Dick Cheney once considered the vice-presidency a "cruddy job" but got over his misgivings and went on to be arguably the most powerful No 2 in US politics, and one of the most heavily criticized.
The 66-year-old Cheney's stoic, no-nonsense demeanor and influence in many White House decisions are in stark contrast to his youthful days when he was caught twice for drunk driving in Wyoming and dropped out of Yale University for bad grades.
Cheney's life has been chronicled in a fairly sympathetic biography by Stephen Hayes, a writer for The Weekly Standard conservative magazine. He spent nearly 30 hours in one-on-one interviews with the normally reticent Cheney for the book.
In his research Hayes found that Cheney in 1996 called the vice-presidency a "cruddy job," which his political mentor, President Gerald Ford, had hated. But by 2000 Cheney was persuaded to accept when George W. Bush offered the position.
Cheney's role as a behind-the-scenes adviser has fed a left-wing stereotype that he is Bush's dark, brooding puppetmaster and advocate of war and torture, an image the media-averse Cheney has done little to change.
"He is pathologically (but purposefully) secretive, treacherous toward colleagues; coldly manipulative of the callow, lazy, and ignorant president he serves," Hendrik Hertzberg, a former speechwriter for Democratic President Jimmy Carter, wrote in The New Yorker.
Cheney's insistence that his office did not fall under Bush's executive branch as a way to avoid providing records to a government oversight agency also has drawn fire.
Satirical cartoonist Garry Trudeau featured Cheney in his Doonesbury comic strip as in charge of a secretive "black branch" of the US government. "My shirt size is classified," the Cheney character says in the strip.
The vice-president's office shrugs off the criticism. The White House said Cheney remains a close Bush adviser. "Always has been and will remain so," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
Source: China Daily/agencies
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