Cheney Gets Role for Which He’s Prepared

He’s discreet and disciplined; a classic behind-the-scenes operator. No wonder the Secret Service once gave Dick Cheney the code name “Backseat.”

Cheney, George W. Bush’s running mate, brings to the Republican ticket a vast resume of working with and for powerful people. He also has a reputation for the kind of utter loyalty that Bush prizes and that presumably prepares Cheney well for the ultimate political back seat: the vice presidency.

And much like Bush, Cheney, 59, marries a record of conservative views with an amiable political style that was key to his rapid rise through the Washington power structure--from the White House staff under President Ford, to the House of Representatives and then the Pentagon, where he was Defense secretary under President Bush, the Texas governor’s father.

Cheney’s selection as Bush’s running mate is the capstone of a remarkable life’s journey that has carried him from a modest upbringing in small-town Wyoming to the wealth he now enjoys as a multimillionaire in the energy industry. Through it all, he has shown a knack for getting along with his adversaries. While in the House, he even managed to befriend Democrat Tony Coelho, the fiercely partisan former congressman from Merced, Calif., who, until recently, ran the campaign of Bush’s Democratic rival, Vice President Al Gore.

“He is as conservative as I am--you might find that he’s more so,” House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said of Cheney. “But he’s got such a wonderful personal demeanor that liberals and moderates have never felt threatened by him.”

Until now, Cheney has been best known for his role in the Bush administration’s response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. As Defense secretary, he worked closely with Gen. Colin L. Powell--they became widely known as “Lethal Weapon,” after the Mel Gibson-Danny Glover cinematic pairing.

Genial Demeanor a Blessing and Curse

Cheney’s personal charm served him well in Washington, where personal relationships and trust frequently are keys to advancement. But in the rough-and-tumble of presidential campaigning, his genial nature will do little to deflect hard-hitting Democratic attacks on his deeply conservative record, which includes votes on a vast array of issues during his years in the House from 1979 to 1989.

Cheney is solidly opposed to abortion rights. He voted against gun control initiatives--including relatively noncontroversial ones such as a 1988 measure to ban plastic guns that can get through metal detectors. He is viewed with suspicion by environmentalists, both for his House votes against stronger anti-pollution laws and because of his current ties to the oil industry as chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based oil-services giant, Halliburton Co. He resigned from those posts Tuesday.

He also will face questions about his health--he had suffered three heart attacks by age 48 and underwent quadruple bypass surgery in 1988. But he has had no serious heart problems since, and a doctor commissioned by the Bush campaign recently declared him fit for “a strenuous political campaign.”

He twice has been cleared by the FBI for high security government posts. The worst thing agents found, said Alan Kranowitz, a former White House official who helped Cheney prepare for confirmation hearings as Defense secretary, was a brush with the law that was classic for a man from Wyoming. A game warden once caught Cheney fly-fishing off season.

Born in 1941 in Lincoln, Neb., he grew up in Casper, Wyo. For fun, he and his buddies fashioned makeshift skis to water ski in an irrigation ditch.

He began college at Yale University but left after losing his scholarship due to poor grades. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science at the University of Wyoming, and in 1964 married a local girl, Lynne Vincent. But the young, ambitious couple eventually found their way out of their hometown. They moved to pursue advanced degrees at the University of Wisconsin, although only Lynne finished a doctorate. But Cheney’s marriage and student status earned him a deferment from the military draft during the Vietnam War.

He came to Washington on a congressional fellowship in 1968. Then, during President Nixon’s first term, he worked in several jobs that brought him under the mentorship of Donald Rumsfeld, a key Nixon aide who later became President Ford’s chief of staff. Cheney became his deputy and succeeded him as staff chief when Rumsfeld left to become Defense secretary in 1975. That put Cheney at the center of power at the age of 34, although he was still a virtual unknown in Washington.

Cheney returned to Wyoming after Ford lost the 1976 election and then ran successfully for the House in 1978. He coasted through every reelection after that.

Cheney was among the House’s most stalwart opponents of gun control measures. When the House in 1988 approved the ban on plastic guns, the vote was 413-4--Cheney was one of the bill’s foes. When the House in 1985 voted to ban armor-piercing bullets, it was approved 400-21--with Cheney again in the minority.

On abortion, he cast 27 votes on abortion rights, and 26 of them were against the abortion-rights position favored by the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. He voted against federal funding for abortion even in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the woman was endangered--exceptions many other anti-abortion lawmakers have supported.

Cheney’s mix of a conservative voting record and conciliatory charm helped him zip up the GOP leadership ladder; in 1988, he was elected minority whip. He was seen as a bridge between warring generations within the party--the older generation of more conciliatory lawmakers, such as then-House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.), and the upstart brand of confrontational conservatives led by then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

But Cheney was soon pulled back to the executive branch when newly elected President Bush named him Defense secretary in 1989. Bush had been forced to withdraw his first choice for the job, John Tower, amid questions about the former Texas senator’s problems with alcohol and womanizing. Cheney emerged as the consensus alternative and easily won Senate confirmation.

At the Pentagon, Cheney was a steady hand on the tiller in stormy times. He presided over a significant shrinkage of the U.S. military and its spending--from roughly $400 billion in 1989 to $334 billion in 1991, the year the Persian Gulf War was fought. As the ranks of service personnel dropped to levels not seen since before the Korean War, he struggled not only to prop up sagging morale but to contain a growing number of social controversies erupting within the armed forces.

Reports of widespread sexual harassment, as well as calls for an end to the military’s long-standing ban on gays and lesbians, competed for Cheney’s attention with efforts to trim costly weapons and scale back the deployment of new intercontinental nuclear missiles.

In the Persian Gulf conflict, Cheney shuttled among reluctant Mideast allies to find regional bases for U.S. troops and materiel. His coalition-building was crucial to the military rout of Iraqi troops in early 1991.

Friends say Cheney weathers crisis and pressure with a remarkably even temper.

“I’ve worked for Dick Cheney for over 20 years, and I’ve never heard him yell at anybody,” said Dave Gribbin, who served him as top aide in the House and at the Pentagon and who now heads the Washington office of Halliburton Co.

Cheney Considered ’96 Presidential Run

Cheney and his wife, Lynne, have two grown daughters. Elizabeth is a lawyer who lives in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. Mary lives in Colorado and for the last several years worked as a corporate relations manager for the Coors Brewing Co. Her prime responsibilities included serving as a liaison to the gay and lesbian community, according to a job description she provided for her alma mater, Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

Cheney himself has had “an extremely conservative record” in Congress on issues of interest to gays, according to an analysis by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group. He voted against early efforts to combat AIDS, including funding for counseling, testing and research.

But while he was Defense secretary, Cheney supported a Pentagon staff member who had been revealed as gay. “I have operated on the basis over the years with respect to my personal staff that I don’t ask them about their private lives,” he was quoted at the time saying.

He later opposed Clinton’s efforts to eliminate the ban on gays in the military.

Cheney considered seeking the presidency himself in 1996, as several Republicans urged him to seek the GOP nomination to challenge President Clinton’s reelection bid. But he took a pass, saying he did not want to sacrifice his freedom and privacy to the campaign.

The decision prompted no obvious regrets, friends say. David Keene, a Cheney friend who is chairman of the American Conservative Union, recalls meeting him shortly after Cheney declined to run. “I just got back from Canada and caught a salmon this big,” the exuberant Cheney told Keene. “I tell you, it beats the hell out of running for president.”

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Times staff writers Melissa Healy and Nick Anderson contributed to this story.

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Profile: Dick Cheney

Former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney emerged Monday as Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s likely vice presidential choice.

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Age: 59; born in Lincoln, Neb.

Religion: Methodist.

Family: Wife, Lynne, a native of Casper, Wyo.; two grown daughters.

Education: Attended Yale University for one year. Received bachelor’s degree from the University of Wyoming, 1965; master’s degree in political science, 1966. Did doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin.

Experience: White House chief of staff under President Ford, 1974-76; Wyoming representative, 1978-89, eventually becoming House Republican whip; secretary of Defense under President Bush, 1989-93; chairman and CEO of Dallas-based Halliburton Corp., one of the world’s leading engineering and construction companies for the petroleum industry,

1995-present.