Dick Cheney once considered the vice presidency a "cruddy job" but got over his misgivings and went on to be arguably the most powerful No 2 in US politics, and one of the most heavily criticised.
The 66-year-old Cheney's stoic, no-nonsense demeanor and influence in many White House decisions are in stark contrast to his youthful days when he was caught twice for drunk driving in Wyoming and dropped out of Yale University for bad grades.
Cheney's life has been chronicled in a fairly sympathetic biography by Stephen Hayes, a writer for The Weekly Standard conservative magazine. He spent nearly 30 hours in one-on-one interviews with the normally reticent Cheney for the book. In his research Hayes found that Cheney in 1996 called the vice presidency a "cruddy job," which his political mentor, President Gerald Ford, had hated. But by 2000 Cheney was persuaded to accept when George W. Bush offered the position.
Cheney's role as a behind-the-scenes adviser has fed a left-wing stereotype that he is Bush's dark, brooding puppetmaster and advocate of war and torture, an image the media-averse Cheney has done little to change.
"He is pathologically (but purposefully) secretive, treacherous toward colleagues; coldly manipulative of the callow, lazy, and ignorant president he serves," Hendrik Hertzberg, a former speechwriter for Democratic President Jimmy Carter, wrote in The New Yorker. Cheney's insistence that his office did not fall under Bush's executive branch as a way to avoid providing records to a government oversight agency also has drawn fire.
Satirical cartoonist Garry Trudeau featured Cheney in his Doonesbury comic strip as in charge of a secretive "black branch" of the US government. "My shirt size is classified," the Cheney character says in the strip.
The vice president's office shrugs off the criticism. The White House said Cheney remains a close Bush adviser. "Always has been and will remain so," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
After such attacks and his role in pushing the unpopular Iraq war, Cheney's job approval is at a lackluster 30 percent, a recent Gallup poll said. Former Wyoming Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, a long-time Cheney friend, said the attacks are emblematic of an ugly period in US politics.
"There's so many people that hate the guy, people that hate Dick Cheney just like people who hate George Bush or hate (Democratic presidential candidate) Hillary Clinton. It's a really ugly thing out in the land, not disgust or irritation, but hatred, and it's a whole new ballgame in my time," he said.
Driving some of the criticism has been a series in The Washington Post describing the backdoor way Cheney persuaded Bush, particularly on approving harsh interrogation methods for captured suspects in the war on terrorism.
According to The Post, a foreshadowing of how Cheney would operate came when former Vice President Dan Quayle congratulated him on his new job in early 2001. Quayle advised Cheney he should expect to attend a lot of funerals, a traditional duty of US vice presidents. "I have a different understanding with the president," Cheney told Quayle with a small smile.
Presidential historians say Cheney is by far the most powerful vice president in modern US history - "He has more power by a factor of maybe 5 or 10," says historian Richard Jensen.
Cheney might not have gotten as far without Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was Ford's chief of staff in 1974 and hired Cheney as a deputy despite eyebrows raised over the two drunk driving arrests in the early 1960s.
Cheney and Rumsfeld maintain a close bond, and Hayes reported Cheney "absolutely" disagreed with Bush's decision to dump Rumsfeld as defence secretary in November after Republicans lost control of the US Congress.
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