Former Vice President Dick Cheney dies at 84 : NPR

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who extolled the ability of the presidency, died Monday on the age of 84, his household stated in an announcement.

The trigger was problems of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular illness, the assertion stated. Cheney had handled a historical past of coronary heart issues.

“Dick Cheney was an amazing and good man who taught his kids and grandchildren to like our nation, and to stay lives of braveness, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the assertion stated. “We’re grateful past measure for all Dick Cheney did for our nation. And we’re blessed past measure to have beloved and been beloved by this noble large of a person.”

In an announcement, former President George W. Bush, who picked Cheney as his vice chairman, stated the loss of life “is a loss to the nation and a sorrow to his pals. Laura and I’ll keep in mind Dick Cheney for the first rate, honorable man that he was.”

Bush added that Cheney “was a relaxed and regular presence within the White Home amid nice nationwide challenges. I counted on him for his sincere, forthright counsel, and he by no means failed to present his finest.”

An inauspicious starting

There was little in Cheney’s adolescence to foreshadow the immensely influential position he would someday play on the highest ranges of American politics. Born the son of a authorities conservation employee in Lincoln, Neb., in 1941, he would flunk out of Yale College and work as a lineman for an influence firm in his new residence state of Wyoming. Toss in a pair of drunken-driving convictions, and it is an inauspicious younger maturity.

However flip it round Cheney did: marriage to his highschool sweetheart, Lynn; two kids; a school diploma on the College of Wyoming; graduate faculty on the College of Wisconsin.

Whereas Cheney was turning his life round, the U.S. was caught within the throes of the Vietnam Warfare. Cheney supported that struggle however by no means fought in it. He obtained 5 army deferments. Critics would seize upon this a long time later, as Cheney helped lead the U.S. into one other controversial struggle — this one in Iraq.

Abnormal to extraordinary

The longer term vice chairman started his political profession as a congressional intern in 1969. That very same yr he went to work for a future accomplice within the Bush administration — Donald Rumsfeld, who ran an economics workplace within the Nixon White Home.

Cheney left the White Home earlier than Nixon’s resignation, however in 1974 he was again working for the brand new president, Gerald Ford. Cheney moved up shortly, turning into Ford’s chief of employees on the age of 34.

It was then that he started to develop a philosophy that will come to full flower within the White Home of George W. Bush. His perception was that the ability of the presidency should be not solely protected, but in addition restored. Within the Seventies, he watched as Congress enacted reforms in response to Watergate and to Vietnam.

“We have seen the Warfare Powers Act, an anti-impoundment management act, and time after time after time, administrations have traded away the authority of the president to do his job,” he stated in a 2002 interview on Fox Information. “We’re not going to try this on this administration. The president is sure and decided to defend these ideas and to cross on this workplace, his and mine, to future generations in higher form than we discovered it.”

Warfare, a recurring theme

In 1978, Cheney ran for Congress in Wyoming and received. That was additionally the yr he suffered the primary of a collection of coronary heart assaults. He served in Congress for a decade and eventually gave up his seat to turn into secretary of protection for President George H.W. Bush.

This job introduced Cheney’s first confrontation with Saddam Hussein, when he directed Operation Desert Storm within the Center East. The struggle ended shortly after Iraqi troops had been evicted from Kuwait. On the time, there have been some who felt the U.S. ought to proceed all the best way to Baghdad and topple Saddam’s regime. President Bush declined; in 1994, Cheney defended that call.

“The notion that we must now go to Baghdad and by some means take management of the nation strikes me as an especially severe one by way of what we would must do as soon as we bought there,” he stated. “You’d most likely must put some new authorities in place. It isn’t clear what sort of authorities that will be, how lengthy you’d have to remain. For the U.S. to get entangled militarily in figuring out the end result of the wrestle over who’s going to control in Iraq strikes me as a traditional definition of a quagmire.”

Cheney left the Pentagon when the primary President Bush misplaced to Invoice Clinton. Two years later, he flirted with a presidential run of his personal however as an alternative headed to the personal sector, becoming a member of the enormous vitality companies firm Halliburton.

Altering the vice presidency — and overseas coverage

The job made Cheney a rich man, however he stayed concerned in conservative politics. In 2000, he was requested by Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush to guide the seek for a operating mate. Bush later made a shock announcement that he had chosen none apart from Cheney.

Dick Cheney and George W. Bush wave to the group throughout Bush’s second inauguration on Jan. 20, 2005.

Mark Wilson/Getty Photos

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Mark Wilson/Getty Photos

In workplace, Cheney grew to become a lightning rod for critics of the administration. Cheney additionally redefined the workplace of the vice chairman. He grew to become President Bush’s closest adviser and a dominant participant in shaping coverage. Critics alleged that Cheney was actually the person in cost on the White Home.

The occasions of Sept. 11, 2001, solely bolstered this notion. Whereas Bush was in Florida that day, Cheney was on the White Home. He was actually carried by Secret Service brokers to an underground bunker. In an interview years afterward NBC’s Meet the Press, Cheney stated it was he who advised Bush to not return to the White Home.

“I stated, ‘Delay your return. We do not know what is going on on right here however it appears to be like like, you already know, we have been focused,'” Cheney stated, including that “issues that we did afterward that day tied on to guaranteeing presidential succession.”

After the Sept. 11 assaults, Cheney advocated an aggressive new overseas coverage during which potential threats can be met with swift, preemptive motion. Now not would the U.S. look forward to an enemy to strike first. He helped promote the Iraq Warfare by issuing dire warnings to the American folks. On the identical time, he famously predicted that the mission itself can be comparatively straightforward.

On Meet the Press, Tim Russert, who then hosted the present, requested Cheney if the American folks had been prepared for a protracted, bloody battle.

“I do not suppose it is prone to unfold that approach, Tim, as a result of I actually do consider we might be greeted as liberators,” Cheney stated.

Because the struggle dragged on, Democrats seized that assertion as proof of how Cheney’s willpower to go to struggle had clouded his judgment. There was speak that his views had modified from his earlier days in politics.

Controversy follows Cheney

Whereas Cheney’s disposition was by no means significantly sunny, critics assailed the vice chairman as a relentlessly grim determine. Late-night comics known as him Darth Vader. Even President Bush had enjoyable along with his vice chairman’s picture on Halloween one yr.

“This morning I used to be with the vice chairman,” Bush advised reporters. “I used to be asking him what costume he was planning. He stated, ‘Effectively, I am already sporting it,’ after which he mumbled one thing concerning the darkish aspect of the power.”

There have been different controversies that dogged Cheney because the Bush administration’s recognition plummeted in its second time period. In 2007, his chief of employees and prime adviser, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted of perjury in an investigation into the leaking of the identify of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. Cheney was not implicated within the case legally, however he was tainted by the scandal nonetheless.

Then, in what was one of many more strange incidents involving somebody as high-ranking an official as Cheney, he unintentionally shot and wounded a pal, lawyer Harry Whittington, within the face and chest with birdshot pellets throughout a 2006 weekend quail-hunting journey at a Texas ranch.

Even in an odd story like this, a number of the traditional Cheney traits, similar to secrecy, had been on show. The story did not come out for 2 days, and when it lastly did, Cheney himself took days longer to discuss it, lastly doing an interview with Fox Information.

On Cheney’s remaining day in workplace, he sat in a wheelchair, the results of an accident, bundled up in opposition to the frigid chilly, and watched as President Barack Obama was sworn in.

Out of workplace, he emerged as a frequent and outspoken critic of the Obama administration, even accusing the president of not understanding that the U.S. was at struggle.

In February 2010 he made a shock look at CPAC, the conservative political motion convention in Washington. The gang erupted.

It was one of many final moments of huge public adulation for Cheney. With the rise of Donald Trump, Cheney’s model of politics and his interventionist overseas coverage fell out of favor within the social gathering. Trump would typically lambaste Cheney for launching what he known as “eternally wars.”

It carried into the subsequent era as Trump attacked Cheney’s daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), when she voted for Trump’s impeachment after a riot on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

Trumps relentless criticism of her contributed to Liz Cheney’s defeat when she ran for reelection in 2022. Alongside the best way, her feather appeared in tv spots on her behalf.

“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,” Dick Cheney stated within the advert.

It was his final large public second within the political enviornment. Two years later, he would endorse Democrat Kamala Harris over Trump for president.

Ultimately, the ability of the Cheney identify was enormously diminished in GOP politics. His legacy grew to become one among contradictions: Trump supporters despised him, whereas some Democrats embraced him — if reluctantly — and nonetheless many others would at all times condemn him as a struggle prison for his position in Iraq.

Now Cheney has died, with a legacy in authorities service, overseas coverage and the stability of energy between the branches of presidency. Irrespective of his contradictory legacy, he leaves behind a private stamp on a presidency better than any vice chairman earlier than him.