The Bush Cheney relationship

What was the relationship between Dick Cheney and George W. Bush? Was Cheney a puppeteer? Peter Baker, who has written a new book entitled Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, writes about that relationship in the New York Times Magazine, after

conducting hundreds of interviews with key players in the Bush White House, including Cheney, and examining thousands of pages of never-released notes, memos and other internal documents, I came to see a relationship that differs substantially from the commonly accepted narrative. Even in the early days, when a young, untested president relied on the advice of his seasoned No. 2, Cheney was hardly the puppeteer that critics imagined. To the extent that the vice president exerted outsize influence in the first term, he became more marginalized over the course of the second, as Bush sought new paths to right his troubled presidency.

Gen. Richard Myers, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was on hand for some of the most critical moments, agreed. “This whole notion that the vice president was the puppet master, I find laughable,” Myers said. “He was an active vice president because I think he was empowered, but he wasn’t a dominant factor. The alpha male in the White House was the president.”

Cheney was unquestionably the most influential vice president in American history, but that influence was in large part a function of his deference, as much as any overt exertion of power. Because he had no aspiration to ever run for president himself, he was able to focus on making Bush’s presidency successful — though on terms that he helped define. In return, Bush gave him access to every meeting and decision, a marked contrast to many of his predecessors. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s appointment calendar shows only two meetings with Vice President Harry Truman after they were inaugurated. When asked in 2002 how many times he had met privately with Bush, Cheney reached into his suit pocket and pulled out his schedule. “Let me see,” he said. “Three, four, five, six, seven — seven times.” Then he added: “Today.”

By the second term, though, as that vision came under fire with the deterioration of Iraq and the failure to find the weapons that led to the invasion, Bush moved away from Cheney and turned increasingly toward Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who supplanted Cheney as the president’s most influential lieutenant. No one in the White House had the relationship with Bush that Rice had. She worked out with him, talked sports with him, dined with him and Laura in the residence and spent weekends with them at Camp David. Over lunch one day in the first term, Rice told Christine Todd Whitman, then the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, “I can count on one hand the days when I have not spoken to the president over the last three years.” As Whitman later reflected: “She didn’t have a life. Her life was all about that.”

Bush turned to Rice to help repair the damage done by the administration’s aggressive response to the Sept. 11 attacks. “We had broken a lot of china,” Rice told me. “But at that point, you have to leave something in place. That is true with allies. It is true with the Middle East. It is true in putting together an international consensus on North Korea and international consensus on Iran. And I don’t think that is how the vice president saw it. I think he would have liked to have kept breaking china.”

Only by the end of his sixth year did Bush finally conclude that Rumsfeld had to go, a decision that represented the most fundamental break with Cheney, who was informed, not consulted. “It wasn’t open for discussion by the time he came to me,” Cheney told me. Cheney managed to preserve much of the national-security architecture he helped create, but he was now on defense more than offense, fending off changes that he thought would weaken the country or unravel the policies he had urged. “Perhaps my clout was diminished,” Cheney said in a 2011 television interview. “That’s possible. I wouldn’t quarrel about that.” Indeed, by the time they left office, Bush and Cheney disagreed on a long list of significant issues and policies. Where Bush was willing to pursue international diplomacy, empty secret C.I.A. prisons, sign an agreement to withdraw from Iraq and cut deals with Congress on military tribunals and warrantless eavesdropping, Cheney resisted any compromise as a sellout of the principles they once shared.

And then there was the Scooter Libby pardon.

Years later, it would be revealed that the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, knew from nearly the start that Richard Armitage, Colin Powell’s deputy, was the original source of the leak, not Libby. Cheney believed that Fitzgerald’s relentless investigation in spite of this fact was proof that Cheney was the real target, and that Libby was caught in the cross-fire. Libby had loyally served his country, Cheney argued, only to be made into a criminal. And Powell and Armitage stayed quiet as it happened. “The Powell-Armitage thing was such a sense of betrayal,” Cheney’s daughter Liz told me. “They sat there and watched their colleagues in the White House — Scooter and everyone else — go through the ordeal of the investigation, and all that time they both knew Armitage was the leaker.” Armitage and Powell said they were simply following investigators’ instructions to keep silent.

Bush and Cheney see each other infrequently. Last spring, they reunited for the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the campus of Southern Methodist University, outside Dallas. While Bush took a seat onstage with his fellow presidents, Cheney stepped down into the audience to sit with cabinet members and the Bush children. Condoleezza Rice had a speaking role; Cheney did not. Aware that many were wondering about their relationship, Bush made a point of praising Cheney’s “loyalty, principle and strength” from the lectern. “I’m proud to call you friend,” Bush said.

But inside, the new library suggested a different reality. There were exhibits featuring the first lady and their daughters, videos narrated by Rice, Bolten and Andy Card, and even statues of the presidential dogs. There was little sign of Dick Cheney.