Analysis: Cheney breaks VP mold

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Dick Cheney alone could probably never bring a crowd to its feet in rapturous enthusiasm no matter how partisan the group was, even if he wanted to and tried. And he certainly isn't a media darling -- he doesn't go a-courting, he offers no particularly pithy, whopper quotes. In fact, he shuns the hyped and crafted media availabilities and appearances so popular with predecessors.

So what gives with America's vice president?

Two things, according to political analysts and administration officials. Cheney's corporate-like personality and lack of personal political agenda have had a profound impact on the administration of President George W. Bush and Cheney's place in it.

"He has got to be one of the most unusual vice presidents in modern history," Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, told United Press International. "He has more influence than any vice president, and I'm not forgetting about (Walter) Mondale and (Al) Gore.

"Yet having said that, for someone so influential he is the least-known and least-visible vice president ever: He is not running for president. He has no need whatsoever to build an independent political organization or take independent political stands or even be known by the public. And a nice thing for Cheney, it matches his personality perfectly."

Cheney, born in Nebraska and raised in Wyoming where he once strung telephone wire, is the 46th person to hold an office President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first VP, John Nance Garner, called "not worth a bucket of warm spit."

"I do not propose to be buried until I am really dead," Daniel Webster said when he turned down a shot at the vice presidential slot in 1848.

Prior to the presidency of Jimmy Carter in 1976, the No. 2 person on a presidential ticket, and later in the White House, was simply there because of Constitutional strictures and political necessity -- having a running mate who would bring regional balance -- and electoral votes -- for the ticket. Following the election, the vice president was lucky even to see the president. Just ask Lyndon Johnson when he was No. 2 to President John F. Kennedy, who apparently had no time at all, figuratively or literally, for the man who was once the most powerful person in the U.S. Senate.

President Harry Truman, who was Roosevelt's last vice president, only was told about work developing the atom bomb he was to later use after he assumed the presidency following Roosevelt's death.

Until the 25th Amendment in 1967, a sitting president was not even required to appoint a vice president if the holder of that office vacated for some reason. Johnson, for example, left the position empty after he assumed office in November 1963 and only moved to fill it when running for election in 1964 by naming Hubert H. Humphrey as his running mate.

Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, said the political expediencies governing choice for running mate began to really change in 1976, when Carter chose Minnesota Sen. Walter Mondale as a running mate.

Carter, a Georgia governor, was an outsider, Hess said. Mondale knew the political ropes of Washington and was given more tasks to handle than previous vice presidents, who were largely restricted by their bosses to the constitutional duties of presiding over the Senate, breaking tie votes and also customary duties such as filling in for the chief executive at state funerals.

The next major break with tradition was made by Bill Clinton, who chose fellow Southerner Al Gore as his running mate.

"He chose a real insider, and I think there was at least -- certainly until their interests started to separate -- there was a sense of comfort there, where Bill Clinton took advantage of Gore's knowledge and gave him a more substantial portfolio than in the past," Hess said.

Gore was a child of Washington and Washington politics. His father was a U.S. senator from Tennessee, and the young Al Gore grew up in Washington. He later served in the House and Senate.

Bush, although the son of a former president, was also technically an outsider. Cheney, on the other hand, was a consummate insider with broad experience with the Washington establishment.

"I do believe he is the ultimate insider and whether he is out front or behind the scenes that has to do with the needs of the administration, changes in time and other things," Hess said.

"I think he is the more dominant one because he has the whole gestalt, he understands from the president's point of view government, he understands the Department of Defense, he understands the Congress. He is a person with a complete resume."

Cheney was chief of staff to President Gerald Ford. He was a six-term congressman and secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush during the 1990-1991 Gulf War.

Hess says Cheney functions effectively as chief lobbyist with Congress and points to the passage of Bush's first tax cut bill just three months.

"He appears to be a behind-the-scenes operative, a planner, a strategist and not a very public person," added political analyst William Schneider. " ... He is kind of an elder statesman, but not, not, not a (public) political cheerleader."

Cheney, the former chief executive officer of Halliburton, the Texas-based contracting company, also brings corporate experience to his post and a corporate business culture in which the boss -- in this case Bush -- is the boss and is not upstaged.

At age 62, and with a history of heart problems, Cheney has no inclination or interest in pursuing a future independent political career.

Kevin Kellems, spokesman for the vice president, said the result is a lack of acrimony -- indeed a greater degree of cooperation -- between Cheney's and Bush's individual staffs than would normally exist in the White House.

Cheney meets with Bush several times a day, schedules permitting, he said. He is present each morning during Bush's national security briefings -- either in person or via teleconference. And they have a private lunch together each week.

Kellems disputes characterizations that Cheney shuns the public eye.

"We don't go out of our way to excessively promote his appearances," Kellems told UPI. "(But) by its very nature the upcoming campaign schedule will dictate a gradual increase in his public schedule and in comments and interviews. In other words, he does the work that needs to be done and that dictates how much exposure there is, instead of the other way around."

A quick check of the White House Web site shows a steady but low number of public events for Cheney. In September, Cheney gave seven speeches around the country. In October, the number was eight.

Cheney has his detractors. Some have vilified him as the ultraconservatives' point man in the White House. Sabato, of the University of Virginia, discounts this, pointing out that Cheney indicated he was not opposed to same-sex civil unions, something conservatives are vehemently against.

Neither, he says, is he running White House policy.

"That would be utterly ridiculous," he said. "Cheney has been around different White Houses so long he knows a president always, always runs the White House and would deeply resent it if anyone else was trying.

"He is deeply influential because he doesn't try (to run things) and he has absolutely no other agenda other than Bush's."

Cheney has also been attacked through allegations that Halliburton and its subsidiaries have gotten plum government contracts for rebuilding Iraq, worth more than $2 billion, without having to bid for them and that in one case one unit overcharged the U.S. military millions for gasoline in Iraq.

Halliburton claims it has done nothing wrong, and buying gasoline from Kuwait instead of Turkey while Iraq's oil infrastructure was being rebuilt was done at the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Pentagon announced Tuesday that contract was being terminated and the contract to supply fuel to Iraq would be put up for bidding.

The issue of Cheney's energy task force, which met behind closed doors to form the administration's energy policy, is currently before the Supreme Court. Two public interest groups are suing to make the composition of the task force and the minutes of its meetings public. But Cheney argues some aspects are covered by executive privilege.

"People attack the vice president, any vice president, to get at the president," Sabato commented. "But part of this is that Americans don't know Cheney ... they have no fix on him at all. That means attacks stick more easily."

Bush has announced his intention to keep Cheney on the Republican presidential ticket, and Cheney has said he intends to stay. Win or lose next November, Bush and Cheney have raised the bar of vice presidential expectations and involvement to an unprecedented level.