Outlook: Five Myths about Dick Cheney

Cheney received five deferments during the Vietnam era. Because of his troubles at Yale (he was effectively kicked out twice) and his graduate work, Cheney had a six-year academic career rather than the typical four year-term. He filed for a deferment every time he was eligible for the draft.

I don't think there's any question that Cheney had a huge influence in the Bush administration, particularly in the first term. He played a major role in shaping the response to 9/11, but he also had a significant role in develop the Bush cabinet and on tax/economic policy. At the same time, there's no question that his influence waned in the second term. In his memoir, he wrote an entire chapter called "Setback" in which he laid out the various foreign policy/national security arguments he lost.

As with most of us, I think his temperament depends on the situation. In the time I spent interviewing him for my book, I found him to relaxed and friendly. I think he's much funnier than people generally believe; he was something of a prankster in college. But he can be gruff, obviously -- something we saw occasionally in his (rather rare) media appearances. He's more comfortable than any elected official I've ever dealt with in answering questions with one word or simply refusing to answer them. He doesn't care about awkward silences -- usually a good way for reporters to get politicians to answer questions.

He was. It's a pretty funny story, actually. Nixon decided on wage and price controls because he believed he needed to be seen as doing something to fight the country's economic woes. It was a completely haphazard undertaking, with the people charged with writing regulations to govern the entire US economy having no experience whatsoever in economics or regulations. (Not that such experience would have led to better results). Cheney talks about the absurdity of Washington trying to determine the price of a pound of ground beef or a gallon of milk -- and then trying to enforce it. He was nominally in charge of the IRS team that was to enforce these new regulations. It didn't work and there's little question that it had a profound impact on his thinking. Until then, he wasn't terribly ideological, believe it or not. During his internship in the Wyoming legislature, he did not care whether he worked for a Republican or a Democrat. He ended up with a Republican because the other student chose to work for the Democrats and program required one student working for each party.

Lots of reasons. He speaks in a direct and forthright manner and, unlike most elected officials, he rarely sugarcoats his disagreements. He is very conservative and he's entirely unapologetic about it. 

But a major reason his reputation took a hit during the Bush administration is because he did not regularly engage the media. Cheney operated quietly, sometimes secretly. The natural skepticism of most journalists leads us to conclude that things done in secret are often nefarious. 

I'm not sure I buy the premise. He was quite conservative during his time in the House of Representatives. He compiled one of the most conservative voting records of anyone who served at the same time. 

I'd put his move to the right in the mid/late 1970s, after his time at the Cost of Living Council and his work on wage and price controls. On national security issues, there is no question his thinking was shaped by front-row seat for the CIA/Congress fights of that era. 

He was a loyal "Ford man" to the end. But his loyalty was to the man, not necessarily his ideas. I think Cheney found himself drawn to arguments Ronald Reagan was making in the 1976 election even while working with Ford to defeat him.

Along the lines of the answer I gave a little earlier, I'd say it has a lot to do with his inaccessibility. Journalists pride themselves on knowing everything (or thinking we do), and too often reporters fill gaps in their own knowledge with speculation about the actions or motives of the people they cover. 

There's another factor, too. Beginning very early in the Bush administration, several top communications officials were concerned about the perceptions that Cheney was running the White House and that the president was taking direction from his number two. It wasn't true, but in order to fight that perception some of these officials sought to diminish Cheney and leaked against him.

If this is true, I haven't heard it.

Good question. In some respects, I think he probably has made the office more influential that it has been. Not because he was out doing prominent VP things, but because everyone - like him or not - understands how influential he was. So he probably raised the expectations of future VPs as to their substantive role. 

On the other hand, one of the reasons he had so much power from the outset was his pledge to President Bush that he would not be running for office after his service. This made Bush believe that the advice he was getting from Cheney was straight -- or at least untainted by concerns about what voters in New Hampshire would think. I'd wager that most prospective vice presidents don't look at the office as the goal but as the final step before the presidency. 

It's true that it's pronounced like "beanie." I'm speculating but I'm guessing VP Cheney never pushed to correct it because it the mispronunciation had become so widespread. Interestingly, one of the few people who regularly pronounces it correctly is Uber-Cheney critic Chris Matthews.

There's little evidence to suggest he did, though it is certainly the case that Cheney believes Libby was done an injustice by the legal system and by George W. Bush (for refusing to pardon him).

You have some Cheney friends have claimed that his personality changed dramatically during the Bush years -- Brent Scowcroft and Ken Adelman, have suggested as much in public. I think there's reasons to be skeptical. For one, they didn't see much of him as VP, so they were making their judgments based on what they saw/heard in media reports. And virtually all of Cheney's friends from Wyoming will tell you he's the same guy he's always been -- not just the same guy he was during his days in Congress or at the Pentagon, but the same guy he was in high school and college. I haven't known him long enough to judge, obviously, but the people in that second group strike me as more authoritative b/c they've known him longer and seen him more regularly in recent years.

To some extent I think he has. Some of the toughest criticism was simply counterfactual. The idea that Cheney was getting rich as VP because Halliburton got Iraq War contracts was simply not true, given the way he handled his stock options, etc. The irony is that there were substantive things to criticize about Cheney's tenure at Halliburton (the company fought hard to have sanctions lifted on Iran, a leading state sponsor of terror, in the late 1990s, for example) but many critics chose to focus on something that was incorrect.