ANGLER
The Cheney Vice Presidency
By Barton Gellman
Penguin Press, 483 pages, $31
Say what you will of Dick Cheney, 44th vice-president of the United States, but remember this: Who would purchase, let alone publish, a hefty volume subtitled The Gore Vice Presidency? How about The Dan Quayle Vice Presidency? or The Alben Barkley Vice Presidency?
Veeps have, historically, spent years in office seething with frustration and attending lots of funerals. But no one doubts that the Cheney years are a different story, one worth the telling.
Barton Gellman shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for a penetrating series of pieces in the Washington Post about the vice-president and his muscular domestic agenda. In his new book, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, Gellman ranges wider and deeper, delivering a cogent, incisive piece of reportage on Cheney's methods, as well as the policy objectives - domestic and international - he has been shooting for.
Gellman interviews dozens of players to tell the story of a very smart, very focused man. Dick Cheney spent most of his career learning how power is acquired and exercised in Washington, D.C. Without exception, men and women interviewed by Gellman agree that Cheney has used that knowledge to become a vice-president of extraordinary power and reach.
The final months of a lame-duck administration are a unique, fruitful period for investigative reporters and their publishers. A year or two ago, mindful of their careers, many of Gellman's interviewees - those closest to the action in the White House, the Pentagon, both houses of Congress, and in the power departments of Justice, Treasury and State - might have been less willing to talk to a Washington Post reporter. And in another four months, George W. Bush's administration, and Cheney's vice-presidency, will be history. Given Washington's constricted attention span, Gellman's account will necessarily lose some relevance and sting as media focus shifts to a brand-new administration. Hardly anyone in Washington, for a while, will care about the momentous decisions described here, though everyone is aware - and many must fear - that the strange chickens hatched by Cheney in the Bush White House must, eventually, come home to roost.
According to Gellman, Dick Cheney has played a fundamental, often unseen role in shaping practically every one of the Bush administration's significant choices, starting with his selection of himself as Bush's vice-president. Cheney came to office determined to have a voice on three "iron issues": the economy, security and energy. In the pre-9/11 world, he quickly mastered effective control of the administration's energy policy. A committed, ruthless and extraordinarily skilled infighter, who always knows exactly what he wants, Cheney was able to sink rivals like EPA administrator (and Bush appointee) Christie Whitman, along with any proposals aimed at regulating carbon dioxide emissions, or even recognizing global warming as a problem. State Department warnings that the United States' allies might feel betrayed were disregarded: Gellman quotes Condoleezza Rice telling secretary of state Colin Powell: "They ... said to hell with everyone else."
On Sept. 11 and after, Cheney time after time has staked out decisions of great national moment without explicit authority from Bush. Sometime between 10:10 and 10:15 on that infamous morning, it was Cheney in the White House bunker, and not President Bush in Florida, who coolly gave the order authorizing the Air Force to shoot down United Flight 93 (which had, in fact, already crashed, after passengers tried to overpower the hijackers).
