WSJ: Cheney "relentless and unapologetic in pursuit of policy goals—and Americans are safer for it"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Mission Accomplished
Dick Cheney was relentless and unapologetic in pursuit of his policy goals—and Americans

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904716604576543023433625238.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

By PAUL A. GIGOT



It's hard to believe now, but Dick Cheney was once a favorite of the Washington establishment. As a young chief of staff to President Gerald Ford and then for 10 years a member of Congress, he was deemed by the town's political arbiters to be a sensible conservative, not a Reaganite or Bible-thumping crazy. The media loved him. When George H.W. Bush nominated him to be defense secretary after John Tower was rejected, he was confirmed unanimously in seven days.

Then came the George W. Bush administration, 9/11, the wars on terror and in Iraq, and Cheney the Reasonable became—pick your Dowdian cliché—Darth Vader, Dr. Strangelove, torturer in chief, Rasputin, the mad bomber.

This image transformation says far more about Washington's partisan warfare than it does about Mr. Cheney, who emerges in "In My Time" as the same man I've observed for more than 20 years—measured, more discreet than a journalist would prefer, conservative with a pragmatic streak but also relentless and unapologetic in pursuing his policy goals. Readers looking for a memoir with the strategic sweep of Dean Acheson's or Henry Kissinger's will be disappointed. The book nonetheless makes a contribution to history by showing how the Bush administration worked, and why it often didn't.

The book's early chapters recount Mr. Cheney's Wyoming upbringing, his two-time failure at Yale and his early years in government. They serve to humanize Lord Vader and also show the vagaries of fate in political life. As a young staffer in the Nixon White House, Mr. Cheney was invited to join the Committee to Re-Elect the President. His career might have ended early if he had accepted.