7 Clues To Understanding Dick Cheney

When Richard Bruce Cheney was a student at Natrona County High School in Casper, Wyo., he was a solid football player, senior-class president and an above-average student. But he wasn't the star. That distinction belonged to Lynne Vincent, Cheney's girlfriend and future wife. A straight-A scholar, Lynne was elected Mustang Queen, the equivalent of most popular girl. She was also a state-champion baton twirler, a big deal in 1950s Wyoming. To begin her routine, Lynne would set both ends of a baton on fire and throw it in the air while her boyfriend stood inconspicuously off to the side holding a coffee can filled with water. When Lynne was finished with her pyrotechnic act, she would pass her flaming baton to Cheney, who, while the audience applauded and Lynne curtsied, would quietly douse the fires by sticking each end of the baton in the coffee can.

Inconspicuous, off to the side, backing up a flashier partner, putting out fires when called upon it's a role Dick Cheney has played his entire life. Throughout his remarkable career White House chief of staff to Gerald Ford, six-term Congressman, Secretary of Defense to the first President Bush and Vice President to the second Cheney's success has derived from his unparalleled skill at serving as the discreet, effective, loyal adviser to higher-profile leaders. He did once flirt with the idea of twirling the flaming baton himself, considering a 1996 run for President. But the idea of putting himself on that stage selling himself in sound bites, baring his soul to profile writers and talk-show hosts would have required a rewiring of Cheney's political DNA. Instead he took an offer in business, figuring he would retire in the job and then do a lot of hunting and fishing. But George W. Bush had a different plan, one that returned Cheney to the role he plays best. As Lynne Cheney told Time, her husband "never thought that this would be his job. But if you look back over his whole career, it's been preparation for this."

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1 Action Man
Dick Cheney seems the antithesis of flamboyance. Stout, gray and slightly stooped, his speech measured and monotonous, he comes across as someone who would shun risks. And yet there are stories. There is Cheney the teenager in Wyoming, attaching a rope to the hood of a car and taking turns with his friends water skiing down irrigation canals that ran parallel to roads outside Casper. There is Congressman Cheney in 1983, five years after his first heart attack and a year before his second, catapulting down a treacherous ski slope in Jackson Hole, Wyo., his red scarf flapping in the breeze behind him, as his fellow skiers watched in stunned admiration from the top of the mountain. "That was the real Dick Cheney. He's not this quiet, laid-back guy," says a politician who has served and vacationed with him. "Inside, this is a guy who takes risks and is very aggressive."

So it is with Cheney's views on national security and foreign policy. Cheney's logic almost always leads to one conclusion: that it is better for the U.S. to act, even if it means taking the risk of acting alone, than it is to sit still. "It's not ideological with him. It's about leadership," says a senior adviser to Cheney. "If he has a bias, it's a bias for action."

During a stint at Yale, Cheney was moved by a course he took from H. Bradford Westerfield, then a self-described ardent hawk who believed the U.S. should use its role as the leader of the free world to fight communism wherever it took hold. Cheney has often told friends that the first author to have a profound impact on his thinking was Winston Churchill, whose multivolume history of World War II impressed upon Cheney the idea that leadership in world affairs is about recognizing dangers and confronting them rather than wishing them away.

Dave Gribbin, a longtime Wyoming friend who worked for Cheney on the Hill and in the Pentagon, traces the Vice President's take on American exceptionalism to his experience in the Ford White House. "Here you are chief of staff, and one of the things you begin to experience up close is the degree to which America is looked upon to do things that other countries can't," says Gribbin. "Not just the use of force, but dealing with hunger and failing economies. He got a firsthand look at the awesome responsibility that that unique position imposes on those who lead." Rather than shrink from that burden, Cheney embraced it. He reasoned, says Gribbin, "Why not enhance and protect that responsibility? Why not make sure you don't fritter it away?"

Years later, during Cheney's tenure as Defense Secretary, his preference for American forcefulness was reinforced when, in the weeks before Iraq overran Kuwait, the U.S. sent mixed signals to Saddam Hussein about the consequences of an invasion. According to friends and aides, Cheney believes that if the U.S. had been more forceful in threatening retaliation against Iraq, Saddam might have stood down and the Gulf War would have been avoided. "You have to be clear and forceful about U.S. intentions," says a current adviser to Cheney. "That way nobody misunderstands our resolve."