Dick Cheney, widely regarded as the most powerful vice president in American history, who was George W. Bush’s running mate in two successful campaigns for the presidency and his most influential White House adviser in an era of terrorism, war and economic change, died Monday. He was 84.
The cause was complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family.
Plagued by coronary problems nearly all his adult life, Mr. Cheney had five heart attacks from 1978 to 2010 and had worn a device to regulate his heartbeat since 2001. But his health issues did not seem to impair his performance as vice president. In 2012, three years after retiring, he underwent a successful heart transplant and had been reasonably active since then.
Most recently, he startled Americans of both parties by announcing that he would vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, in the 2024 election, denouncing her Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, as unfit for the Oval Office and a grave threat to American democracy.
“We have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution,” Mr. Cheney said.
His announcement echoed that of an earlier one by his daughter Liz Cheney, the former Republican representative from Wyoming, who broke with Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his followers. She, too, said she would vote for Ms. Harris.
A consummate Washington insider, Mr. Cheney was an architect and executor of President Bush’s major initiatives: deploying military power to advance the cause of democracy abroad, championing tax cuts and a robust economy at home, and strengthening the powers of a presidency that, as both men saw it, had been unjustifiably restrained by Congress and the courts in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.
As Mr. Bush’s most trusted and valued counselor, Mr. Cheney foraged at will over fields of international and domestic policy. Like a super-cabinet official with an unlimited portfolio, he used his authority to make the case for war, propose or kill legislation, recommend Supreme Court candidates, tip the balance for a tax cut, promote the interests of allies and parry opponents.
But it was the national security arena where he had the most profound impact. As defense secretary, he helped engineer the gulf war that successfully evicted Iraqi invaders from Kuwait in 1991, then took a leading role a decade later in responding to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. To prevent future attacks, he advocated aggressive policies including warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention and brutal interrogation tactics. And he pushed for the invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003, completing the unfinished job of his previous stint in power but leading to years of bloody warfare.
Early in Mr. Bush’s first term, many Democrats and even some fellow Republicans wondered if Mr. Cheney might be the real power in a White House occupied by an untested president whose qualifications had been questioned. While Mr. Bush eventually asserted his authority and Mr. Cheney’s influence declined by the second term, the image of him as a Machiavellian paterfamilias was never quite dispelled.
Even Mr. Bush worried about that perception, as he noted in his 2010 memoir, “Decision Points.” He wrote that Mr. Cheney offered to withdraw from the ticket for the 2004 presidential election, having become “the Darth Vader of the administration.” Mr. Bush considered the offer, aware that accepting it “would be one way to demonstrate that I was in charge.” But he ultimately kept his running mate, saying he valued the vice president’s steadiness and friendship.
A full obituary will appear later.
Robert D. McFadden was a Times reporter for 63 years. In the last decade before his retirement in 2024 he wrote advance obituaries, which are prepared for notable people so they can be published quickly upon their deaths.
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