Dick Cheney, the conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U.S. history and a leading advocate of the invasion of Iraq, has died at the age of 84.
Quietly powerful, Cheney served both father and son presidents, leading the military during the Gulf War as secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush, before returning to public life as vice president under Bush’s son George W. Bush.
Cheney was effectively the chief operating officer of the young Bush administration.
Despite decades of heart disease and a heart transplant after a heart transplant, he was involved in, and often at the helm of, the most important decisions for the president and those important to himself.
Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary measures of surveillance, detention, and interrogation employed in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Mr. Cheney, who has suffered five heart attacks, long thought he was living on borrowed time, but in 2013 he declared that he would wake up every morning and “smile and be grateful for another day,” an odd image for someone who always seemed to be on a rampart.
Cheney, whose vice presidency has been dedicated to fighting terrorism, once revealed that years ago she turned off the wireless capabilities of defibrillators out of fear that terrorists could deliver fatal shocks to the heart remotely.
During his tenure, the vice presidency was no longer just a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney created a network of back channels to influence Iraq, terrorism, presidential power, energy, and other conservative policy fundamentals.
Fixed in a seemingly permanent half-smile, critics called it a fake smile. Cheney joked about his extraordinary reputation as a stealth operator.
“Am I some evil genius who has been in a corner and no one has ever seen me come out of a hole?” he asked. “It’s actually a great way to operate.”
For his fans, he kept his faith alive during uncertain times, standing firm even as his country opposed war and its leaders waged war.
Cheney retired several years later to Jackson Hole, not far from where her daughter Liz Cheney bought a home, and lived in Wyoming until she won her old House seat in 2016.
With the Cheney family becoming one of President Trump’s favorite targets, the fate of father and daughter also drew closer.
Dick Cheney rallied to his daughter’s defense in 2022, juggling his lead role on the committee investigating the events at the Capitol on January 6 and his bid for re-election in deeply conservative Wyoming.
Liz Cheney, who voted in favor of impeaching Trump after the insurrection, received praise from many Democrats and political observers outside Congress. But even those accolades and her father’s support didn’t save her from a crushing defeat in the Republican primary, a dramatic fall from grace after a rapid rise to the third-highest ranking job in the House Republican leadership.
From Rumsfeld disciple to Washington’s top decision maker
Politics first lured Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a member of Congress. He became a protégé of Donald Rumsfeld, working for him in two government agencies and in Gerald Ford’s White House, becoming the youngest chief of staff in history at age 34.
After serving in that position for 14 months, Cheney returned to Casper, where he grew up, and ran for the sole seat in the state Legislature.
During that first House campaign, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, which caused him to become angry that he was trying to form a group called Cardiacs for Cheney. Still, he won a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.
In 1989, Cheney became Secretary of Defense under the first President George W. Bush, and led the Pentagon during the 1990-1991 Gulf War, which drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
During the two Bush administrations, Cheney led Halliburton Corp., a Dallas-based oil industry engineering and construction giant.
Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of a longtime USDA employee. President of his senior class and co-captain of the football team at Casper, he attended Yale University for one year on a full scholarship, but dropped out after failing grades.
He returned to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming, and renewed his relationship with his high school sweetheart, Lynn Ann Vincent, whom he married in 1964.
He is survived by his wife Liz and second daughter Mary.
