I am reading Write It When I’m Gone, by a reporter for Newsweek who became a buddy of Gerry Ford and who interviewed him many times after DF left office. Gerry seems like a real nice guy, much more savy than the popular image credits him.
Dick Cheny (after serving as a congressman) was Ford’s first chief of staff in the White House. Ford like the guy. Like him a lot. He pushed for Cheny to be Veep on several tickets before Bush the Lesser made the pick.
As an exercise, let us stretch our hive mind. Presume Ford was right, presume Dick was a Nice Guy.
Could this be true? If so, how did the media get such a bad impression of him?
I have kicked this around and I wonder if this is possible … Cheny is a swell fellow, a real insider who had way too much influence, but a nice guy. But 9-11 scared him very, very badly. As a result he did a lot of really dumb things. Further he was too proud to change his mind even if he later wanted to.
Cheney’s personality isn’t important except to the extent it helps us understand his actions in office. I don’t really care if he can be described as nice or mean. He might be very pleasant guy if you get to know him individually. Certainly plenty of people have said the same about George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. But Dick Cheney was also George H. W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense, so if you’re suggesting he was a flowers-and-bunnies pacifist, you’re probably wrong.
Anyway: how did the press get a bad impression of Cheney? This probably didn’t help:
Bush [to Cheney, preparing to address a crowd]: “There’s Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the New York Times.”
Cheney [same]: “Oh yeah, he is, big time.”
From there Cheney’s and his aggressive views on foreign policy and his penchant for secrecy - I don’t mean executive power, I mean that he didn’t like to deal with the press, and neither did most of the Bush adminstration - probably did the rest. His “Fuck you” to Sen. Pat Leahy (on the senate floor) didn’t help, but I’m sure his reputation was well sealed by that point.
There is a difference between Cheney = Swell Guy prior to becoming VP and Cheney = Swell Guy after becoming VP.
Maybe it is power corrupts thing but certainly his actions as VP and since paint the picture of a seriously not good or nice guy.
You can discuss why he changed (if he indeed did change rather than just quietly smile on his way up while harboring evil thoughts) if you want. Not sure it matters much.
I’ve read that Bush the Elder reined in a lot of the more aggressive members of his Cabinet. He had the self-confidence and experience to do that, which Bush the Younger did not.
I don’t think you can blame his behavior on 9/11. Remember that before this he nominated himself as VP. In addition, we blame him for Iraq, not Afghanistan, and Cheney surely knew that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. If he had really cared, he would have supported putting in enough resources to catch bin Laden, and not diverting them elsewhere.
I’ll add this, because maybe I didn’t address your central point: I don’t think September 11th changed Dick Cheney’s opinions on much of anything. I think it reinforced them and in some cases it gave him a chance to put them into action. From reading about him I think he always believed in a strong chief executive, believed in taking an aggressive foreign policy, believed international alliances were of little value, and so on.
One trait I see from Cheney is a willingness to take political and factual matters and make them personal. I’m thinking of things like the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame affair. Forget for the moment whether a crime was committed, and all of the who-told-whom stuff that was debated at the time. The core of the story, to me, is that someone published some facts that the administration didn’t like, and rather than go after the facts, they went after the people. That’s dirty pool.
I don’t have a secret recording of Cheney saying “how dare he disagree with us, let’s ruin him,” but he either directed it or sat back while others did.
Cheney was a charter member of "The Project of a New America’. He and Wolfowitz, Abrams, Bush, Rumsfield, Libby, and Bennett. He was also a follower of Fritz Kraemer. His credentials as a neo-con are long established. His far right wing policies are many decades old.
Cheny is a great guy who has simply been misunderstood.
Cheny is a nasty man, and Ford was a poor judge of character.
Ford was a nastier fellow than we think, and so naturally he like Cheny.
Cheny was a great Chief of Staff by made a nasty Veep.
a. because he changed while Veep, or
b. because he changed between the time he was CoS and when he became Veep.
Project for a New American Century, I believe. The PNAC Gallery.
I think Cheney’s a scumbag who always wanted to have people tortured and did so as soon as he thought he’d have enough sympathy from the proles to get away with it.
Unless American public opinion somehow converts to Cheney’s vision of the “unitary executive”, with more discretionary powers and less accountability, I don’t see historical revisionism having much influence on his reputation.
As far as purely personal traits go, I think it’s worth remembering that although nobody seems to regard Cheney as likeable, he maintains ties with his lesbian daughter and her partner and child, even though acceptance of homosexuality is not a road to popularity with most conservatives. So the scowly old Evil Overlord does apparently value personal loyalties over currying favor with ideologues, and I can respect him for that.
Cheney was hugely popular as SecDef during the first Gulf War. He exudes an air of competence and intelligence, and talks in ‘straight talk’, which people love - when they agree with him. Another politician like that is Don Rumsfeld, who started out in the Bush administration as its most popular figure - a near rock star in political circles.
But guys like that can also come across as dismissive and arrogant, which is maddening if you don’t agree with them. They’re lightning rods. Both of them rode the heights of popularity, then became enemies #1 and #2 when public opinion turned against what they were doing and they continued being themselves - unapologetic, forceful, dismissive of other viewpoints, etc.
I think Ford’s opinion of both Nixon and Cheney tells us more about Ford (who was a generous, affable, easy-to-get-along with guy) than it does about the other men.
I’ve read in a few places that Cheney’s personality seemed to change after his heart attack - which is not an uncommon occurrence. His personality when he worked for Gerald Ford might in fact have been different from his personality now.
A guy can he affable in private and come off as a jerk when dealing with the press and the public. Anyway did Ford push for the guy because he was nice or because he thought Cheney would be a good vice president?