Former Vice President Dick Cheney died at 84 after a storied career that included 9\/11 and the War on Terror.<\/b>
\nFormer Vice President Dick Cheney was eulogized on Tuesday by his running mate, former President George W. Bush, as a \u201ccalm and steady presence\u201d and \u201camong the finest public servants of his generation.\u201d
Cheney built long lists of both admirers and adversaries during his years in politics, a career that went from him growling at reporters to stop calling him a \u201cmoderate\u201d to endorsing Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
The on Tuesday remembered Cheney peevishly telling an aide to \u201ccall the Post and tell them I\u2019m a conservative\u201d after the paper described him as a \u201cmoderate\u201d during his days as a congressman from Wyoming. Cheney, and later his daughter Liz, have been very insistent upon describing themselves as the metaphysical center of conservatism.
\u201cCalm\u201d is the word most often associated with Cheney after his death on Tuesday at age 84, but once upon a time, another word was branded upon him by the media with comical fervor: \u201cgravitas.\u201d The media narrative of Cheney\u2019s ascent to the vice presidency was that he supposedly added \u201cgravitas\u201d to a ticket headed by the boyish and goofy George W. Bush.
\u201cMr. Cheney\u2019s most obvious asset as a running mate is that he could provide an instant gravitas injection for a ticket headed by Governor Bush. Given Mr. Cheney\u2019s role in running the gulf war, his presence would shore up Mr. Bush in his weakest areas, foreign policy and national security,\u201d the New York Times said in 2000, setting the tone for media coverage of Cheney\u2019s role in the Bush campaign.
Another label the Left liked to slap on Cheney was \u201cevil.\u201d His redemption in the eyes of the Left for claiming \u201cthere has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump\u201d and calling Trump a \u201ccoward\u201d in a political ad for his daughter, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), was surely the strangest of the Strange New Respect awards handed out by left-wing media, considering that Dick Cheney was routinely compared to Darth Vader and Satan during his vice presidency. Hollywood turned him into an inhuman supervillain, a rapacious oil baron who started wars to line his own pockets.
Cheney was involved in politics, business, and the intersection between the two for a very long time, so some of the seeming paradoxes and contradictions in his long career were a result of the political pendulum swinging, the world changing around him. His entry into public service came during the Nixon Administration. He was a deputy assistant to President Gerald Ford, Secretary of Defense for the elder President Bush, and then vice president to the younger. The world changed a great deal around him during those years \u2013 in no small part because of decisions he made and advice he gave.
The War on Terror under George W. Bush was the defining event of Dick Cheney\u2019s career. Those were the years that crystallized the Left\u2019s hatred of him as a warmonger. In the years afterward, as a growing segment of the Republican electorate came to see the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as expensive follies, Cheney\u2019s star among conservatives began to sink. Cheney was far too intelligent to be surprised by this, but he did not seem to like it very much. The animosity between Cheney and Trump Republicans was mutual.
The new breed of Republicans who found themselves at odds with Dick Cheney could take a moment to understand the figure he cut as vice president \u2013 a man of steely determination and tremendous political skill during a time of fear and confusion after 9\/11. Conservatives of a certain age can remember a time when we very much wanted Darth Vader in the White House.
Another word used in every Cheney eulogy is \u201cpowerful.\u201d The vice presidency is a job often mocked for its ceremonial and ineffective nature. Friend and foe alike regard Cheney as one of the most powerful vice presidents to ever hold the office, and not just because he had President George W. Bush\u2019s ear. He got things done. He went into political negotiations with a strong hand. He was good at handling hostile press. In his hour of power, Cheney demonstrated many of the qualities that today\u2019s Republicans admire.
Cheney was the \u201carchitect\u201d of the Iraq War \u2013 another word you\u2019ll see a lot of today! \u2013 and that particular exercise of power is not as popular among Republican voters as it once was. The relationship between Republicans and their political elites has changed profoundly over the past two decades, and the War on Terror is a key factor in that change. Cheney was the face of the war, so he has taken a lot of the heat for it.
It is a sad irony that Cheney ended his time in politics by endorsing Kamala Harris, who was absolutely no one\u2019s idea of a powerful, effective, or intelligent vice president. The Cheney family\u2019s political calculations are their own to explain or defend, but for what it\u2019s worth, the elderly Cheney seemed genuinely horrified by the events of January 6, perhaps seeing them as an assault on the system he devoted much of his long life to serving and protecting.
The media is remembering Cheney today as \u201cdivisive\u201d and \u201ccontroversial,\u201d which is what they say about every Republican. It\u2019s more true of Cheney than most because he had a hand in events that have shaped the modern world, for good and ill.
Republicans, Democrats, and America itself have changed a great deal since Dick Cheney signed on with the Nixon Administration. His career demonstrated how yesterday\u2019s moderate becomes today\u2019s extremist, and yesterday\u2019s conservative icon can become today\u2019s Kamala Harris voter.<\/p>\n