Dick Cheney redefined the vice presidency

While it is an exaggeration to say Dick Cheney was co-president with former President George W. Bush—similar to the arrangement former President Gerald Ford, Cheney’s former boss, sought to join the 1976 Republican ticket with former President Ronald Reagan (who demurred)—he was undoubtedly the most powerful vice president in history.

Traditionally, the vice presidency was mainly a symbolic role, with the only constitutional duty being to preside over the Senate while the president was alive and well. However, the vice presidency steadily gained influence after former President Harry Truman was forced to assume the presidency during World War II following the unexpected death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was serving an unprecedented fourth term. From that point on, it became generally accepted that the vice president should at least be kept in the operational loop to be prepared to take over the top job at a moment’s notice.

Cheney was originally tasked with leading Bush’s vice presidential search committee before ultimately taking on the assignment himself. One reason Cheney was selected was that he was not planning to run for president, having passed on a bid for the GOP nomination in 1996, and was unlikely to change his mind due to his age and health. Bush hoped this would mean Cheney’s counsel would be free from political ambitions.

As it turned out, Cheney and his aides were deeply involved in decisions that defined—and eventually turned public opinion against—Bush’s presidency.

On a different note, former Vice President Kamala Harris suggested in her 2024 campaign memoir, *107 Days*, that she avoided more ambitious names on her vice presidential list and instead chose Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) at least in part because he wouldn’t outshine her.

Former President Joe Biden had a somewhat awkward, though publicly friendly, relationship with Harris because she ran against him in the Democratic primaries, scoring a memorable debate moment at his expense in 2019, and harbored ambitions to be president. As the oldest person ever to serve as president, Biden had to prepare for the possibility that Harris might succeed him, whether he wanted her to or not.

Biden took some steps to groom Harris for the top job. She held calls with top foreign leaders, and the White House often released readouts of these conversations. Official communications frequently referred to the “Biden-Harris administration.” Biden endorsed her as his replacement promptly, though not immediately after he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race.

However, Harris’s allies often expressed dissatisfaction with the roles she was assigned by Biden, worrying she was being set up to fail. “I want to see her be used more effectively, and I think her being in charge of voting was important, but I question her other assignments,” Al Sharpton told *The Root* in 2021, adding that he planned to meet with Biden about it. Commentator Bakari Sellers went even further, calling Harris’s policy portfolio “trash.”

Harris herself complained in *107 Days* that she did not feel adequately supported by Biden or his staff. “Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well,” she wrote. “Given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital. It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him. His team didn’t get it.” She recounted that Biden personally interrupted her presidential debate preparation with an unhelpful phone call.

Looking back, former President Barack Obama picked Biden as his running mate in 2008 for reasons similar to Cheney’s selection. Biden had more foreign-policy experience, a longer track record in Washington, D.C., and seemed unlikely to run for president. That last assumption obviously turned out to be wrong: Obama had to dissuade Biden from launching a campaign to succeed him in 2016 and continued to have misgivings as his former two-term vice president was actually elected president four years later. Obama later played a role in pushing Biden to abandon his reelection bid.

On the Republican side, President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance enjoy a close relationship. Trump, who is term-limited, has gone further in preparing Vance to succeed him, even granting the vice president access to the GOP’s financial operations, while musing about the possibility of seeking a third term or having Secretary of State Marco Rubio run. Trump famously had a rift with his first vice president, Mike Pence, over the 2020 election, which appears to have ended Pence’s career in electoral politics. Pence’s 2024 GOP presidential nomination campaign went nowhere.

Both Vance and Pence followed another Cheney tradition: they had longer-standing ties to the conservative movement than the presidents they served. Pence was supposed to balance the 2016 Republican ticket by reassuring evangelicals and other traditional conservatives. Vance represents a kind of MAGA doubling down.

**FORMER VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY DEAD AT 84**

Nevertheless, both Vance and Pence, in their own ways, joined Cheney, Paul Ryan, Jack Kemp, and former Vice President Dan Quayle as protectors of the Republican ticket’s right flank. This tradition arguably dates back to Richard Nixon under Dwight Eisenhower and continued with Nixon’s selection of Spiro Agnew, though Reagan broke the pattern by picking an establishment figure in George H. W. Bush, and Ford did the same when he appointed liberal Nelson Rockefeller.

Every would-be president now must contemplate whether they want their vice president to be a Cheney-like figure or not. In that regard, Cheney broke the vice presidential mold.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/3875002/dick-cheney-redefined-vice-presidency/

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