Where the hell is Dick Cheney? Does anybody ever see him anymore? I would consider myself a news addict but for every hour Bush is on CNN, Cheney is on for 1/2 a second. WHAT DOES THE MAN DO ALL DAY? Isn’t he a public servant? Does he ever make any speeches? Isn’t it true he has never even been outside the U.S.?
Now, even if Bush wins this election, I can’t imagine Cheney running in 2008. He has absolutely no relation to the public, even less than Al Gore did in his position. Of the few pictures I’ve seen of him, he has a hideous assymetrical grin, he looks like the Penguin from Batman.
AMERICAN CITIZEN HERE, WONDERING WHERE THE MAN IN THE SECOND HIGHEST OFFICE OF THE COUNTRY IS
Second-highest office? You’re talking of the Speaker of the House, or the Chief of Staff, right? The Veep is a do-nothing job, and Cheney is doing it admirably.
Who said “The Vice Presidency isn’t worth a bucket of warm piss”? He knew what he was saying. Al Gore has more impact on the actual politics of this country, and he lost the last election. The VP doesn’t do anything until the Senate decides it needs a tiebreaker. Somehow, that hasn’t come up recently.
More seriously, Cheney isn’t a generally healthy individual. I’m surprised a major party would put him in as VP, and I can only assume that they didn’t know the depth of his heart problems when they put him on the ticket. I think he’s probably taking it easy someplace.
Most vice presidents are not that visible. I never remember seeing or hearing about Gore before he ran (and lost…he should have been a man about that) and then I could not get him disassociated with Clinton.
Gore was actually one of the more visible VPs, as Clinton delegated a lot of crappy jobs to him. It still didn’t help him much in the election, though. Quayle was visible, not because he ever did anything, but because he was good late-night comedy fodder. (An ill-deserved reputation; the guy is actually quite smart.)
Bush 41 was pretty invisible during his term as VP, except for the time when Reagan was shot and he took over temporarily.
“P-a-t-a-t-o-e” doomed Qualye. Unfortunatly the guy gets the idea to run for president every so often (1996) and gets the vegetable brought up. Oh well.
It’s true Cheney has some chronic heart problems, look for a new Bush VP in 2004 so as to set up a winner in 08.
I rather like the do-little VP, if only the First Lady and President had taken that cue on the previous administration (Eisenhower anyone?).
Tom Leherer relates the story of how, during the Lyndon Johnson/Hubert Humphrey administration, an important world leader died. President Johnson was unable to attend the funeral, and someone suggested he send Hubert. He responded, according to Leherer, “Hubert who?”
Lesson: the VP role is seldom at the forefront of the news.
My impression is that when Bush first came to office, we heard tons and tons from Cheney, and nary a peep from Bush. I think they were afraid of letting Bush open his mouth about anything. For six months they trained Bush to read speeches that someone else wrote, and now they let him out in public to read out loud once in a while, so people will think we are governed by someone. They shut Cheney up so it would look like Bush was doing something. Actually Cheney and the other oil moguls are making all the decisions, but we’re not supposed to know that.
As soon as I read the OP I knew someone would come in with the ‘puppetmaster is never seen’ theory. I’m surprised it took this long for someone to post it.
Haven’t they (whoever “they” are) been keeping Cheney in a safe place so if the terrorists do manage to take out Bush, the Veep won’t get taken out with him, thus passing the mantle of the Presidency on to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert?
Rampant speculation on just what Cheney’s “safe place” might be is invited.
While this is probably not the right forum for it, let me speculate that Mr. Cheney may be found behind the curtains working the levers–al la “pay no attention to the man behind the curtains.”
I’d love to be Vice President. I’d get a salary of 200k a year, for doing absolutely nothing except calling the White House periodically to see if the President was still alive, and breaking ties in the Senate. That’s my dream job.
Well, let’s look at the recent history of the office of Vice-President. By “Made bid” I mean managed to secure the nomination of one of the two major parties. The President under which a particular Veep served follows in brackets:
[ul][li]Harry Truman (FDR): Became President upon death of FDR, ran successfully for second term.[/li][li]Alben Barkley (Truman): Was re-elected to his former Senate seat (Kentucky) in 1954, died suddenly in 1956, at age of 78.[/li][li]Richard Nixon (Eisenhower): Made bid for Presidency in 1960, lost, ran again in 1968, won and then won second term.[/li][li]Lyndon Johnson (Kennedy): Became President upon death of JFK, ran successfully in 1964, declined nomination for 1968.[/li][li]Hubert Humphrey (Johnson): Made bid for Presidency in 1968, lost to Nixon.[/li][li]Spiro Agnew (Nixon): Resigned Vice Presidency over payoff scandal dating from his time as Governor of Maryland.[/li][li]Gerald Ford (Nixon): Became President upon Nixon’s resignation. Made bid in 1976, lost to Jimmy Carter.[/li][li]Nelson Rockefeller (Ford): After Carter’s win, returned to the New York business scene.[/li][li]Walter Mondale (Carter): Made bid in 1984, lost to Ronald Reagan.[/li][li]George Bush aka Bush41 (Reagan): Made bid in 1988, won. Lost to Bill Clinton in 1992.[/li][li]J. Danforth (“Dan”) Quayle (Bush): Dabbled, but never managed successful bid.[/li][li]Al Gore (Clinton): Made bid in 2000, lost to George HW Bush (aka Bush43).[/ul][/li]Contrary to the “warm bucket of spit” assessment, it seems pretty obvious that in recent decades, the Vice Presidency has frequently been a useful stepping stone for one’s own Presidential bid. A lot of this may have to do with Truman, who involved Barkley in Presidential business much more than Roosevelt had involved Truman. Perfectly understandable, since the war was still on then Truman took over.
In any case, of the twelve men listed above, five became President and three made serious bids. The Vice Presidency is not the useless thumb-twiddling exercise it may have been in John Garner’s day, when he was FDR’s first Veep (1933-1941). Garner (or possibly Henry Wallace, who followed him, before being replaced by Truman) may actually be the last of the “useless” Veeps. Since the war, a President who casually under-utilizes his Veep does his administration and his party no favour.
In the case of Cheney, I’d speculate on the following:
[ul][li]His health problems have ruled out a Presidential bid of his own, so he has no impetus to make a lot of public appearances[/li][li]His style is exactly the opposite of the lightweight Quayle, Bush43 having learned a major lesson from Bush41’s troubled administration (having a senior member who attracts endless jokes about his intelligence is a bad idea)[/li][li]He does have the necessary background to be a valuable advisor to Bush43, especially on foreign policy, a commonly perceived weakness in Bush43’s campaign.[/ul][/li]Bush43’s handlers made a pretty good choice, actually. They went with a man with many years of experience in and around the White House, who wouldn’t be an albatross around the boss’s neck, or outshine him (not difficult with this particular President) with his own amibtions.
