Double-Edged Sword

By NANCY GIBBS

This war has two faces, one a promise, one a growl. One says we will defend liberty wherever it lives, plant our values where they have never grown. The other says if you challenge us or threaten us or even just invade our sense of security, you will have started a fight that you will certainly lose. Wartime leadership requires a dual message. It has been President Bush's role from the earliest days to handle our hopes, reacquaint us with our resilience and remind our allies of our resolve. It has fallen to Vice President Cheney, a nighthawk with a darker imagination, to focus our fears. The risks of inaction outweigh the risks of action, he warned this summer, because we face an enemy that will never relent and never recede until it is destroyed.

With that posture--leaning forward, fists clenched--the Bush Administration has promised to set aside a longtime tradition of restraint in waging war, because the danger demands no less. Its members believe that the enemy is mobile and can't be deterred, the targets are soft and can't be protected, and the old rules of battle no longer apply. The war on terror is a war of annihilation, and the President's every instinct tells him that however divided America may be over policy or priorities, this is the only fight that matters.

The American public, awakened to danger but wary of responses that could be more dangerous still, finds itself this winter at war's door, and holding the key are a President and Vice President who together wield a kind of power that is more than the sum of its parts. Like any other partnership, whether of business or brotherhood, Bush and Cheney's is more complicated than it looks. What is beyond dispute is that two men of very different skills, instincts and histories found in each other the counterpart who could take them places they couldn't go alone, at a time when the American journey turned suddenly perilous. Together they are leading us along a rough road with sharp curves, and while we may argue about where we're heading, we have no choice but to follow, because a nation fights as one.

To understand this year, it helps to understand their union, including the mysteries of how it works and what it means. Most running mates, chosen to help the presidential candidate win, find that once they are elected their job is done. Presidents come into office and quickly find an unpleasant and unsolvable chore--trade policy, deregulation, the war on drugs--to keep their sidekicks busy, out of sight and out of trouble. It was always the office where ambition goes to die, unless the President does so first.

Had Sept. 11 never happened, there is no telling what kind of presidency Bush would have had or what kind of deputy he would have needed. But in the national crisis, when all the bright lights came up on the White House stage, there was a chance to rewrite the rules, rewire the whole Executive Branch. Bush had the zeal to make the war on terrorism his mission; Cheney provided the theology. "With Bush, it's all gut; it's visceral," a White House official says. "He hates Saddam. He's an evil guy who tried to assassinate his dad, and he's gonna get him. With Cheney, it's all logical and deliberate and thought through. He knows the issues, he's studied them, and he really believes--he's convinced by the facts--that Saddam poses an unacceptable threat to the United States."

WINDS OF WAR

In the days that followed 9/11, Bush found his voice and rallied the country, while Cheney was whisked off to his "undisclosed location." It was the ultimate testimonial: most Vice Presidents disappear from view because they don't matter; Cheney had to disappear because he does. He quickly emerged as first among equals in the war cabinet, which was all the more striking given who the equals are. Colin Powell is the untouchable star, both at home and abroad; his job-approval rating, which hovers around 85%, is typically 20 points higher than Bush's good marks, which means he is both a partner in this Administration and a potential rival. Defense chief Donald Rumsfeld used his Pentagon briefings to turn up his star wattage and in private meetings is the fire breather; he runs much hotter about the dangers of Saddam Hussein than anyone else. As National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice has the advantage of a sweet spot in Bush's comfort zone; she is the one spending weekends with the family at Camp David or quietly arbitrating among warring factions at State and Defense.

Cheney's force is gravitational; his relationship with Bush is so close and so big that he is the fixed weight who pulls policy in his direction. He can just sit there in meetings, camped inside his sidewinder smile and cocking his head as if he's listening to music no one else hears. He saves his advice for a circle that no one else can enter. "He doesn't tell Bush what to think," says a White House adviser and Cheney friend. "It's a process. He lays it out. He guides Bush's thinking to a conclusion. But he knows the conclusion going in." Much as the U.S. keeps pulling the rest of the world toward a tougher line on Saddam, so Cheney keeps pulling within the White House. Bush uses Cheney to play that role publicly as well--most remarkably back in August, when Cheney's very tough speech about the threat posed by Iraq helped convince U.N. members that Bush was serious about going after Saddam, alone if necessary. "They wouldn't have known how serious we were," says a Cheney adviser of the outcome at the U.N., "if Dick Cheney hadn't been sitting there in a loincloth with a knife in his mouth."

This raises the most interesting question about how this President uses people, both in public and in private. It's a media cliche to tell the story of an impressionable and inexperienced princeling caught between his powerful counselors: Powell and the multilateralist moderates arrayed against Rumsfeld, Cheney and the unilateralist hawks. The decision to force a confrontation with Saddam was seen as Cheney's handiwork. But the decision to first present the case to the American people, the Congress and the U.N. was taken as a victory for Powell. And the process of getting there looked awfully messy and improvised.

But a careful look finds evidence of consistent calculation at work. Both Bush and Cheney had long agreed that U.S. foreign policy had gotten flabby over the years. A clear and aggressive posture, on the other hand, could act as a deterrent to mischiefmakers and compel countries to bend to U.S. pressure. How do you behave enough like a thug to convince your enemies you are serious, but enough like a statesman to bring the allies onboard? Here is where Bush was able to use Cheney and his other lieutenants to accomplish jointly what he could not manage alone. During the summer of corporate scandal, when Bush needed to resuscitate the drooping economy, the argument over Iraq seemed to slip out of his control. Democrats sensed Bush might finally be vulnerable on a national security issue; hunting down al-Qaeda was one thing, but stirring up the entire Middle East was another. By August even some of Cheney's old colleagues from the first Bush Administration, like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, were challenging the idea of going after Saddam so aggressively and all alone.

It was time for someone to reset the argument, but Bush couldn't do it and still keep his options open. Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz couldn't make the case against Saddam because they were considered diehard hawks. But Cheney would be listened to because he spoke out so rarely. He was already scheduled to give a speech in Nashville, Tenn., to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Speaking privately by phone with Cheney on Aug. 26, the day of the speech, Bush discussed what it would do and made some suggestions. Cheney should make it clear that the President would consult Congress and was not hell-bent on going to war. But the speech would be tough. Other war councilors heard a general outline in a conference call the day of the speech, but few knew that Bush and Cheney had gone over its fine points. "They had a long, private conversation before they had the shorter, more public one," says a White House aide.

In the speech, the longest of his vice presidency, Cheney cataloged Saddam's crimes and threats, committed the U.S. to addressing them and unapologetically declared that we would do it alone if we had to. As for giving the U.N. weapons inspectors one more chance, Cheney blew right past skepticism to scorn. The implication was that a U.S. invasion of Iraq was inevitable and imminent.

The speech set off a firestorm, in part because the tinder was already piled high. There was speculation that Powell would quit; his allies leaked word that Bush had privately told Powell that Cheney had gone too far and would have to be reined in. Rice called Cheney to discuss the misinterpretation of his remarks and how to fix them. In fact, Cheney had used language not that different from some Powell had just used to say the same thing. But coming from Cheney, in a full metal jacket, the force of the comment was too strong. When Cheney gave the speech again three days later, he tweaked the language about inspectors but left nearly everything else in the speech the same. "Dick Cheney doesn't freelance," says a senior adviser to the Vice President. "He said what he did because the President wanted him to. There is no daylight between Bush and Cheney on this. None. Zero."

But the value of the speech only became visible two weeks later, when it was Bush's turn. The very fact that he actually set foot in the U.N.--Who would have guessed?--was heralded as a victory for the moderates and a big defeat for the hawks. In all the score keeping, few noticed how extraordinarily the debate had shifted. Cheney's hard line allowed Bush to appear reasonable for even consulting with the Security Council. Having purchased gratitude at such a cheap price, Bush then walloped his audience for 45 minutes, describing how the U.N. had grown weak and irrelevant, how Saddam had repeatedly made it look foolish. And he was applauded.

This episode is a case study in how Bush uses his whole choir to get the music right. Powell was able to play the public Voice of Reason who orchestrated the 15-to-0 vote in the Security Council. When some White House aides tried to bait Bush in a senior staff meeting, mentioning Powell's grandstanding, the President didn't take the hook. He understood Powell needed his place in the sun, for the future diplomatic leverage it would bring him. He didn't even make one of his trademark jokes. "He recognized the utility in it," said one who was there. As for Cheney, "He likes being the right-wing nut," says a senior Administration aide. "If you didn't have the Cheney side out there to tell the whole world 'We're studded up here and ready to go,' if you didn't announce that to the whole world, then Bush couldn't move to the other side of all that."

TWO MEN, ONE TEAM

What two people have in common may bring them together, but what makes them different tells their fortune. Some of history's most powerful partnerships are not friendships, and this is true of Bush and Cheney. They like and respect each other but do not socialize. What matters, what makes their union work, turns more on their differences than their similarities, though there are enough of the latter to confuse you. Both are Western oil men, Yale educated (though Bush got the degree, Cheney flunked out--twice), with bright and devoted wives of many years and two daughters. Both are content to be alone, but neither is terribly introspective; both recreate alone (Cheney fishes, Bush chops wood). Neither of them drops old friends; each has pals going back to childhood. They share deep conservative principles but a CEO's taste for results. They share a contempt for braggarts and showboats and a belief in America's essential goodness as if it were just a hard fact. "They talk to each other in a kind of code," says a top U.S. diplomat. "Bush can say things to Dick he can say to no one else."

But each owes his success to qualities the other lacks. Bush runs hot, Cheney ice cold. Kirk and Spock. Bush is impulse and reflex, with a gift for winning people over without sucking up to them. Cheney is deliberation and discretion; he wins people over by becoming indispensable to them. People trust Bush because his easy candor makes him seem more authentic than the average politician, right down to his ragged syntax. People who deal with Cheney trust him for the opposite reason: he's so steady and stalwart that even when he smiles, half of his mouth stays behind.

Perhaps the most conspicuous difference between them is a physical one. Bush has an almost moral commitment to fitness--he called his inability to fit in more long runs one of the tragedies of his presidency. Cheney, who's only five years older but can seem twice that, visibly declined in office and didn't seem to care. At Senate lunches, other Republicans winced as he ordered up a fat sandwich and potato chips, or dove into the fried chicken while they nibbled on salads. After one hospitalization for an angioplasty, in March 2001, lawmakers placed quiet bets on whether he would even be able to serve out his term.

But somehow Cheney got religion: some say it was his wife Lynne, but she had been trying for years. Several people say Bush finally wore him down by example. By this summer, Cheney was ordering fresh fruit, bran muffins and decaf for the congressional breakfasts, which had the other lawmakers grumbling because it was so bland. Senator Bill Frist, who himself may harbor vice-presidential ambitions, says that when he went duck hunting with Cheney in late November, "my heart rate went up a lot more than his as we walked through a foot of water to a duck blind. Fitness comes out at 5 o'clock in the morning in the freezing cold. And he pulls a lot more ducks out of the sky than I do, with a lot less effort."

While both Bush and Cheney are political creatures, they are of utterly different species. Bush loves the foreplay of politics; Cheney can't stand it. Bush learned it at his father's knee; Cheney came to it much later and as a student. Worse, he was a student of political science, a man trained as a staff member, crunching the numbers, writing about highway reforms. As heir to a political dynasty, Bush was always a stand-in for the big guy himself, not an aide but a doppelganger. And although it was not until 1994 that he began to run seriously, he had been in the motorcade since college. Cheney was born to serve but not to run for the top job, though it took a painful outing before he realized it. During his short-lived presidential bid in 1994, Cheney would ask his handlers if they could make the fund raisers more substantive, which is like trying to make a frat party more philosophical. Even after Bush tapped him to be his running mate, the advance team outlined a parade event in which Cheney would meet and greet some of the voters. "Um," said a Cheney staff member tentatively, "Mr. Cheney does not like to shake hands."

By coming together, each can become even more himself. Bush knows his limitations but does not feel compelled to overcome them, learn what he doesn't know or master what he knows only superficially; Cheney is the consummate student, a voracious reader who absorbs information, masters the details and takes quiet pride in his expertise. "Dick lets George be the external political outside guy, the schmoozer, the talker," says a friend who has known both men long enough to use first names. "And George lets Dick run the machine. George would be bored by process. He understands it. He manipulates it. But he doesn't want to live in it. George gets energy from interacting with people, like his father did. Cheney doesn't. He could spend every day of the rest of his life in his West Wing office and be fulfilled just talking on the phone, moving the process, meeting on policy."

SHARING CHORES

Cheney is the most powerful deputy ever, and he is also very much Bush's subordinate; this is not a contradiction so much as a cause and effect. Bush trusts Cheney because he is loyal, discreet and very clear about who is in charge; that trust in turn is Cheney's trophy, up on the mantel for all to see. They have more than that weekly private lunch that Al Gore insisted on when Bill Clinton recruited him. They are together every day, sometimes for most of the day; Cheney attends any important meeting and then often stays behind with Bush alone. As a minister without portfolio, he has no territory to defend or institution to protect, which means that "the President doesn't have to run his advice through a filter," says an aide to the Vice President. "Cheney's view isn't the State Department view or the Pentagon view; it's Cheney's view."

It also means that Cheney's influence depends entirely on the state of his relationship with Bush, which he has proved very good at tending. Its first pillar is that it includes only one President, now and forever more. This is all but an article of faith in Washington: as budget director Mitch Daniels puts it, Cheney's title is "Senior Adviser Without Future Political Ambition." As Bush happily told some congressional guests early in his first term, "Dick's doing a good job because he's told me he doesn't want to be President." Cheney had his fourth heart attack in November 2000, amidst the Florida recount drama--which lent him further credibility as one who can be appointed but not elected. "For the first time since Truman, you have a Veep who does not dream, does not wonder, does not think every day about being President," says a White House official. "And so Cheney has a much larger role than Bill could have given Al or 41 gave Dan Quayle or Ronald Reagan gave 41."

It might be more accurate to say that Dick Cheney is plenty ambitious, just not the way everyone assumes. Cheney knows that his not wanting power for himself allows Bush to give it to him. Bush put Cheney in charge of his transition because it sent an instant signal about Cheney's clout: "I want Dick to build up some political capital," Bush would say, "so he can go up to Capitol Hill and spend it." Ambitious lawmakers who may run one day themselves did not see Cheney as a rival. The Vice President sat at the Senate's G.O.P. policy lunches, taking notes; when Senator Trent Lott asked for comments, Cheney usually passed. When there was an important bill on the floor, he might say, 'You know, this means a lot to the President. We need to get this done.' And not much more.

This goes to the second piece of gospel about Bush and Cheney's partnership: that its inner workings are utterly secret, the Vice President perfectly discreet. He's Bush's personal CIA, with secure lines into corporate boardrooms, foreign governments, both houses of Congress and sleeper cells in every branch of government. When he went to visit senior British officials--who know something about reticence--they were struck by his demeanor. "There's no charisma," one of them observes. "But that's not what he's there for, which is intelligence, wisdom." In their first meeting, just before Bush took office, the official met with Cheney in Washington. "He just didn't say anything; so I kept talking and talking until I ran out of things to say. It made me feel like a complete idiot," he adds cheerfully--an acknowledgement that sometimes the best way to gather information is by not trying to. "And then at the end, he looked at me quizzically and said, 'How's your brother?'" The brother had been an aide to Margaret Thatcher and was still in Cheney's Rolodex.

Even if Cheney is Bush's extra set of eyes and ears, he's not the only one. Cheney may have the biggest Rolodex, but Bush is the master of the information game. "He's got a lot of portals for data," says a former Cheney aide about Bush. "He plays them off against each other. That's smart: he hears from Powell, then he'll go to Cheney. And Cheney is always the last sounding board." But that doesn't mean Cheney will always carry the day. When Bush's Republican rival, Senator John McCain, showed up at the White House the evening of Jan. 31, 2001, he expected to discuss his campaign-finance-reform bill privately over a drink with Bush in the residence. Instead, he was directed to the Oval Office, where Cheney was waiting as well. Despite his hostile rhetoric during the campaign, Bush had never studied McCain's proposal carefully. Cheney stayed silent as McCain leafed through the 38-page bill to explain its provisions, insisting that it would not hurt Republicans. Bush asked a lot of questions; he seemed intrigued. Cheney was not. He sat impassive throughout the presentation. Bush finally turned to Cheney. "So what do you think?" he asked.

"Yeah, you haven't said anything," McCain prodded. "I'd like to hear it."

"Well, I'm for full disclosure and no limits," Cheney would only say, which was essentially the opposite of McCain's approach. Bush and McCain both laughed. "Well, it's a good thing I'm handling this issue," Bush said, chuckling. Just over a year later, he signed McCain's bill.

MONEY TROUBLES

It took about three months in office to see that Cheney was not Perfect in Every Way. He knew how to organize a task force; he did not know how to unveil one. There was something garage-floor quirky about him: the master mechanic knows how to build any car by hand, but he doesn't have a clue about how to sell one. Bush gave Cheney the energy portfolio, only to inspire complaints (and lawsuits) about his secrecy in handling it and his clumsiness in promoting it. In one of the rare moments when Cheney went front and center, he made news by deriding conservation as a "personal virtue," as opposed to a pillar of any effective national strategy. Maybe because he is from Wyoming, where the center lies to the right of just about everyplace else, and because he has not run for office in 14 years, Cheney seemed not to realize that protecting the environment had become a core value to voters in both parties.

This was, even to the Bush team, something of a surprise. "He's pretty tone-deaf on this stuff," conceded a senior White House official at the time. Counsellor Karen Hughes, meanwhile, who was the nearest thing to a centrist on the environment in the West Wing, was appalled. She immediately went to work on damage control, forcing the President into a series of photo-op events designed to show how much he cared about the environment. She also made sure Cheney receded into the background, something the Vice President, burned by the experience, was happy to do.

Likewise on economic policy, Cheney has not always been able to help Bush get his footing. Cheney's record at Halliburton made him slightly radioactive last spring, after the New York Times reported that Halliburton may have inflated its earnings, with a little help from Arthur Andersen. Shareholders have filed a lawsuit. Cheney's critics took great pleasure in sharing a six-year-old promotional video of Cheney that praises the accounting firm for work "over and above just the ... normal by-the-books auditing arrangement." If Bush was slow to grasp the toll that Enron and Tyco and WorldCom would take on investor confidence, Cheney was no help.

History is full of failed Presidents who become prisoners of their problems, but Bush doesn't appear to have that trait. While he was late to address the failings of his economic team, when he did, he shot everyone in sight. In the months before the massacre, Cheney had been meeting privately with people on the economy. Old friends told him that Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was not cutting it--a painful truth, since it was Cheney who had tapped him for the job. It was Cheney who finally called O'Neill to break the news that it was time to leave and who helped recruit John Snow to replace him, much to the relief of party elders. "Many of us wondered whether they lived in the real world," said a top Republican. "All summer and fall, we were asking ourselves, Do they think this war is going to take care of everything? Surely they know that if they can't move on the economy, the war is not going to get them through this. And then along they come and make a dramatic move, choose a couple of practical guys. They broke out."

Ever since Cheney and Bush came onstage together, people have seen in their partnership whatever they are looking for. The President's critics still view Bush as a puppet, his mouth wired to Cheney's brain. His fans see a man surrounded by big and confident personalities who is himself the most confident of all. The critics challenge the whole notion of pre-emption for its reckless means in pursuit of arrogant ends. Bush's allies note that he has still managed to sell it to the American people, who have never gone to war gladly but support his foreign policy generally. However anxious they may be, most Americans are inclined to give Bush the benefit of the doubt; they trust his motives and approve of his performance. In war, it's not enough for people to like Bush; they have to follow him, and for many, that's easier when he has Cheney marching at his side. --Reported by James Carney, John F. Dickerson, Michael Duffy, Douglas Waller/Washington and J.F.O. McAllister/London

With reporting by James Carney, John F. Dickerson, Michael Duffy, Douglas Waller/Washington and J.F.O. McAllister/London