to the path of moderation as his father did," said Leuchtenberg.
Cheney reemerged on the scene in 2000 while serving as chief executive of Halliburton Corp., a Texas-based energy services conglomerate. Asked to head up Bush's search for a running mate, he instead became the vice presidential choice himself. He went to work convincing voters that Bush would have a top-rate, tested team in the White House. But he steadily became more and more controversial after the contested 2000 election was settled.
He was accused of pulling the strings in the White House. Democrats charged that he drafted a national energy policy behind closed doors with the advice of American's oil companies. And his role in the Iraq war and the economic boon it became for his old company was powerful fodder for the Bush administration's political opponents.
"Dick Cheney is a person who makes people dislike George Bush even more," said presidential historian Stephen Hess, with the Brookings Institution in Washington."Alternatively, the true believers in Bush probably feel good about the vice president."
Cheney is hardly the first controversial vice president. Hubert Humphrey was seen as the salesman for an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam under Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s. Spiro Agnew, vice president under Republican President Richard Nixon, unleashed some of the nastiest attacks on antiwar protesters in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
But while it is traditional for the number two on the ticket to go on the attack, Cheney ignited strong feelings on both sides like no other American vice president in decades, according to many analysts.
"Cheney mobilizes both bases," said Goldstein."That is really a unique development in the modern vice presidency."
Added John Zogby, a Democratic pollster:"In 2000, he played a pivotal role. He gave Bush seriousness, experience, maturity, a steady hand. This time, in a divided nation, he was the great divider."