Richard Cheney’s War

“We’re the kind of country that fights for freedom,” he said.

Vice President Cheney in Wyoming. White House photo by David Bohrer.

When Vice President Cheney met with the editorial board of the New York Sun, I gave him a gift: a custom-embroidered CHENEY-Bush 2008 baseball cap, with the word Cheney on top, first, and larger than the word Bush. I told Cheney that as vice president of the New York Sun, I somewhat understood what it was like to be no. 2, and I said I thought that the then-governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, would make a fine running mate for Cheney.

For better or worse, the idea that Vice President Cheney, who died Monday at 84, should have run for president is something that I’m somehow publicly associated with. I was quoted in the New York Times about it in April 2004, described as a member of the “media elite.” Okay, here is the entire Times item:

Q: What do the media elite talk about at sophisticated book parties?

A: So we were at a party the other day for RON CHERNOW’s new biography of ALEXANDER HAMILTON. Saw JAMES ATLAS, BILL BUCKLEY, the usual crowd. And there by the mantel was IRA STOLL, managing editor of The New York Sun. Pardon us, Mr. Stoll, but we were just mulling: head to head, who would win, DICK CHENEY or COLIN POWELL?

‘’Well, that’s hard,” he said, “because Powell has the New Yorker thing, but Cheney has the Wild West thing. And Powell is a former general, but Cheney is the more hawkish one now. My money is on Cheney.”

In July 2007 I reviewed for the Sun a 578-page biography of Cheney by Stephen Hayes, “Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President.”

That review began, “Of all the editorials The New York Sun has run, the one that attracted the most response was the one under the headline ‘Cheney’s Chance.’ The editorial, suggesting that Vice President Cheney would be an attractive presidential candidate who would bring a lot to the race, caused a furor in the blogosphere and led to the production of an entire segment on CNN. It also led to several dinner party conversations of friends or relatives of the editorial writer devoted to whether the writer had finally lost his mind.”

The review went on:

Mr. Hayes’s account describes a vice president who has lived the American dream. The son of a man who worked for the federal Soil Conservation Service, Mr. Cheney lived for several months as a child with his family in a friend’s unfinished basement. In exchange for a scholarship to Yale, he had to work as a busboy in the freshman cafeteria. Eventually, he flunked out, earned a living stringing electricity lines across Wyoming and Utah, developed a three-pack-a-day cigarette habit, and amassed two arrests in less than a year for driving under the influence of alcohol.