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As one of the most vocal
proponents for a preemptive war, Dick Cheney has been a chief target of attacks
from Democrats and other administration critics.
 Democratic
Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, among others, has accused Cheney and others in the
Bush administration of exaggerating intelligence on Iraq to help make their case
for war and of overstating the connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida,
the terrorist network identified as responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Nevertheless,
in the aftermath of the war, without the discovery of WMDs in Iraq, Cheney has
steadfastly maintained his early argument that toppling Saddam's regime improved
national security, arguing America is helping stabilize the region by building
a new democratic government in Iraq. Beyond
the Iraq war, Cheney has become a lightening rod for Democrats' criticism against
allegations of the Bush administration's corporate links and its alleged abuse
of executive power. Halliburton,
in particular, has been a source of controversy for the vice president ever since
his early days in office. Amid the corporate scandals of 2002 -- with Enron leading
the pack -- the Securities and Exchange Commission in May of that year opened
an investigation into Halliburton's accounting practices during several of the
years Cheney was CEO. The probe was still ongoing as of March 2004. Democrats
and critics of the Bush administration, however, seized the opportunity to criticize
the White House as being lenient on corporate corruption and some have accused
Cheney of illicitly profiting during his tenure at Halliburton. In
2003, Cheney's ties to Halliburton again became a source of controversy after
the company and its subsidiaries won large Defense Department contracts through
a closed bidding process.
Cheney's energy task force also came under
fire in 2001 when several Democrats in Congress alleged the group met secretly
with top campaign donors from the energy industry and drafted policy recommendations
that would directly benefit those companies. The General Accounting Office filed
its first ever lawsuit against the White House in attempt to obtain Cheney's records
of the task force meetings. Although the GAO dropped its case after a federal
court indicated it did not want to intervene in a dispute between Congress' investigative
arm and the White House, a similar lawsuit filed by two nonprofit groups is now
under review by the Supreme Court.
In a January 2002 interview on ABC's
This Week, Cheney defended his decision as a protection of executive privilege:
"In 34 years [in Washington], I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers
and [of] the ability of the president of the United States to do his job. We are
weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been
made over the last 30 or 35 years." But
the furor over Cheney's task force documents erupted again after the vice president
and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia went on a duck-hunting excursion in January
2004, only months before the high court was set to hear the task force case. Scalia
refused to recuse himself from the case, which the court heard in May and will
likely decide this summer. Such
controversies appear to have taken a toll on Cheney's popular support. By late
February 2004, Cheney's approval ratings fell to 33 percent from 43 percent in
October 2003, with the biggest drop among Republicans, according to a National
Annenberg Election survey. Despite
his sometimes tumultuous tenure as vice president, Cheney has proven to be President
Bush's consummate No. 2 as his most loyal adviser. Cheney,
for instance, publicly backed the president's proposal to add a constitutional
amendment banning gay marriage, even though his daughter, Mary, is openly gay.
When prodded
by CNN's Wolf Blitzer on March 2, 2004 whether he supported the president's proposed
amendment, Cheney replied: "I support the president." He added, "I
never discuss the advice I provide him with anybody else. That's always private.
He makes the decisions. He sets policy for the administration. And I support him
and the administration." He
also appears to have accepted his position as a lightening rod for criticism,
rarely choosing to defend himself from such attacks. Instead,
Cheney has joked about criticisms of his image. In a mid-January interview with
USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, Cheney was asked whether he felt compelled
to deal with "the caricature of you that has evolved over the last three
years, the whole undisclosed location thing, the sinister force behind the president's
policies." "Why
do I want to deal with it?" Cheney replied. "What's wrong with my image?
... Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?
... It's a nice way to operate, actually," he quipped. Vice
President Cheney and Lynne Cheney, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute, have two adult daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, who both work for the
Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, and three granddaughters.
-- By
Liz Harper, Online NewsHour | 
