Dick Cheney, a former US vice-president, was a hugely influential figure in the George W. Bush administration after the September 11, 2001, attack and during the Iraq War that followed. Photo / Getty Images
Richard Bruce Cheney elevated the role of United States vice-president to a power it had never held before - and probably never will again.
It was Cheney, operating largely in secret after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, with a cadre of like-minded aides known as “the Vulcans”, who masterminded a controversial set of tools to deal with what he saw as a new and urgent threat.
Many of those policies are not regarded fondly by history.
They include:
Cheney would remain unapologetic for all of it.
“Torture, to me,” he said on NBC News in 2014, “… is an American citizen on his cellphone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Centre in New York”.
In a statement after Cheney’s death, former President George W. Bush described him as “a calm and steady presence in the White House amid great national challenges” who provided “honest, forthright counsel”.
To suggest Cheney was merely an adviser vastly understated his role and influence.
Much of it derived from the fact that Cheney brought a background that few could match in an era before “Washington insider” had become a pejorative.
Cheney had been White House chief of staff under Gerald Ford; a congressman from Wyoming who rose to a post in the House Republican leadership; and defence secretary under George H.W. Bush during the quickly ended Gulf War.
Picking someone whose own experience and views, especially on international matters, were deeper than his own turned out to be far more significant than merely a choice of a running mate on George W. Bush’s part.
“The selection of Cheney was of surpassing importance for the future direction of foreign policy. It went further than any other single decision Bush made toward determining the nature and the policies of the administration he would head,” journalist James Mann wrote in his history titled Rise of the Vulcans.
In the early years of his political career, Cheney’s low-key and laconic manner, along with the fact that he had worked for Ford, gave journalists and others in Washington the misimpression that he was a moderate and committed institutionalist.
That image began to change in 1987 when he became a member of the congressional committee investigating the Iran-contra scandal, which involved the secret selling of arms to the Iranians and illegal diversion of funds to Nicaraguan rebels.
On that panel, Cheney was one of President Ronald Reagan’s most aggressive defenders. A grateful Nancy Reagan rewarded Cheney by seating him at Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s table at a state dinner that year.
In 2000, Cheney was working in the private sector as chairman and chief executive of the oil service firm Halliburton, when George W. Bush, who was cruising to the Republican presidential nomination, asked his father’s former defence secretary to take over the selection process to pick a running mate. The pick turned out to be: Cheney.
“I have to tell you that I never expected to be in this position. Eight years ago, when I completed my service as secretary of defence, I loaded a U-Haul truck and drove home to Wyoming,” Cheney said in his speech at the Republican convention that year.
In the years towards the end of his government service and beyond, the country’s perception of him would undergo further revision as Cheney revealed more of his views.
During Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign, his vice-president parted ways with him on the question of same-sex marriage. The president backed the idea of a constitutional amendment banning it.
At a campaign rally in Iowa, Cheney noted that he and his wife, Lynne, “have a gay daughter, so it’s an issue our family is very familiar with”, referring to their youngest daughter, Mary.
“With the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone,” Cheney said. “… People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.”
The presidency of Donald Trump forced a final schism with the party that Cheney had once helped lead.
Along with daughter Liz, a Republican former congresswoman, Cheney announced he planned to vote for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a statement in September 2024.
“He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.”
Nonetheless, his party - and the country - did so, making it finally clear that the era and brand of politics that Dick Cheney had done so much to shape was fading to dark like a Wyoming sunset.
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