Vice presidents are selected for many reasons. They may balance the ticket, helping the top man in a region or a section of the electorate where he is not strong, just as Lyndon Johnson helped John F Kennedy in 1960 to win his home state of Texas (and with it, the White House).
Or they may reinforce a candidate’s appeal, just as Al Gore underlined Bill Clinton’s message of youth, energy and new ideas in 1992.
In 2000, Dick Cheney fit neither model. His home state of Wyoming was a negligible electoral prize, while in contrast to George W. Bush’s promises of change, he seemed the incarnation of eternal, bureaucratic Washington — so much so that some feared he would lose, not win, votes for his boss.
Yet, from this unpromising start, he turned himself into the most influential vice president in modern U.S. history, transforming a job once famously described as “not worth a bucket of warm spit” into a U.S. version of the office of prime minister, subordinate to, but almost coequal of, the presidency itself.
That summer, Cheney was not the obvious first choice for running mate. But four years in charge of the Pentagon under the elder George Bush had sealed his place as “one of us” for the fiercely protective Bush family clan, which prizes loyalty above all else.
After securing the Republican nomination, the younger Bush named Cheney to lead his search team for a vice president. A few weeks later, he concluded that the head he really wanted belonged to none other than the head-hunter himself.
In fact, the choice made eminent sense. Cheney did offer attributes — of gravitas, top-level experience and knowledge of foreign policy issues — that Bush at that stage could never match.
It soon became clear he would have an authority and influence unrivalled by any 20th-century predecessor — so much so that the president, not the vice president, was said to be the proverbial “heartbeat from the Oval Office”.
The jibe played on Cheney’s long history of heart trouble. But it also reflected how the former Congressman, cabinet member and White House chief of staff was shaping policy across every field of the government with which he had been associated, in one role or another, for over three decades. If anything, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the defining moment of the Bush presidency, only cemented his power.
Early that terrible day, while Bush was on a scheduled trip to Florida to promote his education reforms, it was Cheney, from the situation-room bunker deep beneath the White House, who took charge in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.
More than anyone, he convinced Bush that terrorism was an existential threat to the U.S.. He was arguably the driving force behind the invasion of Iraq, utterly persuaded of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein, and dismissive of any intelligence that contradicted that view.
Cheney was obsessed with secrecy, with American power, and preserving the authority of the president to project that power as he saw fit. In the months after 9/11, he operated from a “secret, undisclosed location” — a phrase that would become rich fodder for the late-night comedians.
Reticent in habit but steely of purpose, Cheney was often seen as mentor of the neo-conservatives who inspired U.S. foreign policy and who, since the late 1990s had advocated the invasion of Iraq to promote reform across the Middle East.
But the vice president’s belief in the use of force reflected less American idealism than a Hobbesian pessimism, that the world was a dark jungle in which only the strongest and most ruthless would survive.
