Dick Cheney, the 46th Vice President of the United States, under the two terms of President George W. Bush, passed away at age 84 on November 3.
The most controversial Vice President since John C. Calhoun under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson 170 years earlier, Cheney was termed “Darth Vader” by the multitude of critics, who condemned Cheney and Bush for intervention in Iraq on false premises of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” that were never found, but caused the deaths of about 4,500 American military personnel in a war that lasted for nearly a decade.
Cheney was seen as corrupt in his corporate dealings, and had a tough public persona that caused great anger and vehemence against him.
Cheney promoted the use of torture, including waterboarding, against Muslim suspects, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Cheney came across as “tough as nails”, harsh, uncompromising, and many observers felt he was more the President in the first term of George W. Bush, than Bush himself.
In the second term, Bush became more assertive, and the role of Cheney declined in influence.
The public image never changed, but ironically, Cheney and his daughter, former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, became the image of a family which resisted the threat of Donald Trump, making Dick Cheney in retrospect seem less evil and threatening by comparison.
The idea that Dick Cheney would actually “cross the aisle” and vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 is a sign of how much the Republican Party had changed from the time of Bush-Cheney to the time of the authoritarian oriented Donald Trump!
Cheney had served as a Wyoming Congressman and Republican Whip in the House of Representatives, after being White House Chief Of Staff to President Gerald Ford, before being a creditable Secretary of Defense under President George H W Bush.