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He was a hawk during the Persian Gulf crisis and clashed frequently with Powell, who was cautious about using the military to expel Iraq from Kuwait. But Cheney never strayed far from the official line coming out of the White House. He asked early on after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait whether the U.S. should consider overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but abandoned the idea quickly. It fell to Cheney to secure support from Arab leaders for pushing Saddam out of Kuwait, support gained with the promise that the U.S. had no intention of marching to Baghdad. Like the other principal players in that war, Cheney has steadfastly defended the decision ever since.
As he demonstrated at the Pentagon, Cheney expects the same kind of loyalty and discretion from below that he delivers to those above him. Three days into his stint as Defense Secretary, he publicly rebuked the Air Force's top officer for venturing into politics when he sounded out members of Congress on updating the U.S. nuclear force. Later, Cheney cashiered two other top officers for indiscreet remarks.
Even with close associates, Cheney doesn't tell stories out of the Oval Office. Wolfowitz says he can't describe the evolution of Cheney's thinking on Iraq, "because he is so tight-lipped and careful, I still don't know from the end of the last war what his positions were." Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona considers himself Cheney's friend and a fellow conservative hawk. "Every time I talk to him and I make a pitch about something, he'll say, 'O.K.'" says Kyl. "And you don't know what he's going to do with the information. I honestly do not know what goes on between him and the President."
6. Perpetual Student
Ever since his flameout at Yale, Cheney seems to have been compensating, retaining a fiercely scholarly approach to his work. In his first year at the Pentagon, he organized periodic Saturday-morning tutorials with top Kremlinologists and defense thinkers to bring himself up to speed on what was still the U.S.'s prime nemesis.
For the past two years, he and Lynne have held periodic dinner parties — an attendee calls them "salons" — featuring big thinkers on topics ranging from American political history (David McCullough) to Islam's relationship with the West (Bernard Lewis). To prepare for a Meet the Press session last fall, Matalin took him two 6-in.-thick binders full of briefing materials. "He loves to prepare," she says. "You can't give him too much information. He just swallows it and asks for more."
Cheney demands the same level of discipline in his staff members. "That last thing you want to do is go to him with an argument you can't back up," says an adviser. "He'll get that look of disgust on his face real fast and tell you to go do your homework."
As a policymaker, his credibility comes in large measure from the way he masters a subject, marshals the facts behind an argument and then patiently and dispassionately lays out the case in his Joe Friday manner. "He never yells; he never even raises his voice," says a close friend and adviser. "He just buries you, slowly, with the force of his logic."
7. Verbal Economizer
There is a joke about the Vice President that his friends like to tell. "Dick Cheney is always at an undisclosed location," they say, "even when he's sitting right in front of you." For the taciturn Cheney, discretion has been the key to power and influence. He has made calculated silence his calling card. Whether in meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill or in sessions of President Bush's war council, Cheney, as a colleague in the White House puts it, "just sits there and listens with that crooked grin on his face. He almost never speaks."
When he does, people tend to listen. He played that role even in high school. Harry (the Horse) Geldien, Cheney's football coach, remembers the young man as a locker-room leader, though not the rah-rah, attention-grabbing type. "They'd be in there dressing for the game, and there was usually a lot of chattering and noise," Geldien recalls. "But when Dick started to speak, the other kids would stop and listen. They respected him."