by Peter Baker
“If he were still there today,” Cheney said, “we’d have a terrible situation.”
“But there is a terrible situation,” Blitzer said.
“No, there is not,” Cheney insisted. “There is not. There’s problems, ongoing problems, but we have, in fact, accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime and there is a new regime in place that’s been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off.”
He added, “Bottom line is that we’ve had enormous successes and we will continue to have enormous successes.”
He accused Blitzer of siding with cut-and-run Democrats. “What you’re recommending, or at least what you seem to believe the right course is, is to bail out,” Cheney charged.
“I’m just asking questions,” Blitzer protested.
“No, you’re not asking questions,” Cheney maintained.
Blitzer had been in Cheney’s doghouse since the previous October, when he interviewed Lynne Cheney and asked about steamy scenes in a novel she wrote that had been cited by James Webb, the Democratic Senate candidate in Virginia, in defending his own fiction. Lynne had angrily rebuffed Blitzer, and her husband later congratulated her for what he called “the slapdown.”
Now Blitzer crossed another line as far as Cheney was concerned by mentioning that Mary Cheney had become pregnant. Did the vice president want to respond to conservatives who had criticized her for having a baby in a lesbian relationship?
“I’m delighted I’m about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf, and obviously, think the world of both my daughters and all of my grandchildren,” Cheney said. “And I think, frankly, you’re out of line with that question.”
Blitzer tried to defend himself. “I think all of us appreciate—”
Cheney cut him off. “I think you’re out of line.”
“We like your daughters,” Blitzer replied. “Believe me, I’m very, very sympathetic to Liz and to Mary. I like them both. That was just a question that’s come up, and it’s a responsible, fair question.”
“I just fundamentally disagree with you,” Cheney retorted.
By this point, Cheney harbored little concern for what the Wolf Blitzers of Washington thought—and not much more for what the White House political operation thought. Speaking with another reporter on January 28, he evinced no worry about the damage to his reputation. “By the time I leave here, it will have been over forty years since I arrived in Washington,” he said, “and I’ve been praised when I didn’t deserve it, and probably criticized when I didn’t deserve it. And there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to spend a lot of time worrying about my image.”
Asked about critical comments by onetime friends like the late Gerald Ford, Colin Powell, and Brent Scowcroft, speculation that he had changed or gotten a fever about Saddam Hussein, Cheney just shook his head.
“Well, I’m vice president,” he said, “and they’re not.”
THE TRUTH WAS that neither Bush nor Cheney was a particularly effective front man for the war effort anymore. Their credibility had been so sapped they were mostly talking to each other. So Bush pushed another figure to the fore, his new commander, David Petraeus.
The White House and other Republicans began describing the surge as “the Petraeus plan,” exaggerating his authorship to tap his popularity among lawmakers. After the Senate voted 81 to 0 to confirm Petraeus’s promotion to a fourth star so he could take over as commander in Iraq, Bush argued that it would make no sense to support the general but not his plan. One day, Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the strongest supporters of the war, planted Petraeus in an office off the Senate floor and one by one fetched fellow Republicans to meet with him.
Petraeus realized he was being lashed to the commander in chief in a way few other commanders had been in modern times. He visited Bush in the Oval Office after his confirmation hearing, and the two reflected on the mission he was about to undertake. The stakes were enormous and the odds of success daunting.
“This is a pretty significant moment,” Bush said. “We’re going to double down.”
Petraeus corrected him. “Mr. President, this is all in.”
As part of his confirmation, Petraeus agreed to return to Washington in September to update Congress on the progress of the surge, a commitment that irritated many in the White House. But it meant that Bush and Cheney needed to buy him time. On February 5, Bush sent Congress a $93 billion spending request to pay for the war. That would be the real test: Would opponents deny funding to an army in the field to force the president to begin winding down the war?
Bush knew the ground had cratered beneath him. The reinforcements he was sending to Iraq would take five months in all to arrive, meaning it could be a while until they achieved results, if any. Bush would have to hold things together until then.
“So now I’m an October–November man,” Bush told the writer Robert Draper. “I’m playing for October–November.”
31
“I’m going to fire all your asses”
There came a moment, and it was only a moment, when the discussion in the office of the vice president turned to the possibility of a Cheney for President campaign. It was early in 2007, and for the first time since 1928 the country was looking ahead to a presidential election without an incumbent president or vice president in the race. Dick Cheney had made clear he was not interested in running in 2008, but a longtime friend showed up in the West Wing to try to change his mind.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people around the country,” Wayne Berman, one of Washington’s most prominent Republican lobbyist-fund-raisers, told Cheney that day, “and I think the money could be raised. I think there’s a lot of support for you.”
If anyone would know about raising money, it was Berman. A mainstay of Washington power circles, Berman may have been the one who first introduced Cheney to George W. Bush back in 1987 and later became a Pioneer, collecting more than $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney ticket in the 2000 election, and a Ranger, pulling in more than $200,000 in 2004.
His connection to the vice president went beyond political fund-raising. His wife, Lea Berman, had been Cheney’s social secretary and later served as Lynne’s chief of staff before becoming the White House social secretary responsible for organizing official functions and overseeing the mansion staff. The Cheneys and the Bermans got together occasionally for dinner and gossip about who was up and down in the capital’s perennial political games.
Berman’s visit in early 2007 came as the Republican field was only beginning to take shape. Senator John McCain was making another run for the White House, but he had considerable vulnerabilities within the party. Others looking at the race included the former mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York; the former governors Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas; Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas; the former senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee; and Representative Ron Paul of Texas.
Cheney had steadfastly disavowed interest in running for president and had just begun building a retirement house in Virginia. After exploring the 1996 race, Cheney concluded he did not have the drive for an extended, two-year, all-out national campaign. As recently as the year before, he had told Bob Schieffer of CBS News, “I’ve taken the Sherman statement—if nominated, I will not run; if elected, I won’t serve.” Cheney regularly opened speeches by joking that “a warm welcome like that is almost enough to make a guy want to run for office again,” then pausing before adding in classic deadpan, “almost.” Besides, the notion of a Cheney candidacy would strike many as absurd; he had a trunkload of political baggage and an approval rating in the thirties.
Berman knew all that and realized the chances of changing Cheney’s mind were slim. But he argued that someone had to carry the Bush-Cheney record into 2008 and defend it against attacks. McCain certainly would not, and, frankly, most of the others probably would not either. For all of Cheney’s political problems, he remained popular with the conservative base that dominated the nomination proc
ess.
McCain had been recruiting Berman. “I’m going to go work for his campaign and do a whole lot of stuff unless you’re going to run,” Berman told Cheney. “If you’re going to run, I want to work for you, if you want me.”
“I’m flattered you came to see me—you’ve been a great friend of mine for a real long time,” said Cheney, who seemed almost emotional to Berman. “For me to do what I want to do around here and finish strong and help the president continue to make sure we protect policies,” he had to remain singularly focused on his duties.
Balancing that with frequent trips to Iowa and New Hampshire, punctuated by endless fund-raising calls, would be daunting. “I can’t do that, so I’m not going to run.”
Cheney added, “McCain’s a good man, and he’s got a real record. He’s an adult, and he’s lucky to have you working for him if that’s what you decide to do.” Cheney then took Berman down to the White House mess for a fat-free hot dog. That wasn’t quite what Berman had hoped to get when he arrived at the White House that day.
Cheney’s status as a lame duck from the moment he took office made him unique in the annals of the modern vice presidency. For years, he argued it was an asset. He could focus exclusively on advancing Bush’s policies without any of the sub-rosa competition that often emerged between presidents and their vice presidents. He had none of the fund-raising and other distractions of those eyeing the big chair. He could take the spears for Bush for controversial policies, becoming the one blamed for torture and spying and unfounded war.
Still, there was a cost. With no one in the White House with an electoral future, certain incentives were missing. “There were a lot of advantages of having a vice president who was not going to run for president himself,” Michael Gerson said. “But one disadvantage was, as things worsened in Iraq, if we had a young vice president that was running for office to replace Bush, they would have been constantly pushing that things have to get better. ‘This is going to kill my chances.’ ” What’s more, the White House found itself in a campaign season without anyone to champion its record. “It constitutes a kind of a double lame duck,” observed Dean McGrath, the longtime Cheney aide.
WHEN CHENEY TOLD Berman he would forgo a race partly to “protect policies,” what he meant was that he was already in a fight inside the White House with those trying to reformulate the legacy of the first term. On interrogation and detention rules, on Middle East policy, and on Iran, Cheney was trying to guard against the wavering and equivocating of those around the president, and perhaps the president himself. On no issue was that battle more pronounced than North Korea.
Much to Cheney’s chagrin, the six-party talks reopened in Beijing on February 8, and after a late-night session Christopher Hill emerged on February 13 with a deal. North Korea would shut down its Yongbyon nuclear facility, readmit international inspectors, and pull together a statement accounting for all of its nuclear programs. The United States and its partners would provide fifty thousand tons of heavy fuel as a down payment on a total of one million tons once all nuclear facilities were disabled. Washington would open talks aimed at restoring diplomatic relations with Pyongyang while removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and the list of countries affected by the Trading with the Enemy Act. The deal touched off a backlash among Cheney’s allies. Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security adviser, fired off e-mails making clear he thought it was, as he later put it, “a disgraceful policy” and “Clintonism again.” The next morning, he found himself in the Oval Office as Bush tried to convince him it was the right approach.
Cheney was no more persuaded and thought they were rewarding North Korea for bad behavior. He believed Rice—as well as Bush—was so eager for an achievement that she was willing to abandon the principles that had undergirded their policies in the first term. “We had a good relationship, so it wasn’t personal at all,” he reflected later. “I just felt that she was pushing very hard to get something of significance done vis-à-vis the North Koreans, but I thought she was heading in the wrong direction. I didn’t agree with the policy.” Stephen Yates, the vice president’s deputy national security adviser until 2005, put it more bluntly. “North Korea policy was an absolute aberration in terms of the personality of George W. Bush and the instincts that guided the first term,” he said. “The first-term president Bush would not have had any part of those shenanigans.”
Rice regularly responded to Cheney’s skepticism by asking what his plan was. It was true that the North Koreans had proved to be unreliable and manipulative, but what was the alternative to negotiations? “They never had an answer for that,” Hill said. “It was sort of, we don’t want you to negotiate with them, but, no, we don’t have any better idea.” While Cheney wanted to stick to a hard line, Hill said, Bush wanted to move beyond his first term. Bush “did not consider himself a warmonger, did not consider it fair that he be regarded in history as someone who always would reach for the gun,” Hill said. “He was persuaded by Condi and other people that we should give diplomacy a chance.” After all, Rice said, “Even before they exploded a nuclear device, we didn’t have a military option.” Bush framed it the same way. “I am not going to go to war with North Korea,” he told aides. “So what is the alternative?”
Stephen Hadley saw it not as a rejection of Cheney but as an affirmation by Bush of his own judgment. “I don’t think he had less influence,” Hadley said of Cheney. “But I think what happened is that this president came into his own and he acted more decisively with more confidence.” Rice agreed. “I just think he became a lot more confident,” she said. By this point in his presidency, Bush was being briefed on North Korea and other issues by aides or CIA analysts who had less experience than he did. No one had to tell him about the North Koreans because he had been dealing with them for six years. “He had a lot of experience under his belt by then and more confidence in his own judgment,” Cheney reflected. “And obviously he placed a great store in Condi’s experience and her views.”
As for Cheney, he seemed drained, politically and physically, “a spent force,” as David Gordon, an adviser to Rice, put it. As a man with a weak heart, Cheney seemed on many days almost worn-out. “He looked tired for the last couple years, for sure,” said Neil Patel, his aide. Schedulers tried to ease his load, and Patel told staffers to keep briefings concise to avoid overburdening the vice president. “He would just sort of gloss over half the time, and it’s because he’s got so much on his plate. You’ve got to keep it tight and especially in the last couple years.”
From time to time, Cheney would even drift off in the Oval Office. “He fell asleep quite often,” said one official, who thought Cheney’s “energy level by the end was not so high as it had been at the beginning.”
One day, after a meeting where Cheney dozed off, Bush and Dan Bartlett chuckled about it as the speechwriter Matt Latimer and others came in for the next meeting.
“Did you see?” Bartlett asked Bush with a big grin.
“Yes,” Bush said merrily. “I couldn’t look at him.”
The two were laughing boisterously by this point. “I saw his head go down and he dropped his papers, and I didn’t want to say anything,” Bush said.
Latimer thought the two were “like students laughing mischievously at their teacher after class.” But it was a sign of the changing relationship that Bush was willing to laugh at Cheney behind his back. Aides in the White House took their cue and were mocking the vice president in a way they never would have in the first term.
On North Korea in particular, Cheney could not stop what he saw as the backsliding, and he was reduced to calling Hadley to gripe without result. He was losing allies. Donald Rumsfeld was gone, and in January, just before the latest agreement, Robert Joseph, the State Department’s nonproliferation chief, resigned in protest of Christopher Hill’s negotiations. Joseph wrote a memo to Rice on his way out explaining that “as a matter of principle” he could not support the policies that
were being pursued, especially dialing back interdiction activities and Hill’s efforts to return the $25 million of North Korean funds frozen in Banco Delta Asia in Macao. “This was money traced to North Korea’s proliferation activities, counterfeiting American super notes, drug-running profits,” Joseph said later. “And we were going to facilitate the return of these illicit funds to the North Koreans?”
Hill had become a deeply controversial figure within the administration. He was a veteran diplomat who had been part of the team led by Richard Holbrooke that negotiated the Dayton Accords ending the Bosnian War in 1995, and he had learned from his mentor the art of creative diplomacy, even if it meant having to outflank bureaucratic adversaries within his own team. Described by Holbrooke as “brilliant, fearless, and argumentative,” Hill bridled at the restrictions Cheney and others tried to impose on his negotiations, maneuvered to talk with the North Koreans outside the stiff six-party format, and pushed for more latitude. He held back information from administration rivals and worked around them—doing to Cheney, in effect, what Cheney had done to others in the first term.
Hill made enemies who took his cleverness for dishonesty. “I don’t think in my twenty-eight years I have ever met anyone who is as universally distrusted and disliked as Chris Hill,” said one of his internal rivals. “He was a junior Holbrooke,” said Michael Green, the Asia adviser on the National Security Council. “He saw working for Holbrooke that the bullying and the circumventing the process and all of that could work, and he did it not as effectively but pretty effectively.” Rice recognized the dynamic. “I love Chris, and I made him my negotiator because he is creative and he is energetic and he is a go-getter,” she said. But “he could be his own worst enemy sometimes.”
THE INTERNAL STRUGGLES were overshadowed as 2007 progressed by a momentous showdown with Congress over Iraq. Fresh off their election sweep, Democrats squared off with Bush and Cheney to try to reverse the surge and begin bringing troops home.
