7 Clues To Understanding Dick Cheney

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3 Power Hoarder
If you're in politics and you believe in leadership and action, the Executive Branch of government is the place to be. Cheney was happy and effective in his 10 years as a Congressman, and he rose to be the second-ranking Republican in the House, with a real chance of one day becoming Speaker. But when President Bush in 1989 asked him to be Secretary of Defense instead, he leaped at the offer. Even when he was in the House, Cheney displayed a strong bent atypical in that chamber for Executive privilege. In the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, Congress had moved aggressively to trim back presidential powers and expand its own. Cheney was opposed. In 1987 he was the top Republican on the committee investigating the Iran-contra affair, which concluded that Ronald Reagan had overstepped his powers as President. Cheney's minority report was a full-throated rejection of that view.

Cheney, as Vice President, is still fighting the battle for Executive perquisites. That struggle moved to the courts when Cheney refused to identify the energy-industry officials who were consulted last year by his task force on energy policy. Members of Congress directed the General Accounting Office (gao) to sue. Some outside interest groups also filed suit. But Cheney, with Bush's support, refused to yield, citing the need to protect private advice to the President and Vice President. When Matalin told him calls were coming in even from allies begging Cheney to compromise, he told her, "Suck it up, Mary. If a principle is worth having, it's worth fighting for." A federal court ruled Dec. 9 in Cheney's favor against the gao, which is likely to appeal.

After 9/11, Cheney supported Bush in aggressively applying the President's unilateral powers for example, creating military tribunals through a presidential order rather than seeking legislation from Congress. Cheney was the Administration figure who pushed hardest against Democrats on Capitol Hill who wanted to launch a probe into the intelligence failures before 9/11. They eventually got their way, but Cheney stalled them for a year.

Cheney's critics argue that his defense of Executive privilege is a smoke screen that masks a contempt for Congress, the media and, by extension, the public. Even some of his friends think he takes it too far. Cheney, says one, "has a kind of Father Knows Best attitude about government: We're in control, and we know what we're doing even if you don't." But Cheney is unapologetic in his view. In an appearance last February on the Tonight Show, not the usual forum for constitutional issues, he complained to Jay Leno about "a continual encroachment by Congress in the Executive Branch" and vowed, "The President and I are bound and determined not to allow that to happen on our watch."

4 Universal Adapter
Whether in Congress, the Pentagon or the White House, Cheney has made a career out of being the consummate No. 2, the trusted deputy or operations man who carries out his assignments with smooth efficiency. "You plug him in, and he works anywhere," says Mary Kay Hill, a longtime aide to former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, who worked with Cheney on Capitol Hill. "He just has a real good way of fitting in and working his environment."

Once Cheney got to Washington, his rise in politics was like a vertical blur. Representative Steiger, fatefully, made his young charge the point man for an informal group of new G.O.P. members that was trying to create a fresher, more appealing face for the Republican Party. It was nicknamed "Rummy's Raiders," after its leader, Illinois Representative Donald Rumsfeld. Cheney got to know the boisterous and driven former fighter pilot well enough that when Rumsfeld was tapped by President Richard Nixon to run the Office of Economic Opportunity, Cheney wrote him an unsolicited memo outlining how he should handle the job. Rumsfeld hired Cheney on the spot as his lieutenant.

Rumsfeld was ambitious, imagining himself in the Oval Office one day, and he saw in Cheney a loyal and effective aide but not a rival. When Nixon sent Rumsfeld to run the Cost of Living Council, Rumsfeld again brought Cheney along as his deputy. And when Ford took over for Nixon, appointing Rumsfeld chief of staff, Cheney was at Rumsfeld's side as No. 2; his Secret Service code name was, appropriately, "Backseat." Finally, in November 1975, after Rumsfeld was named Ford's Defense Secretary, Dick Cheney became the youngest White House chief of staff in history, at age 34.