Indiscretion and self-promotion are high crimes in Cheney’s world. His Secret Service code name was once “Backseat,” and not by accident. From his days as a whiz-kid chief of staff to President Gerald Ford, he has been both faithful subordinate and ultimate insider. As a vice presidential running mate, Cheney, now 59, fits seamlessly into the culture of the Bush family, where loyalty and team play count for just about everything. Cheney the candidate makes Al Gore look almost electric, something many Republicans discovered when he took a short-lived look at entering the 1996 presidential race. But he also brings a resume that may reassure voters with doubts about Bush’s depth. And Bush clearly aims to use Cheney’s reputation for probity and plain-speaking as a contrast to Bill Clinton’s evasions. In a debut rally at the Casper, Wyo., high school Cheney attended, Bush described his new partner as a man who “knows what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”
But Cheney’s rollout also hit some bumps. His heart problems–three attacks and a bypass since 1978–raised questions. So did his rigorously conservative voting record, which Democrats quickly began to pick apart. Cheney’s moderate and quietly congenial style made his legislative scorecard a surprise for those who thought congressional conservatives come only in the Tom DeLay and Jesse Helms models. But Cheney, vehement defender of Ollie North and foe of social spending and abortion rights, was no moderate in 10 years (1979-89) as Wyoming’s sole House member:
Cheney opposed a 1985 ban on armor-piercing “cop-killer” bullets. He says that gun violence can be curbed by enforcing existing laws. He voted against continuing Head Start in 1986, although he now says he would support the preschool progam. A Westerner instinctively wary of federal interference, he fought initiatives protecting clean water and endangered species. One exception: voting to protect Wyoming wilderness from oil and gas drilling. Cheney opposed economic sanctions against apartheid South Africa in 1986, and voted against a resolution calling for Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. He says he believed that sanctions would only harm black workers. As for Mandela, conservatives complained that his party, the African National Congress, was communist-dominated.
Cheney fired back in interviews, calling the criticism “crap.” He said he was proud of his record, but also backpedaled a bit, claiming that some of the votes were the result of procedural traps set by Democrats. Bush defended his new partner unconditionally. “This is a conservative man,” he said. “So am I.”
Cheney also faced questions about his most recent role, as chairman of the international oil giant Halliburton. Hired in 1995 for his network of contacts in Washington and overseas (he had no oil-industry experience), Cheney delivered handsomely. Not long after he took over, a Halliburton subsidiary, Brown & Root, snared a $900 million contract to provide logistic support to U.S. troops in Bosnia. And in just five years Halliburton delivered for Cheney; his stockholdings in the company have a market value of about $40 million. In May when the price of Halliburton stock peaked, Cheney sold shares worth about $5 million. The bigger political problem may be his outspoken opposition to American sanctions against Iran. Cheney has complained publicly that U.S. policy has caused the firm to lose several contracts to European competitors. That has angered Jewish groups, who still regard Iran as virulently anti-Israel and a terrorist sponsor.
Cheney’s early years didn’t exactly shine with promise. Like Bush, he also went East to attend Yale, but made poor grades and missed Wyoming. He left New Haven twice, friends say, finally staying away for good. Back home he took a lineman’s job for the power company. But by 1969 he was a doctoral candidate at Wisconsin and a congressional intern. He caught the eye of Nixon lieutenant Donald Rumsfeld, who brought him on as his assistant at the Office of Economic Opportunity. Six years later he succeeded Rumsfeld as Ford’s chief of staff. “What I saw was a young fellow, intelligent, purposeful, laid back,” said Rumsfeld. “He would take a problem, worry it through and move things to a conclusion.”
Cheney made his first major Bush connection in the Ford White House. While Dubya’s dad got lukewarm reviews from several top aides, Cheney recommended the then Republican National Committee chairman for the CIA director’s job. He also honed a hawkish, hard-edge approach to politics. Pushing Ford to ask conservative icon Barry Goldwater for an early election endorsement in November 1975, Cheney wrote in a memo on file at Ford’s presidential library: “You should be very tough and very forceful… This is no time to be understanding or sympathetic with respect to his perceived problems.” Whatever Ford said, it didn’t impress Goldwater. He waited until the following June. The Ford-era documents also show Cheney as a hardened cold warrior with a pragmatic streak. He urged the president to meet with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn when the dissident Russian novelist visited the United States in the summer of 1975. Cheney said it would signal that reduced tensions of detente didn’t mean “all of a sudden our relationship with the Soviets is all sweetness and light.” But Cheney also added that the Kremlin could be quietly reassured that the meeting was not intended as a slap at them. Ford ignored the advice and never saw Solzhenitsyn.
At the Pentagon, Cheney remained deeply skeptical of Soviet intentions, even as its empire dissolved. “Would you want a Defense secretary who wasn’t skeptical?” he asked in 1990. But Cheney also showed a willingness to rethink old assumptions. He helped reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal and took strategic bombers off alert. As the elder Bush’s wartime Defense secretary, his televised briefings with Powell projected calm and confidence to jittery viewers. This fall Dubya would like him to do much the same thing. Bush will have to win the election on his own, but he could do worse than to have Cheney behind him.
