Dick Cheney Strikes Back
Jules Witcover

The first accounts of former Vice President Dick Cheney's memoir of his Bush administration years contain the customary defenses of the author's policy positions and personal assessments that mark such post-mortems.

Unlike some others of the genre, Cheney's book goes beyond self-aggrandizement to confirm the unusually influential role he played in a job that until recent years had been heavily ceremonial, if not (as some had argued) inconsequential.

As reported in The New York Times, Cheney tells in "In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir," (Available at Amazon.com), how on Sept. 11, 2001 he ran the administration's response from the White House underground crisis center in a way that protected the out-of-town President George W. Bush's image.

In reference to the decision that for security reasons the president not return to Washington at once but instead go to an undisclosed military installation, Cheney writes: "We were at war. Our commander-in-chief needed to be seen in charge, strong and resolute -- as George W. Bush was."

Cheney also paints himself as a loyal subordinate who aired his differences with the president internally only and fell in line once presidential decisions were made, in contrast to other major administration figures. He writes that Bush's first CIA director, George Tenet, resigned "when the going got tough."

The former vice president also says Bush's first-term secretary of state, Colin Powell, tried to apply pressure on Bush by airing his disagreements to others externally. "It was as though he thought the proper way to express his views," Cheney writes, "was by criticizing administration policy to people outside the government." Powell's subsequent resignation, he says, "was for the best."

Cheney also takes a sly swipe at former National Security Adviser and later Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying she was naive in approaching nuclear arms talks with the North Koreans. He also writes that Rice "tearfully admitted I had been right" in arguing there was no need to apologize for Bush's erroneous report to Congress that Iraq had been pursuing uranium in Niger for its nuclear weapons project.

As for Bush's decision to fire his first secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney mildly grouses that he "had no chance" to object to that dismissal of the man Cheney once served under at the Pentagon.

The figure Cheney presents in these views squares essentially with how he was widely perceived from the outside -- as a tough, tight-lipped hard-liner who may not have "run" George W. Bush, as many critics insisted, but who clearly exerted influence bar beyond the traditional figurehead vice president.

A measure of how Cheney in eight years raised the office's reputation in policy-making and implementation is the fact that Threshold Editions, a Simon and Schuster imprint, has reported a remarkable 500,000 first printing, far beyond what any previous vice-presidential memoir has been given.

The office of vice president has grown rapidly into a responsible and functioning arm of the executive branch. It started 34 years ago, when President Jimmy Carter brought his vice president, Walter Mondale, into the White House itself, giving him full access to all Oval Office meetings of importance and a voice in policy decisions. The practice diminished somewhat in the vice presidencies of the senior George Bush and more so in that of Dan Quayle, but resumed when Al Gore, Cheney and currently Joe Biden assumed the office.

In all these instances, the power or weakness of the vice president has remained in the hands of the president. Carter, Bill Clinton, the junior Bush and now Barack Obama have relied heavily on what has become a significant partnership with their stand-bys. Cheney's memoir does nothing to contradict this critical development.

One aspect of the Cheney vice presidency, however, remains a source of legitimate regret. Beyond the unpopularity of certain decisions attributed to him, such as the torture of suspected terrorists, was the uncommon secrecy in which he operated, which advanced his image as a shadowy, malignant figure. Writing his memoir at least lifts the cloak somewhat from this vice president, who surpassed Adams' description of the job: "In this I am nothing, but I may be everything."