Dem
47
GOP
53
This was announced very early this morning (3:30 a.m. PT), leaving us with relatively little time to write about it, but former Vice President Dick Cheney has died at 84.
Even if we'd had all day, though, we're not sure we would have written all that much more than appears here, because we can really only think of three things to say. The first is that it's something of a miracle, and a tribute to modern medicine, that Cheney held on this long. He had his first heart attack nearly 50 years ago (in 1978), and at least half a dozen major ones (and, according to doctors, many additional, more mild attacks) since then. He's undergone countless very serious heart procedures, including stents and valve repairs and the like. Eventually, back in 2012, he got a heart transplant. At that time, the doctors said he could reasonably hope to live another 10 years. Obviously, he made it 13.
Second, many obituaries, including the one we've linked, refer to Cheney as "America's most powerful modern vice president." We don't exactly know what this "modern" stuff is all about. Are CNN, and others, trying to suggest that, say, William Wheeler was the real power behind the Rutherford B. Hayes throne? In any case, Cheney certainly has a claim as the most powerful VP. It sort of depends on what kind of career trajectory is more "powerful." For the early years of the George W. Bush presidency, Cheney was something like a co-president—some even said that he basically WAS president. No other VP has enjoyed that kind of power, before or since. On the other hand, Cheney eventually fell from grace and was almost entirely marginalized for most of Bush's second term. A few Democratic VPs, namely Walter Mondale, Al Gore and Joe Biden, had a great deal of influence in their respective administrations. They never reached the heights Cheney did, but they didn't fall out of favor like he did, either.
Third, and finally, is the thing that WE will remember Cheney for. Like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Cheney was a Reagan-style Republican who—in the name of "winning"—unleashed political forces he ultimately could not control. McConnell laid the groundwork for modern MAGA by personally stacking the Supreme Court; Cheney did it by turning elections into culture-wars referenda. The amount of space between running a presidential campaign based on opposition to gay marriage (2004), and running a campaign based on opposition to trans girls playing high school sports (2024) is very small, indeed. And not only did the former VP instigate his own fall from grace, but the chaos he helped create also chewed up and spit out the political career of his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY).
For those who are trivia-minded, Cheney's passing brings to an end the third period in U.S. history where there were 7 living VPs. It happened from 1993-94 (Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Gerald Ford, Walter Mondale, George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle and Al Gore); it happened again from 2017-18 (Mondale, Bush, Quayle, Gore, Cheney, Joe Biden and Mike Pence), and it happened a third time this year (Quayle, Gore, Cheney, Biden, Pence, Kamala Harris, J.D. Vance). (Z)