Dick Cheney: Double-Edged Sword

• Share

This war has two faces, one a promise, one a growl. One says we will defend liberty wherever it lives, plant our values where they have never grown. The other says if you challenge us or threaten us or even just invade our sense of security, you will have started a fight that you will certainly lose. Wartime leadership requires a dual message. It has been President Bush's role from the earliest days to handle our hopes, reacquaint us with our resilience and remind our allies of our resolve. It has fallen to Vice President Cheney, a nighthawk with a darker imagination, to focus our fears. The risks of inaction outweigh the risks of action, he warned this summer, because we face an enemy that will never relent and never recede until it is destroyed.

With that posture--leaning forward, fists clenched--the Bush Administration has promised to set aside a longtime tradition of restraint in waging war, because the danger demands no less. Its members believe that the enemy is mobile and can't be deterred, the targets are soft and can't be protected, and the old rules of battle no longer apply. The war on terror is a war of annihilation, and the President's every instinct tells him that however divided America may be over policy or priorities, this is the only fight that matters.

The American public, awakened to danger but wary of responses that could be more dangerous still, finds itself this winter at war's door, and holding the key are a President and Vice President who together wield a kind of power that is more than the sum of its parts. Like any other partnership, whether of business or brotherhood, Bush and Cheney's is more complicated than it looks. What is beyond dispute is that two men of very different skills, instincts and histories found in each other the counterpart who could take them places they couldn't go alone, at a time when the American journey turned suddenly perilous. Together they are leading us along a rough road with sharp curves, and while we may argue about where we're heading, we have no choice but to follow, because a nation fights as one.

To understand this year, it helps to understand their union, including the mysteries of how it works and what it means. Most running mates, chosen to help the presidential candidate win, find that once they are elected their job is done. Presidents come into office and quickly find an unpleasant and unsolvable chore--trade policy, deregulation, the war on drugs--to keep their sidekicks busy, out of sight and out of trouble. It was always the office where ambition goes to die, unless the President does so first.