Why George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are a formidable team

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Einar Stefferud <Stef () thor nma com>
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 01:55:35 -0800
To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Subject: Why George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are a formidable team

Hi Dave -- This thoughtful text fell into my mailbox, and I think it
deserves wider distribution, as it sets context for better
understanding of what is going on.  The URL at the end points to the
text published by Time.

Best...\Stef

TIME magazine - Sunday, Dec. 22, 2002

Partnership of the Year: Double Edged Sword   -   By NANCY GIBBS

     Why George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are a formidable team


This war has two faces, one a promise, one a growl. One says we will defend
liberty wherever it lives, plant our values where they have never grown. The
other says if you challenge us or threaten us or even just invade our sense
of security, you will have started a fight that you will certainly lose.
Wartime leadership requires a dual message. It has been President Bush's
role from the earliest days to handle our hopes, reacquaint us with our
resilience and remind our allies of our resolve. It has fallen to Vice
President Cheney, a nighthawk with a darker imagination, to focus our fears.
The risks of inaction outweigh the risks of action, he warned this summer,
because we face an enemy that will never relent and never recede until it is
destroyed. 

With that posture -leaning forward, fists clenched- the Bush Administration
has promised to set aside a longtime tradition of restraint in waging war,
because the danger demands no less. Its members believe that the enemy is
mobile and can't be deterred, the targets are soft and can't be protected,
and the old rules of battle no longer apply. The war on terror is a war of
annihilation, and the President's every instinct tells him that however
divided America may be over policy or priorities, this is the only fight
that matters. 

The American public, awakened to danger but wary of responses that could be
more dangerous still, finds itself this winter at war's door, and holding
the key are a President and Vice President who together wield a kind of
power that is more than the sum of its parts. Like any other partnership,
whether of business or brotherhood, Bush and Cheney's is more complicated
than it looks. What is beyond dispute is that two men of very different
skills, instincts and histories found in each other the counterpart who
could take them places they couldn't go alone, at a time when the American
journey turned suddenly perilous. Together they are leading us along a rough
road with sharp curves, and while we may argue about where we're heading, we
have no choice but to follow, because a nation fights as one.

To understand this year, it helps to understand their union, including the
mysteries of how it works and what it means. Most running mates, chosen to
help the presidential candidate win, find that once they are elected their
job is done. Presidents come into office and quickly find an unpleasant and
unsolvable chore -trade policy, deregulation, the war on drugs- to keep
their sidekicks busy, out of sight and out of trouble. It was always the
office where ambition goes to die, unless the President does so first.

Had Sept. 11 never happened, there is no telling what kind of presidency
Bush would have had or what kind of deputy he would have needed. But in the
national crisis, when all the bright lights came up on the White House
stage, there was a chance to rewrite the rules, rewire the whole Executive
Branch. Bush had the zeal to make the war on terrorism his mission; Cheney
provided the theology. "With Bush, it's all gut; it's visceral," a White
House official says. "He hates Saddam. He's an evil guy who tried to
assassinate his dad, and he's gonna get him. With Cheney, it's all logical
and deliberate and thought through. He knows the issues, he's studied them,
and he really believes -he's convinced by the facts- that Saddam poses an
unacceptable threat to the United States."


WINDS OF WAR 

In the days that followed 9/11, Bush found his voice and rallied the
country, while Cheney was whisked off to his "undisclosed location." It was
the ultimate testimonial: most Vice Presidents disappear from view because
they don't matter; Cheney had to disappear because he does. He quickly
emerged as first among equals in the war cabinet, which was all the more
striking given who the equals are. Colin Powell is the untouchable star,
both at home and abroad; his job-approval rating, which hovers around 85%,
is typically 20 points higher than Bush's good marks, which means he is both
a partner in this Administration and a potential rival. Defense chief Donald
Rumsfeld used his Pentagon briefings to turn up his star wattage and in
private meetings is the fire breather; he runs much hotter about the dangers
of Saddam Hussein than anyone else. As National Security Adviser,
Condoleezza Rice has the advantage of a sweet spot in Bush's comfort zone;
she is the one spending weekends with the family at Camp David or quietly
arbitrating among warring factions at State and Defense.

Cheney's force is gravitational; his relationship with Bush is so close and
so big that he is the fixed weight who pulls policy in his direction. He can
just sit there in meetings, camped inside his sidewinder smile and cocking
his head as if he's listening to music no one else hears. He saves his
advice for a circle that no one else can enter. "He doesn't tell Bush what
to think," says a White House adviser and Cheney friend. "It's a process. He
lays it out. He guides Bush's thinking to a conclusion. But he knows the
conclusion going in." Much as the U.S. keeps pulling the rest of the world
toward a tougher line on Saddam, so Cheney keeps pulling within the White
House. Bush uses Cheney to play that role publicly as well - most remarkably
back in August, when Cheney's very tough speech about the threat posed by
Iraq helped convince U.N. members that Bush was serious about going after
Saddam, alone if necessary. "They wouldn't have known how serious we were,"
says a Cheney adviser of the outcome at the U.N., "if Dick Cheney hadn't
been sitting there in a loincloth with a knife in his mouth."

This raises the most interesting question about how this President uses
people, both in public and in private. It's a media cliché to tell the story
of an impressionable and inexperienced princeling caught between his
powerful counselors: Powell and the multilateralist moderates arrayed
against Rumsfeld, Cheney and the unilateralist hawks. The decision to force
a confrontation with Saddam was seen as Cheney's handiwork. But the decision
to first present the case to the American people, the Congress and the U.N.
was taken as a victory for Powell. And the process of getting there looked
awfully messy and improvised.

But a careful look finds evidence of consistent calculation at work. Both
Bush and Cheney had long agreed that U.S. foreign policy had gotten flabby
over the years. A clear and aggressive posture, on the other hand, could act
as a deterrent to mischiefmakers and compel countries to bend to U.S.
pressure. How do you behave enough like a thug to convince your enemies you
are serious, but enough like a statesman to bring the allies onboard? Here
is where Bush was able to use Cheney and his other lieutenants to accomplish
jointly what he could not manage alone. During the summer of corporate
scandal, when Bush needed to resuscitate the drooping economy, the argument
over Iraq seemed to slip out of his control. Democrats sensed Bush might
finally be vulnerable on a national security issue; hunting down al-Qaeda
was one thing, but stirring up the entire Middle East was another. By August
even some of Cheney's old colleagues from the first Bush Administration,
like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, were challenging the idea of going
after Saddam so aggressively and all alone.

It was time for someone to reset the argument, but Bush couldn't do it and
still keep his options open. Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz couldn't
make the case against Saddam because they were considered diehard hawks. But
Cheney would be listened to because he spoke out so rarely. He was already
scheduled to give a speech in Nashville, Tenn., to the Veterans of Foreign
Wars. Speaking privately by phone with Cheney on Aug. 26, the day of the
speech, Bush discussed what it would do and made some suggestions. Cheney
should make it clear that the President would consult Congress and was not
hell-bent on going to war. But the speech would be tough. Other war
councilors heard a general outline in a conference call the day of the
speech, but few knew that Bush and Cheney had gone over its fine points.
"They had a long, private conversation before they had the shorter, more
public one," says a White House aide.

In the speech, the longest of his vice presidency, Cheney cataloged Saddam's
crimes and threats, committed the U.S. to addressing them and
unapologetically declared that we would do it alone if we had to. As for
giving the U.N. weapons inspectors one more chance, Cheney blew right past
skepticism to scorn. The implication was that a U.S. invasion of Iraq was
inevitable and imminent. The speech set off a firestorm, in part because the
tinder was already piled high. There was speculation that Powell would quit;
his allies leaked word that Bush had privately told Powell that Cheney had
gone too far and would have to be reined in. Rice called Cheney to discuss
the misinterpretation of his remarks and how to fix them. In fact, Cheney
had used language not that different from some Powell had just used to say
the same thing. But coming from Cheney, in a full metal jacket, the force of
the comment was too strong. When Cheney gave the speech again three days
later, he tweaked the language about inspectors but left nearly everything
else in the speech the same. "Dick Cheney doesn't freelance," says a senior
adviser to the Vice President. "He said what he did because the President
wanted him to. There is no daylight between Bush and Cheney on this. None.
Zero." 

But the value of the speech only became visible two weeks later, when it was
Bush's turn. The very fact that he actually set foot in the U.N. -Who would
have guessed?- was heralded as a victory for the moderates and a big defeat
for the hawks. In all the score keeping, few noticed how extraordinarily the
debate had shifted. Cheney's hard line allowed Bush to appear reasonable for
even consulting with the Security Council. Having purchased gratitude at
such a cheap price, Bush then walloped his audience for 45 minutes,
describing how the U.N. had grown weak and irrelevant, how Saddam had
repeatedly made it look foolish. And he was applauded.

This episode is a case study in how Bush uses his whole choir to get the
music right. Powell was able to play the public Voice of Reason who
orchestrated the 15-to-0 vote in the Security Council. When some White House
aides tried to bait Bush in a senior staff meeting, mentioning Powell's
grandstanding, the President didn't take the hook. He understood Powell
needed his place in the sun, for the future diplomatic leverage it would
bring him. He didn't even make one of his trademark jokes. "He recognized
the utility in it," said one who was there. As for Cheney, "He likes being
the right-wing nut," says a senior Administration aide. "If you didn't have
the Cheney side out there to tell the whole world 'We're studded up here and
ready to go,' if you didn't announce that to the whole world, then Bush
couldn't move to the other side of all that."


TWO MEN, ONE TEAM 

What two people have in common may bring them together, but what makes them
different tells their fortune. Some of history's most powerful partnerships
are not friendships, and this is true of Bush and Cheney. They like and
respect each other but do not socialize. What matters, what makes their
union work, turns more on their differences than their similarities, though
there are enough of the latter to confuse you. Both are Western oil men,
Yale educated (though Bush got the degree, Cheney flunked out-twice), with
bright and devoted wives of many years and two daughters. Both are content
to be alone, but neither is terribly introspective; both recreate alone
(Cheney fishes, Bush chops wood). Neither of them drops old friends; each
has pals going back to childhood. They share deep conservative principles
but a CEO's taste for results. They share a contempt for braggarts and
showboats and a belief in America's essential goodness as if it were just a
hard fact. "They talk to each other in a kind of code," says a top U.S.
diplomat. "Bush can say things to Dick he can say to no one else."

But each owes his success to qualities the other lacks. Bush runs hot,
Cheney ice cold. Kirk and Spock. Bush is impulse and reflex, with a gift for
winning people over without sucking up to them. Cheney is deliberation and
discretion; he wins people over by becoming indispensable to them. People
trust Bush because his easy candor makes him seem more authentic than the
average politician, right down to his ragged syntax. People who deal with
Cheney trust him for the opposite reason: he's so steady and stalwart that
even when he smiles, half of his mouth stays behind.

Perhaps the most conspicuous difference between them is a physical one. Bush
has an almost moral commitment to fitness - he called his inability to fit
in more long runs one of the tragedies of his presidency. Cheney, who's only
five years older but can seem twice that, visibly declined in office and
didn't seem to care. At Senate lunches, other Republicans winced as he
ordered up a fat sandwich and potato chips, or dove into the fried chicken
while they nibbled on salads. After one hospitalization for an angioplasty,
in March 2001, lawmakers placed quiet bets on whether he would even be able
to serve out his term.

But somehow Cheney got religion: some say it was his wife Lynne, but she had
been trying for years. Several people say Bush finally wore him down by
example. By this summer, Cheney was ordering fresh fruit, bran muffins and
decaf for the congressional breakfasts, which had the other lawmakers
grumbling because it was so bland. Senator Bill Frist, who himself may
harbor vice-presidential ambitions, says that when he went duck hunting with
Cheney in late November, "my heart rate went up a lot more than his as we
walked through a foot of water to a duck blind. Fitness comes out at 5
o'clock in the morning in the freezing cold. And he pulls a lot more ducks
out of the sky than I do, with a lot less effort."

While both Bush and Cheney are political creatures, they are of utterly
different species. Bush loves the foreplay of politics; Cheney can't stand
it. Bush learned it at his father's knee; Cheney came to it much later and
as a student. Worse, he was a student of political science, a man trained as
a staff member, crunching the numbers, writing about highway reforms. As
heir to a political dynasty, Bush was always a stand-in for the big guy
himself, not an aide but a doppelgänger. And although it was not until 1994
that he began to run seriously, he had been in the motorcade since college.
Cheney was born to serve but not to run for the top job, though it took a
painful outing before he realized it. During his short-lived presidential
bid in 1994, Cheney would ask his handlers if they could make the fund
raisers more substantive, which is like trying to make a frat party more
philosophical. Even after Bush tapped him to be his running mate, the
advance team outlined a parade event in which Cheney would meet and greet
some of the voters. "Um," said a Cheney staff member tentatively, "Mr.
Cheney does not like to shake hands."

By coming together, each can become even more himself. Bush knows his
limitations but does not feel compelled to overcome them, learn what he
doesn't know or master what he knows only superficially; Cheney is the
consummate student, a voracious reader who absorbs information, masters the
details and takes quiet pride in his expertise. "Dick lets George be the
external political outside guy, the schmoozer, the talker," says a friend
who has known both men long enough to use first names. "And George lets Dick
run the machine. George would be bored by process. He understands it. He
manipulates it. But he doesn't want to live in it. George gets energy from
interacting with people, like his father did. Cheney doesn't. He could spend
every day of the rest of his life in his West Wing office and be fulfilled
just talking on the phone, moving the process, meeting on policy."


SHARING CHORES 

Cheney is the most powerful deputy ever, and he is also very much Bush's
subordinate; this is not a contradiction so much as a cause and effect. Bush
trusts Cheney because he is loyal, discreet and very clear about who is in
charge; that trust in turn is Cheney's trophy, up on the mantel for all to
see. They have more than that weekly private lunch that Al Gore insisted on
when Bill Clinton recruited him. They are together every day, sometimes for
most of the day; Cheney attends any important meeting and then often stays
behind with Bush alone. As a minister without portfolio, he has no territory
to defend or institution to protect, which means that "the President doesn't
have to run his advice through a filter," says an aide to the Vice
President. "Cheney's view isn't the State Department view or the Pentagon
view; it's Cheney's view."

It also means that Cheney's influence depends entirely on the state of his
relationship with Bush, which he has proved very good at tending. Its first
pillar is that it includes only one President, now and forever more. This is
all but an article of faith in Washington: as budget director Mitch Daniels
puts it, Cheney's title is "Senior Adviser Without Future Political
Ambition." As Bush happily told some congressional guests early in his first
term, "Dick's doing a good job because he's told me he doesn't want to be
President." Cheney had his fourth heart attack in November 2000, amidst the
Florida recount drama-which lent him further credibility as one who can be
appointed but not elected. "For the first time since Truman, you have a Veep
who does not dream, does not wonder, does not think every day about being
President," says a White House official. "And so Cheney has a much larger
role than Bill could have given Al or 41 gave Dan Quayle or Ronald Reagan
gave 41." 

It might be more accurate to say that Dick Cheney is plenty ambitious, just
not the way everyone assumes. Cheney knows that his not wanting power for
himself allows Bush to give it to him. Bush put Cheney in charge of his
transition because it sent an instant signal about Cheney's clout: "I want
Dick to build up some political capital," Bush would say, "so he can go up
to Capitol Hill and spend it." Ambitious lawmakers who may run one day
themselves did not see Cheney as a rival. The Vice President sat at the
Senate's g.o.p. policy lunches, taking notes; when Senator Trent Lott asked
for comments, Cheney usually passed. When there was an important bill on the
floor, he might say, 'You know, this means a lot to the President. We need
to get this done.' And not much more.

This goes to the second piece of gospel about Bush and Cheney's partnership:
that its inner workings are utterly secret, the Vice President perfectly
discreet. He's Bush's personal CIA, with secure lines into corporate
boardrooms, foreign governments, both houses of Congress and sleeper cells
in every branch of government. When he went to visit senior British
officials -who know something about reticence- they were struck by his
demeanor. "There's no charisma," one of them observes. "But that's not what
he's there for, which is intelligence, wisdom." In their first meeting, just
before Bush took office, the official met with Cheney in Washington. "He
just didn't say anything; so I kept talking and talking until I ran out of
things to say. It made me feel like a complete idiot," he adds cheerfully -
an acknowledgement that sometimes the best way to gather information is by
not trying to. "And then at the end, he looked at me quizzically and said,
'How's your brother?'" The brother had been an aide to Margaret Thatcher and
was still in Cheney's Rolodex.

Even if Cheney is Bush's extra set of eyes and ears, he's not the only one.
Cheney may have the biggest Rolodex, but Bush is the master of the
information game. "He's got a lot of portals for data," says a former Cheney
aide about Bush. "He plays them off against each other. That's smart: he
hears from Powell, then he'll go to Cheney. And Cheney is always the last
sounding board." But that doesn't mean Cheney will always carry the day.
When Bush's Republican rival, Senator John McCain, showed up at the White
House the evening of Jan. 31, 2001, he expected to discuss his
campaign-finance-reform bill privately over a drink with Bush in the
residence. Instead, he was directed to the Oval Office, where Cheney was
waiting as well. Despite his hostile rhetoric during the campaign, Bush had
never studied McCain's proposal carefully. Cheney stayed silent as McCain
leafed through the 38-page bill to explain its provisions, insisting that it
would not hurt Republicans. Bush asked a lot of questions; he seemed
intrigued. Cheney was not. He sat impassive throughout the presentation.
Bush finally turned to Cheney. "So what do you think?" he asked.

"Yeah, you haven't said anything," McCain prodded. "I'd like to hear it."

"Well, I'm for full disclosure and no limits," Cheney would only say, which
was essentially the opposite of McCain's approach. Bush and McCain both
laughed. "Well, it's a good thing I'm handling this issue," Bush said,
chuckling. Just over a year later, he signed McCain's bill.


MONEY TROUBLES 

It took about three months in office to see that Cheney was not Perfect in
Every Way. He knew how to organize a task force; he did not know how to
unveil one. There was something garage-floor quirky about him: the master
mechanic knows how to build any car by hand, but he doesn't have a clue
about how to sell one. Bush gave Cheney the energy portfolio, only to
inspire complaints (and lawsuits) about his secrecy in handling it and his
clumsiness in promoting it. In one of the rare moments when Cheney went
front and center, he made news by deriding conservation as a "personal
virtue," as opposed to a pillar of any effective national strategy. Maybe
because he is from Wyoming, where the center lies to the right of just about
everyplace else, and because he has not run for office in 14 years, Cheney
seemed not to realize that protecting the environment had become a core
value to voters in both parties.

This was, even to the Bush team, something of a surprise. "He's pretty
tone-deaf on this stuff," conceded a senior White House official at the
time. Counsellor Karen Hughes, meanwhile, who was the nearest thing to a
centrist on the environment in the West Wing, was appalled. She immediately
went to work on damage control, forcing the President into a series of
photo-op events designed to show how much he cared about the environment.
She also made sure Cheney receded into the background, something the Vice
President, burned by the experience, was happy to do.

Likewise on economic policy, Cheney has not always been able to help Bush
get his footing. Cheney's record at Halliburton made him slightly
radioactive last spring, after the New York Times reported that Halliburton
may have inflated its earnings, with a little help from Arthur Andersen.
Shareholders have filed a lawsuit. Cheney's critics took great pleasure in
sharing a six-year-old promotional video of Cheney that praises the
accounting firm for work "over and above just the ... normal by-the-books
auditing arrangement." If Bush was slow to grasp the toll that Enron and
Tyco and WorldCom would take on investor confidence, Cheney was no help.

History is full of failed Presidents who become prisoners of their problems,
but Bush doesn't appear to have that trait. While he was late to address the
failings of his economic team, when he did, he shot everyone in sight. In
the months before the massacre, Cheney had been meeting privately with
people on the economy. Old friends told him that Treasury Secretary Paul
O'Neill was not cutting it - a painful truth, since it was Cheney who had
tapped him for the job. It was Cheney who finally called O'Neill to break
the news that it was time to leave and who helped recruit John Snow to
replace him, much to the relief of party elders. "Many of us wondered
whether they lived in the real world," said a top Republican. "All summer
and fall, we were asking ourselves, Do they think this war is going to take
care of everything? Surely they know that if they can't move on the economy,
the war is not going to get them through this. And then along they come and
make a dramatic move, choose a couple of practical guys. They broke out."

Ever since Cheney and Bush came onstage together, people have seen in their
partnership whatever they are looking for. The President's critics still
view Bush as a puppet, his mouth wired to Cheney's brain. His fans see a man
surrounded by big and confident personalities who is himself the most
confident of all. The critics challenge the whole notion of pre-emption for
its reckless means in pursuit of arrogant ends. Bush's allies note that he
has still managed to sell it to the American people, who have never gone to
war gladly but support his foreign policy generally. However anxious they
may be, most Americans are inclined to give Bush the benefit of the doubt;
they trust his motives and approve of his performance. In war, it's not
enough for people to like Bush; they have to follow him, and for many,
that's easier when he has Cheney marching at his side.

Copyright © 2002 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/2002/poyrelationship.html


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