I don't think Cheney started off in 2000 with a burning desire to become vice-president. I think the prospect gradually became more appealing, and he goosed the process.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm not questioning Dick Cheney's motives. There's a chance for a conflict of interest. At one point in time, he was opposed to going into Baghdad. Then he was out of office and involved in the defense industry, and then he became for going into Baghdad.
Cheney was among the best secretaries of defence the country has ever had. He was a very effective White House chief of staff. He did not make many enemies, and he had the ability to persuade people with that soft tone and very reasonable style of his. He's always been exceptionally good as the right-hand man.
The Vice-Presidency is sort of like the last cookie on the plate. Everybody insists he won't take it, but somebody always does.
The vice president had a bargaining asset, however, that no ordinary person has: He was next in line to the presidency. I saw no chance that he would resign first, then take his chances on trial, conviction, and jail.
The funny thing is that Dick Cheney has done more than anybody in the White House for quite a long time to throw up roadblocks against future historians.
I've thought Cheney was scary for a long time. Now I know I was right to be nervous.
A lot of factors go into choosing a vice-presidential nominee.
There's something to be said for CEOs' entering politics: In theory, they have management expertise and financial savvy. Then again, it didn't work so well with Dick Cheney.
Richard Nixon is very much a self-made man in the six years prior to his emergence as a national figure. Between the moment he's elected to Congress in 1946 and the moment he's inaugurated as Vice President in 1953, he conducts nothing less than a kind of prodigy of American political self-advancement.
The vice presidential candidate tends to be a bit of an afterthought.
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