Double-Edged Sword
	Why George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are a formidable team
	By Nancy Gibbs

Posted Sunday, December 22, 2002; 4:31 a.m. EST
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.

Had Sept. 11 never happened, there is no telling what kind of presidency Bush would have had or what kind of deputy he would have needed. But in the national crisis, when all the bright lights came up on the White House stage, there was a chance to rewrite the rules, rewire the whole Executive Branch. Bush had the zeal to make the war on terrorism his mission; Cheney provided the theology. "With Bush, it's all gut; it's visceral," a White House official says. "He hates Saddam. He's an evil guy who tried to assassinate his dad, and he's gonna get him. With Cheney, it's all logical and deliberate and thought through. He knows the issues, he's studied them, and he really believes—he's convinced by the facts—that Saddam poses an unacceptable threat to the United States."

WINDS OF WAR
In the days that followed 9/11, Bush found his voice and rallied the country, while Cheney was whisked off to his "undisclosed location." It was the ultimate testimonial: most Vice Presidents disappear from view because they don't matter; Cheney had to disappear because he does. He quickly emerged as first among equals in the war cabinet, which was all the more striking given who the equals are. Colin Powell is the untouchable star, both at home and abroad; his job-approval rating, which hovers around 85%, is typically 20 points higher than Bush's good marks, which means he is both a partner in this Administration and a potential rival. Defense chief Donald Rumsfeld used his Pentagon briefings to turn up his star wattage and in private meetings is the fire breather; he runs much hotter about the dangers of Saddam Hussein than anyone else. As National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice has the advantage of a sweet spot in Bush's comfort zone; she is the one spending weekends with the family at Camp David or quietly arbitrating among warring factions at State and Defense.

Cheney's force is gravitational; his relationship with Bush is so close and so big that he is the fixed weight who pulls policy in his direction. He can just sit there in meetings, camped inside his sidewinder smile and cocking his head as if he's listening to music no one else hears. He saves his advice for a circle that no one else can enter. "He doesn't tell Bush what to think," says a White House adviser and Cheney friend. "It's a process. He lays it out. He guides Bush's thinking to a conclusion. But he knows the conclusion going in." Much as the U.S. keeps pulling the rest of the world toward a tougher line on Saddam, so Cheney keeps pulling within the White House. Bush uses Cheney to play that role publicly as well—most remarkably back in August, when Cheney's very tough speech about the threat posed by Iraq helped convince U.N. members that Bush was serious about going after Saddam, alone if necessary. "They wouldn't have known how serious we were," says a Cheney adviser of the outcome at the U.N., "if Dick Cheney hadn't been sitting there in a loincloth with a knife in his mouth."

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