by GREY ANDERSON
In January 2022, Richard Bruce Cheney made a surprise appearance on the floor of Congress. His return to Capitol Hill marked the anniversary of the ruckus that briefly delayed certification of election results the previous year. Cheney, accustomed to rough words from his opponents, found himself in an improvised receiving line. ‘No Republicans showed up’, the New York Times recounted,
But Democrats in the House, including the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, were effervescent. After 13 years in retirement and of all-but-unimaginable changes in American life wrought by the rise and fall of President Trump, Mr Cheney and Liz Cheney were engulfed by a parade of Democratic well-wishers, many of whom had once called the former vice president a war criminal. The Democrats shook Mr Cheney’s hand, and some embraced Ms Cheney, who introduced him to her erstwhile colleagues, saying: ‘This is my father. This is Dad.’ It was a stunning moment and an emblem of how much had changed in the Trump era.
Pelosi praised his attendance, declaring that, whatever past quarrels, they had never differed over their commitment to ‘honoring our oath of office to support and defend the Constitution’; Steny Hoyer saluted Liz Cheney ‘for having the courage to stand up for truth’; Adam Schiff looked back misty-eyed to ‘a time when there were broad policy differences, but there were no differences when it came to both parties’ devotion to the idea of democracy’. ‘It’s an important historical event’, Cheney explained when asked what drew him to Washington to commemorate the January 6th ‘insurrection’: ‘I was honoured and proud . . . to recognize this anniversary, to commend the heroic actions of law enforcement that day, and to reaffirm our dedication to the Constitution’. Media accolades did not save his daughter’s seat in Congress from a MAGA primary challenge, although the Resistance circuit offered a lucrative fallback. When he endorsed Kamala Harris last September, Cheney said of Trump ‘there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic’.
Twenty-five years ago, Cheney displayed a different attitude towards the sacral rites of democratic transition. As lawyers contested George W. Bush’s razor-thin Florida margin, his running mate took charge of a privately funded transition operation based at his McLean residence, preparing a presidential team before an official victor was declared. Recounts stalled in Miami-Dade and the courts deliberated over ‘hanging chads’; Cheney nonetheless pressed ahead, bringing in Ari Fleischer as spokesman and vetting cabinet nominees all while the General Services Administration refused to release federal resources. He declared Florida’s certification to be conclusive, dismissed Gore’s legal challenges as an exercise in denial and warned that any hesitation in assembling a government would jeopardize national security. Meetings with congressional leaders in Austin followed, signalling that the administration-in-waiting intended to behave as though the matter were settled. The haste was not improvised. In truth, the VP-elect had devoted the better part of a long career to reflection on the relays of power.
He wasn’t born to it. Raised in Wyoming by New Dealer parents, Cheney won admission to Yale through connections of his future wife, Lynne, only to flunk out twice. A period of drift and minor alcohol-related scrapes back West ended when she insisted on a more disciplined course. Five draft deferments later, by his mid-thirties he was serving in the Office of Economic Opportunity as deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, whom he followed into the Ford Administration and eventually replaced as chief of staff to the president. A Watergate survivor, he learned the lesson of Nixon’s collapse: ‘Don and I survived and prospered in that environment because we didn’t leave a lot of paper lying around’, he observed. At the White House he proved a virtuoso of bureaucratic manoeuvre. He and Rumsfeld eased Rockefeller off the 1976 ticket, sidelined Kissinger and conspired to extinguish détente. Quiet, relentless, Cheney rarely took credit; he showed an appetite for minutiae and stamina for unglamorous work, seeing to it that the West Wing plumbing got fixed and cruets were replaced on the presidential table. Colleagues remembered a discreet, preternaturally middle-aged man, his distinguishing features a lawless smirk and ‘snake-cold eyes, like a Cheyenne gambler’s’, as another Ford adviser recalled.
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