Cheney’s death underscored the decline of the more traditional, establishment-oriented version of the Republican Party that had dominated for decades.
A look back at Dick Cheney’s controversial political achievements
USA TODAY’s Washington bureau chief Susan Page looks back on the political accomplishments of Dick Cheney, who has died at the age of 84.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s funeral on Thursday will mark the passing of the type of politician made increasingly dangerous in the era of Donald Trump.
“Name me a Cheney-style Republican who is still alive politically,” said Joshua Bolten, who served as White House chief of staff during the final years of the George W. Bush administration.
Many Republicans are paying close attention to Cheney’s departure. They say he now looks like someone from another America, but his funeral at the Washington National Cathedral, where many other 20th century political icons were memorialized, also feels like the funeral of a more traditional, establishment-oriented version of the Republican Party that has dominated American politics for decades.
Cheney epitomized the old Republican Party and was one of the party’s leading figures of the past half-century. That was before Ms. Cheney clashed with Mr. Trump, declaring that she would vote for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in 2024 over the candidate chosen by the party she helped define for generations, calling the then-former president a “threat to the republic.”
This is a story familiar to many Republicans, especially former senators and Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain, as well as Cheney’s daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney. They were all outraged by what the party had become, from ideological shifts to what some perceived as President Trump’s trampling of norms, institutions and the rule of law. After expressing concerns about the state of American democracy, he was deemed persona non grata.
Former Republican Rep. Fred Upton, a self-described “Reagan Republican,” will also attend Cheney’s funeral, saying he watched the former vice president’s career up close during her more than 30 years in Congress, which ends in 2023. “It was on schedule,” Cheney said.
“Trump is trying everything,” added Upton, a powerful former House committee chair and one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
The Cheneys were particularly enraged by President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the Jan. 6 attack. They paid a heavy price, with President Trump forcing Liz Cheney to resign through a preliminary Republican challenge to her participation in a Congressional investigation into the attack.
Dick Cheney contrasted with President Trump in many other ways, from his cool temperament to his deep governing experience to his hawkish support for foreign intervention, which Trump later campaigned against.
Cheney and Bush entered office under a cloud of controversy after the Supreme Court ended the Florida recount during the 2000 presidential election. They left the White House eight years later, as the economy collapsed into the Great Recession and two unpopular wars raged.
It’s the political context that President Trump found fixable in his outsider campaign in 2016 that helped catapult him from a New York real estate agent and reality TV star to the White House. on the way, Trump will accuse Bush and Cheney of leading the United States into “endless wars.”
Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, called Cheney “the ultimate deep state insider” and “a particularly evil villain.”
“He and his henchmen…have the blood of thousands of American servicemen and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on their hands,” Stone said.
Immediately after Cheney’s death, Vice President J.D. Vance, responding to comments that Cheney seemed to be “running the country” during the Bush years, ridiculed his predecessor, saying, “At the end of the day, we’re not doing very well.”
The White House has not responded to inquiries about whether Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance and other administration officials will attend Mr. Cheney’s funeral, but the flag was lowered by half of its staff, as directed by U.S. flag regulations.
“Grandpa in the room”
Mr. Cheney is considered by many to be the most powerful vice president in history, and part of his power derives from his extensive knowledge of government.
The 34-year-old became the youngest White House chief of staff ever under Republican President Gerald Ford, represented Wyoming in the House of Representatives for 10 years, including several years within the Republican leadership, and served as Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush. Cheney was appointed by President Bush’s son to vet running mate candidates and ultimately accepted the position himself.
“He was very well qualified,” said former Republican congressman Dan Miller of Florida, who retired from Congress in 2003.
Miller, a Trump critic who describes himself as an “old-fashioned, conservative, traditional” lawmaker in the “Reagan-Cheney mold,” said the former vice president represents “competence and experience” that is a “huge contrast” to the Trump administration.
“Have you ever heard of ‘adults in the same room?'” Well, the Bush administration had a room full of adults, and (Cheney) was one of the most grown-up people, almost the grandpa in the room,” said Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who served on the National Security Council during the Bush administration. “This wasn’t his first rodeo, it wasn’t even his second rodeo. It was more like his fifth or sixth rodeo.”
The kind of experience Cheney brought to the Bush administration was more extensive than most, but records of high-level service were once standard for senior government officials.
Trump turned that around.
Upton said Cheney was an “insider” who “knew how things worked and how things should work.” Trump, a real estate scion with no governing experience, ran as an outsider and promoted like-minded people in his second administration.
hawk cheney
The late 46th vice president of the United States came of age politically during the Cold War era following World War II, and was a hawk on military intervention and confrontations with foreign adversaries, from the former Soviet Union to perceived threats in the Middle East.
“Cheney was part of the bedrock of Reagan,” Upton said of Reagan, who served two terms as Republican president from 1981 to 1989 and was known for a hard-line foreign policy that emphasized military power.
Some of Trump’s foreign policy agenda during his second term, such as bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, are consistent with Cheney’s philosophy, according to people who have worked with the former vice president. Trump also takes an expansive view of the executive powers championed by Cheney.
But Mr. Trump has been more diplomatic toward some dictators, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, than some Republican hardliners would like.
“Cheney would have been more hawkish on both,” Feaver said.
Trump has also directly targeted some of the military interventions that Cheney helped initiate, criticizing the Iraq war and moving in his first term to scale back military operations in Afghanistan, which the U.S. invaded during the Bush-Cheney administration after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Trump was guiding the public opinion of many war-weary Americans. But there has long been an isolationist tendency within the Republican Party, which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney resisted with his intervention.
“President Bush was very opposed to the Republican Party pursuing populist policies, which President Bush defined at the time as isolationism, xenophobia and protectionism, and he, like Cheney, opposed all three,” Bolten said.
Meanwhile, President Trump has aggressively pushed for tariffs and deportations of immigrants without legal status, but his support for Ukraine against Russia’s attacks has wavered at times.
Cheney Republican Funeral
Mourners at Cheney’s funeral are likely to lean more heavily toward the old Republican Party than the new MAGA version. President Bush and Liz Cheney speak during a service at the National Cathedral, which has hosted services for six previous presidents.
Whether Mr. Cheney’s death is also the death of the man he represented within the party will likely play out in the coming months and years, especially as Mr. Trump begins to retreat from the political scene and debate intensifies over what happens next for the party.
John Hanna, a former Cheney aide, said it is “increasingly doubtful” that the Republican Party will return to anything resembling the party Cheney defined.
“We are beginning the last period of a bygone era,” said Hanna, who worked for Cheney for eight years as vice president, including more than three years as national security adviser.
But some conservatives remain hopeful that the traditional Republican Party will return.
“It’s a little premature to say Wing will die and be buried with Cheney,” Feaver said.
There are still conservatives who have doubts about President Trump’s approach. Their voices have been largely silenced by the MAGA revolution, but Feaver expects their voices to grow louder as candidates vie for the party’s future in 2028.
Contributor: Bart Jansen, Reuters
