Richard Bruce Cheney

As a prelude to this post, credit must be given to John Nichols, author of The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney. This book is an invaluable source of information for anyone looking to find out where Cheney came from (hell?) and the degree of influence he has over the so-called Bush Administration.  Nichols is one of the foremost authorities on Cheney and his articles for The Nation continue to put things in perspective.

Richard Cheney, appropriately known as “Dick,” has long been a deceptive figure in American politics.  He has served in four separate Republican administrations, yet his political rise remains shrouded in mystery.  In fact, much about the man is unclear.  More than anything else, a careful study of Dick Cheney will reveal that his voice has guided the foreign policy of the current political regime more than any other, though he has done a credible job of avoiding the limelight.

One telling anecdote that illustrates the degree of influence possessed by Cheney within the Bush regime.  On a Wednesday morning in February of 2001, an accountant named Robert Pickett fired a few rounds from a revolver at the White House.  Standard procedure during any attempt like this was to secure the president and vice-president.  Secret service agents found Cheney in his office, surrounded by aides, barking orders on the phone, and basically looking like the man in charge.  Where was Bush?  In the gym, jogging on a treadmill.

That is not to say that Bush and Cheney have nothing in common.  They both have a history of being poor students and heavy drinkers.  Cheney managed to gain admission into Yale, but withdrew in June of 1962.  He went back to Wyoming (which was only a temporary home for him), and was busted twice for drunk-driving over the next few months.  He attended a junior college in Casper, Wyoming and then graduated from the University of Wyoming.  He would later matriculate to the University of Wisconsin for graduate school, though he failed to earn his Ph.d.

In 1968, Cheney managed to ride to Washington on the coattails of Wisconsin congressman Bill Steiger.  Within a few years, Cheney was an assistant to Donald Rumsfeld in the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO).  In 1971, Rumsfeld was appointed as a “counselor” to Nixon, and Cheney went with him.  Due to the Watergate scandal, Rumsfeld and Cheney were able to gain cushy positions for themselves - White House chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, respectively, in the Ford Administration.  Amazingly, Cheney and Rumsfeld were able to use their positions in the Nixon Administration as resume builders.  Even after they failed to get Gerald Ford re-elected, both continued to move up the ranks of the GOP throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Cheney served as a congressman from Wyoming for five terms, beginning in 1978.  Then he was secretary of defense under George H. W. Bush.  From there he was CEO of Halliburton from 1995-2000.  Since that time, he has held the role of vice-president of the United States, though much of the evidence indicates he may have taken over many of the powers traditionally held by the president.  Instead of providing a biography, it is more telling to relate some particular instances from Cheney’s political career.

Many people, both within the United States and abroad, are unaware of just how conservative Cheney’s voting record was during his time in the House of Representatives.  He voted against legislation providing food and health care to the elderly, against the Clean Air Act, and against the Undetectable Firearms act of 1988, which prohibited the importation of plastic weapons that would not set off metal detectors.  He even voted ten times against moves to pressure South Africa to end apartheid.  So why haven’t opponents labeled Cheney as pro-apartheid?  Part of the overall failure on the part of the media and his political opponents to grasp the radical nature of Cheney’s conservatism.

Cheney also has a very important role in the events that led to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.  During his time as secretary of defense in 1990, Cheney traveled to Saudi Arabia prior to the Gulf War.  The purpose of his trip was to convince King Fahd to accept U.S. military bases in the country.  The alleged purpose of these bases was so the U.S. could put troops on the border with Kuwait to force the Iraqis out of the country.  Cheney used doctered satellite images to convince King Fahd that an Iraqi invasion force was preparing to attack Saudi Arabia.  At the same time that this was unfolding, Osama bin Laden had expressed a desire to build a religious army that would expel the Iraqis from Kuwait.  Osama bin Laden was livid when he learned that infidels had been given the authority to protect Saudi Arabia, and he swore that he would have vengeance.  He began to build the al-Qaeda network shortly afterwards, and referred to the agreement between King Fahd and the Americans as one of his biggest grievances with the U.S. Ironically, on the day the U.S. was attacked by bin Laden’s forces, Cheney was calling the shots.  He sent Bush to Nebraska, then began issuing orders.  He ordered all nongovernment aircraft to be grounded, and told American fighter pilots to fire on any commercial aircrafts that were still in the air.

While he was CEO of Halliburton, Cheney did not seem to harbor ill-will against Iraq.  He exploited the Oil-for-Food program by directing Halliburton subsidiaries to sign $73 million worth of contracts with the Iraqi government, which was then under heavy United Nations sanctions.  So, while Cheney has often expressed his opinion that Iraq posed a threat to the United States and other nations, he seemed to have no problem doing business with Iraq when he was a CEO.  Some Americans may be dismayed to learn that Cheney’s ties to Halliburton did not end when he slithered into the White House.  He received hundreds of thousands in deferred salary payments between 2000 and 2005.  Cheney also has stock options he can exercise until 2009.  Therefore, he has a vested interest in Halliburton’s financial situation.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Dick Cheney and his disastrous effect on the entire world is the fact that he technically is forbidden from serving as vice-president.  According to the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution, the president and vice-president cannot be from the same state.  In 2000, Cheney was appointed the head of a task force to select the younger Bush’s running mate.  He worked hard to discredit all competitors, and eventually chose himself.  Yet in 2000, he held a Texas driver’s license, registered his automobiles there, and paid taxes as well.  In fact, he had lived in Texas for years.  He tried to solve this problem by buying a house in Wyoming at the last minute and registering to vote there mere weeks before the “election.”  Of course, his side did not emerge victorious from this process.  Lucky for Dick his friend of thirty years, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, led the majority decision that handed the White House to Cheney and Bush.  One could have argued that Scalia should have recused himself from the vote for two reasons: he was close friends with Cheney, and two of his sons worked for law firms that did legal work for the Cheney-Bush campaign.  Yet apparently, no one in the media or the government thought this was pertinent information.

If any lasting impressions are taken from this post, hopefully they center around the idea that Dick Cheney, in addition to being the personification of pure evil, is basically the de-facto president of the United States.  His influence should never be discounted, doubted, or dismissed.  When the blame is placed for the thousands of mistakes made by this “administration,” the majority of it should fall squarely on his shoulders.