Both Campaigns Train the Spotlight on Cheney

Vice President Dick Cheney is the master of the monotone speech and a man who relishes his backstage role at the White House. But Republican strategists are suddenly pushing the consummate inside guy into a more prominent role in the closely fought presidential campaign.

And oddly, both Democrats and Republicans are happy about it.

Republicans are putting a spotlight on Cheney to shore up support with the party’s conservative base.

Democrats have their own focus on him -- trying to draw attention to his ties to contractor Halliburton Co., his role in building the case for war with Iraq and his recent use of a vulgarity on the Senate floor.

The strategy is a gamble for both sides.

Cheney, for instance, is being dispatched this weekend on a two-day bus tour through Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania -- an unusual assignment in these battleground states for someone who acknowledges that he is less comfortable with the flash of retail politics than with “solid, serious conversation.”

“I can’t even form a mental picture of Dick Cheney on a bus,” said Michael Nelson, a political scientist at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., who has written a book on the vice presidency.

“This could be a test to see whether Cheney out there campaigning helps the president or helps the Democrats,” Nelson added. “The kind of response he gets on this trip could offer some real evidence about how viable he is on the ticket this time.”

Cheney, a former congressman and Defense secretary, was hailed four years ago as a senior statesman who could balance then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s lack of Washington experience. But polls suggest that he has since become a polarizing force, at least among those with an opinion about him.

A CBS News/New York Times survey published this week found that 22% of registered voters had a favorable impression of Cheney, compared with 31% who had an unfavorable impression.

As most politicians are at sporting events, the vice president was greeted with a chorus of boos Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium, where he met team owners and players, when his picture was displayed on the big stadium screens.

To Democrats, this is fertile ground, a chance to cast Cheney in the role of one of their former favorite antagonists.

“In the absence of Newt Gingrich, there’s Dick Cheney,” said Jano Cabrera, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, referring to the former House speaker from Georgia who helped spearhead the impeachment of President Clinton.

Democratic officials acknowledge that few voters are likely to base their choice in November on the No. 2 slot on the ticket.

But they say Cheney can add to the overall portrait they are trying to paint of President Bush as out of touch with average people and more interested in helping corporations such as Halliburton, which Cheney once headed and which has received billions of dollars in contracts for work in Iraq.

Also, Cheney is viewed as a key player in the administration’s decision to wage war. Democrats say they will remind voters of the vice president’s statements that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction, which have not been found, and that Al Qaeda had links to the regime of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. An independent commission recently released a staff report saying Al Qaeda’s contacts with Iraq apparently had never developed into a “collaborative relationship.”

“Cheney is a key part of the argument against George Bush,” said Phil Singer, a spokesman for Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “He exemplifies the poor policy decisions and troubling ties to corporate America that have come to characterize this administration.”

To that end, the Democratic National Committee has orchestrated daily criticism of Cheney. Kerry frequently rips Cheney by name, as well as Halliburton. One anti-Bush group, the Media Fund, blanketed battleground states in recent days with an ad criticizing Halliburton and Cheney.

Democrats are arranging for protesters to greet Cheney this weekend at his stops in suburban Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Wheeling, W.Va. They are to include parents, who intend to chastise the vice president for the recent incident in which, on the Senate floor, he told Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.): “Go ... yourself.”

Mary Matalin, a former Cheney aide who is a political advisor to him, said the Democrats’ strategy would backfire, succeeding only in further riling a conservative base that resents the attacks.

She added that the subdued Cheney is no Gingrich, who Democrats successfully blamed for escalating a budget showdown with Clinton into a shutdown of the federal government in 1995. Gingrich eventually became too controversial and stepped aside.

“Newt was the face of the party, and he was the leader of the party then,” said Matalin. “But everyone understands that George Bush is the president.”

The gamble for both sides is how and whether undecided voters will weigh Cheney. In the new CBS poll, more than one-third of independents said they viewed him unfavorably, but more than half said they were either undecided or did not know enough about the vice president to have an opinion.

Political analysts noted that efforts in 1988 to defeat President Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, by attacking his running mate, then-Sen. Dan Quayle (R-Ind.), failed.

The GOP’s efforts to label Democratic vice presidential nominee Al Gore “Ozone Man” in 1992 for his environmental policies were also fruitless.

“I hope they spend a lot of time on this,” said Republican strategist Ron Kaufman, a senior political aide to the elder Bush. “Nobody cares.”