What About Dick?

John Nance Garner said that being Vice President wasn't worth a warm pitcher of p*ss. Dick Cheney wouldn't agree with Garner. This piece evoked memories of Mephistopheles waiting. If this be (fair & balanced) foreboding, so be it.

[x Washington Post]
The Strong, Silent Type
Vice President Cheney Doesn't Suffer Small Talk When He's Looking at the Big Picture
By Mark Leibovich

ABOARD AIR FORCE TWO

As a rule, Dick Cheney doesn't like to talk unless he has to. He sits for long stretches of conversation, holding his fingertips together at his lips, peering over his glasses. When he does speak, it is in a brisk cadence and often in partial sentences, as if to conserve every word.

"I start out by nature to be a private person," he says. "Where I grew up, out West. You learn not to toot your own horn. I remember at an orientation for congressional fellows. There was a quote. Attributed to Sam Rayburn. 'You never get in trouble for something you don't say.' "

The vice president is hunched on a couch during a short flight from McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma to Seattle. He is having an expansive moment. You can tell because he's opening his whole mouth to talk, not just mumbling out the right side. And he is doing a most un-Cheneylike thing: talking with his hands.

"In my experience, those who have had the most impact are people who keep their own counsel," Cheney says. "They don't spend time worrying about taking credit." In his case, he says, "it's not so much a strategic decision as much as it's what I'm comfortable with."

This is as close as Cheney ever gets to navel-gazing. He has no use for self-revelation, yours or his own. He is impatient with small talk and niceties. "Not enough hours in the day" is his recurring platitude for anything he deems wasteful.

Cheney relishes quiet and solitude, the better to absorb information. He travels with a green Orvis bag that holds about 20 hardcover books. He loves history, particularly military history. He is reading a book about World War II called "Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb."

"Never got much attention," Cheney says of the battle. "Far more significant than people realize. But it was one of the bloodiest battles. Land. Sea. Air. Put it all together." With each burst, Cheney contorts his mouth and chin.

"Spring of '45. Kamikazes really came into their own then. Did tremendous damage to our fleet."

Then it's back to silence. Silence lets people know you can keep confidences, Cheney says. Lets them know you can be trusted.

Excess words can bloat and complicate. Information escapes. And you never learn anything when you're talking. Washington is over-winded by talkers.

But there is a method to wielding silence constructively. And Cheney -- in his discretion, secrecy and inscrutability -- has raised it to an art form, a signature and, at times, a weapon.

He will never be called a sycophant, schmoozer or self-promoter. But his reticence doesn't mean that he is opting out of the Washington game, or that he doesn't love the game, or that he hasn't mastered it.

"I've always considered Dick to be very ambitious," says former Rep. Lee Hamilton, an Indiana Democrat who served with Cheney in the House and calls him a friend. "In politics, one of the big keys to success is how well you cloak this ambition. It's part of the game. And I always felt, whatever his context, Dick did it brilliantly."

As much as he's been a Washington fixture for three decades, Richard B. Cheney, 62, remains a figure sketchily drawn. He is the second most powerful man in the Bush administration, both in constitutional rank and, it would seem, real influence.

Yet to a large degree, Cheney remains publicly defined by his invisibility. His profile, intentionally low to begin with, shrinks more so next to the president and the administration's rock stars (Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell). Cheney is the one known for disappearing, into a "secure undisclosed location." ("There are a few of them, actually," he says.) Few people know where he is much of the time, where he resides at night.

Only that he's somewhere. And powerful.

An Elusive Personality

He's not that complicated, goes a common notion proffered by friends. Cheney is a product of the West -- an all-purpose explanation to distill Cheney's strong and stolid bearing and cowboy conservatism. He needn't be tagged with anything more convoluted or, gosh forbid, psychoanalytic. And if he feels your pain -- double gosh forbid -- he's certainly not going to say so.

Like his boss, and his boss's predecessor, Cheney has become a Rorschach test for interpreting the nation's political divisions. His admirers glean from his reserve a sense of avuncular reassurance. His critics see bad motives, an elder prince of darkness in the administration.

Either way, Cheney's job in shorthand -- to serve the president -- plays to his bent for loyalty. President Bush spares him, largely, from the role of being a spokesman or public face and assured him early on that his funeral-hopping would be minimal.

Cheney rarely gives interviews. It's been a conscious decision, he says ("Not enough hours in the day,") and one, he allows, that might contribute to the run of bad press he has received in recent months. The vice president has been charged in the media with overselling the specter of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and engineering a rush to war. Halliburton, the energy services firm Cheney ran until 2000, was accused of overcharging the U.S. government on a contract to deliver oil in Iraq. While he has not been implicated in the matter, news accounts inevitably include the words, "the company previously run by Vice President Cheney."

White House officials have become concerned that negative stories about Cheney have reached critical mass, to a point that it could be harming the president. One of those concerned officials is Dick Cheney, who has been more bothered than usual by much of his recent coverage, sources close to the vice president say. Particularly on Halliburton, the subject of which triggers a quick rant against the press.

The media has changed a great deal, he says. "As an institution. Evolved. Kind of thing where it's almost impossible to catch up with a bad story. Factual errors." He mentions Lexis-Nexis, search engines, 24-hour news cycles, cable news. "Nobody goes back to check the accuracy," he says. "Can be frustrating."

Cheney's public appearances are generally photo ops, fundraisers or speeches to friendly GOP audiences. He could be a wholly innocuous figure, in a job well-suited to wholly innocuous figures. But the notion persists that Cheney is something of a sphinx, and one with great authority. In a new book, former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill describes him as the center of power and influence in this White House, even though Cheney is portrayed through much of the book as sitting quietly, or, in expansive moments, nodding quietly.

He has the Socratic bent of the political science professor he once thought he would become. He likes to ask questions, pointed and at times rapid-fire. This is a variation on silence in that he does not explicitly express his views or divulge information. He just acquires.

"He used to drive us to extremes to get information about how things worked in the military," says Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Cheney was secretary of defense.

"How does a tank work? How do you plan an assault on a position? Same thing with how do missiles work off airplanes."

The questions expand Cheney's cache of information, a fortune he invests conservatively. "One of the great reasons for Cheney's success is that, once he is provided information, you never, ever know what happens to it," says Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who served with him in the House. "You never know how he's processing the information in his head and you never know where it ends up. . . . It can be frustrating to people. But it also makes him extremely effective."

Some of Cheney's bigger dust-ups as vice president relate to his penchant for secrecy. He has been sued over his insistence that the details of his energy task force meetings remain private. People who have worked with Cheney say he is very much at home in a post-9/11 environment where information is regarded as hyper-sensitive and confined to a select few in the executive branch.

"I think Cheney probably believes that by keeping things as secretly held as possible, you increase your power," says Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who has been among the vice president's fiercest critics. But democracy is harmed, he says. "This administration wants to be immune from oversight," which Waxman attributes largely to Cheney, whose inclination for secrecy permeates the Bush White House "to a remarkable degree."

"Dick's preference was always to deal quietly, not in public," says Hamilton. Going back to his days as a legislator, Cheney was a consistent advocate for executive power, Hamilton says.

"In a sense, you associate democracy with accountability, transparency and doing things out in the open. But he really does prefer to do it in the back room. And that's reflective of his style."

What About Dick?

Cheney lacks the political gene that yearns for popular approval. If his ego bruises, the manifestation is well-cloaked. Asked to assess the vice president's need for adulation in his current job, Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, responds, "Almost zero." This spares Cheney so much of the energy, capital and words that politicians exert toward acquiring love.

"Cheney proceeds with a great deal of confidence but not a lot of price," says Bill Frenzel, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota. He describes his friend as being free from fear relating to his ego. Fragile egos are perhaps the single biggest source of excess verbiage in Washington, Frenzel says. They impede listening because the brain is preoccupied with figuring out what to say next.

Frenzel guesses that Cheney's chronic heart problems -- he has suffered four heart attacks, the first at age 37 -- have imbued him with a natural pacemaker to order his priorities. This is just a guess, Frenzel emphasizes. Cheney himself doesn't really talk like this.

Cheney has described himself as "fatalistic" about the future, and his career provides a study in how to achieve power and rank quietly, seemingly without trying.

In 1975, President Gerald Ford was searching for a chief of staff to replace Donald Rumsfeld, who had become secretary of defense. Cheney, Rumsfeld's 34-year-old White House deputy, was the choice. It was the first of several "What about Dick?" instances that have landed Cheney in big jobs.

Later he was a Wyoming congressman, well respected but not given to memorable speeches or, to many eyes, big plans. Then, in 1988, House GOP Whip Trent Lott won a Senate seat and House Republicans needed a replacement. Minority Leader Bob Michel asked . . . what about Dick? (Cheney ran unchallenged).

John Tower's nomination as secretary of defense blew up in 1989 and President George H.W. Bush needed an able and confirmable replacement.

What about Dick?

George W. Bush asked Cheney to vet prospective running mates in 2000, only to wind up asking . . . what about Dick?

"It's the most Machiavellian [expletive] thing I've ever seen," says Stuart Spencer, a Republican consultant and old friend of Cheney's, of the running mate selection. He laughs in admiration.

It is assumed that Cheney has no plans to seek the only job bigger than his current one. He considered running for president once, before the 1996 election.

"Looked at it really hard," he says. "Raised the money. Did the PAC thing. Gave a lot of speeches."

Decided not to run.

"I didn't want to do those things I'd have to do to get elected," he says. He didn't want to put his family through the ordeal. It was not yet public that Mary, his youngest daughter, is a lesbian.

Cheney would be the first vice president since Nelson Rockefeller not to eventually seek the Oval Office. He specifically says he's not running in 2008. "No," he says. "I made that decision long ago. . . . My effectiveness now depends very much on the president knowing that I'm here to serve him, as part of his team, and not be worried about what I'm going to do in Iowa or New Hampshire five years down the road."

"People underestimate what Cheney not wanting to run for president means to him psychologically," says former House Democratic whip Tony Coelho, who served with Cheney. "He doesn't worry about keeping this or that group happy, kissing this person's behind, whatever. It frees him up to stay in the background, work his agenda, stay quiet and keep people guessing."

Even so, one can easily envision scenarios for 2008: Bush-Cheney is re-elected in 2004, the Republican field is weak in 2008, no one grabs the mantle, and people begin to ask . . . what about Dick? Cheney would be 67 on Inauguration Day 2009, which is younger than Ronald Reagan was when he took office.

A Silent Stream

Lynne Cheney, the vice president's wife of 39 years, tells the story of the long, silent car rides Dick used to take with his late father, Richard. Richard Cheney, a career federal servant with the Soil Conservation Service, was a man of even fewer words than his oldest son. (Dick has a younger brother, Bob, who is retired from the Bureau of Land Management.)

In his father's later years, Dick would pick him up at his home in Casper, Wyo., and drive to Dick's home in Jackson, about 300 miles away. Hours would pass without either man speaking.

Once, Richard Cheney broke a silence and asked, "You heard from Al Simpson lately?"

Dick replied that his friend Simpson, the former senator for Wyoming, had gone on to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Twenty minutes of road passed in silence.

"Went eastern on us, did he?" Richard said.

"Yep," Dick said.

Conversation over.

Asked aboard Air Force Two how he would spend an ideal day, Dick Cheney says, "On a river with a good friend and a fly rod. Northern British Columbia for steelhead. South Texas to chase quail."

If a "good friend" does join Cheney on the river, he must abide a test of character. "I used to ask him to take me fly-fishing all the time," says Ken Adelman, the chairman of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the Reagan administration and a longtime Cheney friend. But Cheney never did. He told Adelman he talks too much.

"He doesn't like to talk when he's fishing and he doesn't like it when you talk to him," says House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a one-time recipient of a fly-fishing invite from Cheney. Their fishing trip was appropriately quiet, he says, except for the fleet of Secret Service boats in the water and SUVs driving on shore. "I don't think there was a self-respecting trout within three miles of us," Hastert says.

Like Cheney, Hastert is an emphatically non-flamboyant man who rose to a heady station, seemingly by accident. Both are better listeners than talkers. Hastert calls Cheney an "interesting guy," which is as close as any friend will come to calling Cheney complex.

"Dick never says more than he has to, but you just know he's thinking," Hastert says. "He'll just sit and listen. Put two hands together on his chin, look out over his glasses and stare at you. He'll wait you out, see what else you have to say."

After a morning Cabinet meeting recently, Cheney skipped off to the new Air and Space Museum facility at Dulles International Airport (as much as one can "skip off" to anything with a 17-vehicle motorcade in tow). He was given a private tour of the museum before addressing a grand opening ceremony. The museum is a vast and cavernous hangar, something of an echo chamber. But as you follow him around, you can never hear what Cheney is saying.

You hear Cheney cough. You see Cheney's lips move. If you're standing close enough, maybe you'll hear a quick mutter. But it's next to impossible to decipher his words.

You can hear Lawrence Small, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who is leading the tour. You can hear the hushed voices of Cheney's staff and the Secret Service detail. You can hear Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who booms "Hello, sir," to Cheney as he sees him standing near a Sparrow 2 missile exhibit.

"It's a great day, sir," the Senate majority leader adds.

And Cheney says something back, presumably something innocuous like Yes, it is.

But you can't tell for sure.

The vice president is in heaven, his aides keep saying. He loves this stuff, planes, especially military aircraft. Cheney looks alternately up at the planes (when he stops) and down at the floor (as he walks). He swings his left arm as he proceeds and keeps his right hand buried in his pocket. He enters a small holding area, where he meets another speaker for the dedication, John Travolta. You don't see meetings like this every day.

Travolta, standing next to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, gets a momentous look in his eye as he extends his hand to Cheney. Cheney shakes it and says nothing beyond one, indecipherable syllable. No Loved you in "Pulp Fiction," nothing.

Cheney then retreats to a corner and digs his hand into a bag of Werther's hard caramels.

Stingy With Praise

In professional settings, Cheney deploys his quiet to great, sometimes intimidating effect. If an underling has something to present to Cheney, he is advised to get a list of topics together, know each subject cold and prepare for pointed questions.

There is a decent chance the visitor will arrive at the vice president's office and find him reading. Cheney runs his finger slowly down the page as he goes. The visitor will wait, perhaps for several seconds, until Cheney reaches a breaking point in the text.

At which point, he might look up and say, by way of greeting, "What you got?"

The aide should go through his items quickly. He shouldn't expect excessive feedback, only pointed direction on each item: Do this on Number 2, yes on Number 4, get back to me on 7. Then leave.

"If you're someone who likes to have your back slapped, if you constantly need recognition from your boss, you probably shouldn't be working for Dick Cheney," says Dave Gribbin, a longtime friend from Wyoming who worked in Cheney's congressional office and later, at the Pentagon.

Once in a great while, if Cheney is well satisfied, he might look intently into an aide's eyes and say, unsmilingly, "That's a good piece of work." And then assign more.

Colleagues repeatedly describe Cheney as one of the best listeners in Washington. Not in the sense that he nods reassuringly and puts the talker at ease, but that he has an ability to discard needless information, retain the trenchant details and apply them to conversations later.

"You can measure his responses," says Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. "He tends to respond to what somebody said rather than simply repeating rote something that was in his head already. And that tends to move the ball down the field."

Cheney is ardently unsentimental, especially in business settings. He is not prone to teary speeches, elaborate goodbye ceremonies or, for that matter, thoughtful reassurances.

In his memoir, Powell writes of the firestorm that followed the publication of "The Commanders" by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward, which detailed Powell's desire to steer a less aggressive course in the first Gulf War and the division it caused within President George H.W. Bush's foreign policy team. Powell details a supportive call he received from the president as the controversy erupted, and how grateful he was for it. But Powell heard nothing from his immediate boss, Cheney.

"Well, obviously it would have been nice to have heard from him," Powell says in an interview. "But it wasn't surprising and it wasn't off-putting." Powell is philosophical. Like many in Cheney's circle, Powell speaks of politics and leadership as an adult matter, a pursuit whose optimal stoicism is embodied in Cheney.

"We both have been patted on the head and crucified by you chaps in this town," Powell says, referring to the media. "And sometimes you will get in trouble. And in this town, when you get in trouble, get out of trouble."

Powell believes that if he were ever really in trouble, Cheney would help. "But his attitude is, we're all big boys," Powell says. "We know that, it almost sounds like 'Godfather 2.' We know the business we are in. And you take care of yourself. And if you need help, let me know. And if you don't need help, then you don't need help."

The Dark View

Cheney stares at his shoes as he makes a slow walk from Air Force Two to a group of servicemen and their families in a hangar at McChord Air Force Base. They are hoisting camcorders, raising toddlers up for a better view of the balding adult in a navy blue suit.

Cheney walks onstage, places his palms on both sides of the lectern. He speaks softly, in conversational tones.

"This is my first time back here since 1992, when I was secretary of defense, and I had real power and influence," he says.

He is the Platonic ideal of sheepish. Some vice presidents over-tout their roles -- how they spend their days "re-inventing government," for instance. Cheney never does. But by waxing absurd about how little influence he has -- the notion draws laughter from the crowd -- he tacitly acknowledges his reputation for having a lot.

Cheney proceeds with a stump speech that focuses heavily on the war on terror. "If we're 99 percent successful, the 1 percent that gets through can still kill you," he says. "Defense isn't enough. We need to go on offense."

Cheney has a long-standing curiosity -- obsession, some have said -- with catastrophic scenarios involving biological, chemical and radiological weapons. This long precedes Sept. 11, 2001. In his skull resides the nation's most chilling intelligence. Lynne and their daughters never ask about it.

In the months after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Cheney, when he spoke in meetings, often talked about "the next hit." Retreating to the secure location was his idea. He steeped himself in briefings and literature about anthrax, smallpox and other unthinkables. In the summer of 2002, he made a surprise visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to quiz scientists and doctors about their progress in defending against bioterror. His silence now takes on a more foreboding aspect: the man who knows too much about too many terrible things.

Is this too much information for a man with a sick heart? One friend describes Cheney as naturally dour, but not in a way that paralyzes or debilitates. Tony Coelho recalls being part of a congressional delegation that traveled to Russia in the 1980s. The wife of Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) administered personality tests to a group of congressmen, just for fun. Cheney was found best-suited to being a funeral director.

Mention the notion of "stress" to Cheney and he squints like you're speaking another language. "Goes with the turf," he says. "Part of your job. It's not as if you can block that part out and say, 'I don't have to deal with that.' "

In speeches, Cheney always says that "September 11 changed everything." But one gets a sense that it didn't change his views, only confirmed them. He has long held a harshly pragmatic view of mankind, informed by his reading and skeptical view of history. His stern, almost forbidding approach to discussing the war on terrorism contrasts with the messianic rhetoric of the president.

One of Cheney's favorite recent books is "An Autumn of War," a collection of essays published by historian Victor Davis Hanson in National Review after 9/11. Hanson, a scholar of ancient Rome and Greece and a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute, believes that bloodshed is a natural condition of humanity. Evil exists in the world and the evildoers need to be met head-on.

In October 2002, during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Cheney invited Hanson to the vice president's mansion for a meeting followed by dinner. Cheney said little but asked many questions.

"He does believe there's sort of a tragic vision in the world," says Hanson, a Democrat who says he came away impressed with Cheney. "He's not one of these ideologues that says he doesn't trust the U.N. or Europe. But human nature being what it is, he has a very realistic view that you can't be afraid to act, even if it's not popular."

As Cheney speaks to audiences, he has an ability to frame the war on terrorism in ways that are both dire and reassuring.

"They're still doing everything they can to acquire even deadlier weapons to use against us," Cheney says at McChord. He will repeat this notion throughout the day, in stark tones. His voice is soft and even, like an airline pilot's. The hangar falls silent. As Cheney catalogues the perils to the U.S. homeland, the moment seems oddly intimate.

Cheney concludes his speech and begins greeting servicemen and their families. He's not a wade-into-the-crowd kind of pol. When shaking hands, Cheney grips hard for a split-second then pulls away quickly, as if he's touched a hot stove. While walking a 15-minute rope line behind cold metal barriers, Cheney manages to avoid hugging or kissing a single well-wisher.

"Thanks for coming out," servicemen tell the vice president. Lynne Cheney, walking alongside her husband, is better suited to this kind of work. She asks for their names, keeps saying how great it is to be there. You can't hear what Dick is saying.

Rope line complete, the Cheneys motorcade to a base cafeteria for lunch with a group of pre-selected and pre-seated servicemen and pre-positioned photographers. The Cheneys load their plates with baked stuffed pollock and succotash. Dick also helps himself to a heap of iceberg lettuce drowned in Italian dressing. He pays the $5.20 tab with a pristine $20 bill and, after lunch, the Cheneys stand for photos.

At one point, Dick is posing with Staff Sgt. Denise Caspers. Their hands rest awkwardly on each other's backs. But the camera keeps misfiring. Cheney endures this for several seconds. His face is frozen in a smile, his hand limp on Caspers's spine. His body slumps until a replacement camera is found, and he is finally delivered.

After lunch, the Cheneys re-board Air Force Two for a short flight to Boeing Field, south of downtown Seattle. From there, Cheney's motorcade snakes the rest of the way to Bellevue, where he attends a $500-a-plate fundraiser that evening for the Senate campaign of Rep. George Nethercutt. Before the event, the vice president retires to a secure, undisclosed room at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue and takes a nap.

A History Lesson

On a recent morning, Cheney is standing in his West Wing office, a fire burning in the fireplace. He is showing a reporter a map hanging over his desk that was researched and commissioned by his daughters, Liz and Mary. It details the battles fought by his great-grandfather, Samuel Fletcher Cheney, a company commander in the 21st Ohio Infantry during the Civil War.

"That was my 60th birthday present," Cheney says. "So, about 10 days after we were sworn in, Lynne and the girls organized a luncheon over here. In my ceremonial office. Had the president and Laura over. And presented me with that." He points up at the map and declares, "Great gift."

Cheney begins a tour of the office. He moves, right hand in right pocket, over to a painting of the Civil War battle of Chickamauga that used to hang at the Pentagon. He is professorial but hard to hear.

"This is where General Thomas earned his nickname, the Rock of Chickamauga," Cheney says. "Put up a hell of a fight. The 21st Ohio was one of the key two or three regiments. That was their moment of glory, so to speak. About half the regiment was captured. Fortunately not my grandfather. Ended up in Andersonville [a Confederate military prison]. Lot of them didn't survive."

Across the room is a portrait of Thomas Jefferson and another of John Adams, the first vice president, ("my predecessor in the office") and a color map of the world ("I like maps") and a painting of the Grand Tetons ("used to hang in the Oval Office").

Cheney has much to share, except that he doesn't. He is asked if he will write a memoir. The question elicits a slight wince.

"Sometimes I think I got this job because I didn't write about the last job." He laughs, a quick snort, then allows that he might write a memoir some day.

But he's not thinking about it. An aide hands him a folded piece of paper, which Cheney looks at and closes. He runs two fingers across the fold to reinforce the crease.

"I always felt it was important to have somebody around here who isn't writing a book," Cheney says. "And darn near everybody is."

He looks at the paper again. "I gotta call I gotta take," the vice president says. He excuses himself and the moment fades to silence.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company