Column: It's now Bush vs. Cheney

Scripps Howard News Service

WASHINGTON

The arrangement between George W. Bush and Richard Cheney was never a match made in heaven. As time went on a lot of Americans thought it just may have been contracted at the other end of the
spectrum. Now there seems to be a residue of resentment between the two.

Nevertheless, it worked for a while in the first White House years with the vice president even deflecting some of the criticism after 9/11 about troubling aspects of the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq.
It seems obvious now that Cheney and others who had been intimately involved in the administration of Bush’s father regarded “junior” as needing the benefit of their superior experience and certainly Bush
seemed to believe that himself.

But as the years went on and wartime policy strongly advanced by the vice president became increasingly controversial and detrimental to the political health of his presidency, Bush, it now appears,
became far more independent and had grave second thoughts about how steadfastly he should adhere to the path advised by Cheney.

At least Cheney apparently thought so, according to interviews with the former vice president in advance of the completion of his memoirs. He reportedly made it clear that the younger man began to drift
in another direction almost as a repudiation of his second in command. He believes Bush ill-advisedly caved to pressure to fire Cheney’s longtime ally, Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, wrongly
refused to give Cheney’s assistant, Scooter Libby, a full pardon, and mistakenly began to doubt the worth of highly inflammatory interrogation methods supported by Cheney. In fact, the president seemed
to Cheney far more malleable on a number of volatile issues.

The vice president had long been an advocate of expanded presidential powers and he regarded this “softening” by Bush as detrimental to the national welfare in perilous times. He firmly believed a
president should not give into the ups and downs of public opinion. Job approval ratings and considerations based on how history might reflect one’s actions were out of bounds in serious decisions.

For his part, Bush apparently began to view his vice president’s stubbornness and preeminent position in his administration as beginning to cost too much. One could hardly blame him. Not only were his
ratings dropping daily, he most likely was tired of going to bed each night feeling as though he had been soundly beaten about the head and shoulders by his enemies. It would surprise no one that he
would begin to question, if not completely resent, his reliance on his father’s former aides, of whom Cheney was one of the last to remain.

What was Cheney’s reaction? Almost before the door had closed on the Bush presidency, he was on point defending his policies from those who saw him as the evil architect of unethical practices, a
manipulative puppet master with more strings in the Oval Office than any vice president before him. While Bush returned quietly to Texas, Cheney did just the opposite. He took a leading role in publicly
renewing his belief that the harshest of methods are necessary in dealing with the faceless soldiers in the terrorist movement and with those who support them to protect the nation from another 9/11. No
olive branches please.

There was a personal motivation in his rhetoric criticizing the new White House and Congress. Veteran observers interpreted this as a clear indication that he was angry not only with the treatment he had
received from liberals but also, it now seems clear, with his former boss’s failure to hold the line. There are few surprises in the seeming slip in the relationship of the two men and when the historians
finish appraising the record, Cheney probably will be rated on the same scale as the president, a title he once aspired to and, some will claim, actually held unofficially for a time.

It will be fascinating to see how all this is treated in biographies expected from both Bush and Cheney — whether either will actually be candid in their assessment of the other and their dealings,
particularly in the later stages, or will they, as might be expected, indulge in some revisionism.

E-mail Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of Scripps Howard News Service, at thomassondan@aol.com.