Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (Hardcover)

by Stephen F. Hayes (Author)
Key Phrases: uranium deal, White House, United States, Dick Cheney (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Before he became George W. Bush's running mate in the 2000 election, Hayes reports, Dick Cheney called the vice presidency a cruddy job. But during his tenure, Hayes argues, Cheney transformed this traditionally inconsequential office into a focal point of presidential power. While emphasizing Cheney's role as vice president, this biography follows his entire political career, beginning with a 1968 congressional fellowship and including key positions in the Ford and George H.W. Bush administrations, as well as 21 years as a congressman. Drawing on interviews with Cheney and others, as well as TV interviews and other journalistic reports, Hayes covers this material engagingly and efficiently. A reporter for the Weekly Standard and author of a previous book on the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, Hayes approaches Cheney sympathetically, countering more critical accounts in the popular press—for example, he laments the way Ambassador Joseph Wilson's flawed storyline regarding forged evidence that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Niger hardened into conventional wisdom. The book may not convince detractors, but it sketches a vivid portrait of Cheney as an intelligent, quiet leader committed throughout his career, even as a member of Congress, to strengthening the power and authority of the executive branch. (July 24)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description

During a forty-year career in politics, Vice President Dick Cheney has been involved in some of the most consequential decisions in recent American history. He was one of a few select advisers in the room when President Gerald Ford decided to declare an end to the Vietnam War. Nearly thirty years later, from the presidential bunker below the White House in the moments immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001, he helped shape the response: America's global war on terror.

Yet for all of his influence, the world knows very little about Dick Cheney. The most powerful vice president in U.S. history has also been the most secretive and guarded of all public officials. "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?" Cheney asked rhetorically in 2004. "It's a nice way to operate, actually."

Now, in Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President, New York Times bestselling author and Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen F. Hayes offers readers a groundbreaking view into the world of this most enigmatic man. Having had exclusive access to Cheney himself, Hayes draws upon hundreds of interviews with the vice president, his boyhood friends, political mentors, family members, reticent staffers, and senior Bush administration officials, to deliver a comprehensive portrait of one of the most important political figures in modern times.

The wide range of topics Hayes covers includes Cheney's withdrawal from Yale; his early run-ins with the law; the incident that almost got him blackballed from working in the Ford White House; his meteoric rise to congressional leadership; his opposition to removing Saddam Hussein from power after the first Gulf War; the solo, cross-country drive he took after leaving the Pentagon; his selection as Bush's running mate; his commanding performance on 9/11; the aggressive intelligence and interrogation measures he pushed in the aftermath of those attacks; the necessity of the Iraq War; the consequences of mistakes made during and after that war; and intelligence battles with the CIA and their lasting effects. With exhaustive reporting, Hayes shines a light into the shadows of the Bush administration and finds a very different Dick Cheney from the one America thinks it knows.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1 edition (July 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060723467
• ISBN-13: 978-0060723460
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #76,212 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #47 in

  Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Political Science > United States > Executive Branch

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

126 of 158 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beware of political opposition masquerading as a review, July 27, 2007

By	D. G. Myers (Texas A&M University) - See all my reviews

Stephen F. Hayes's new biography of Vice President Cheney is narrative history at its best. Decidedly not an authorized biography, the book is unsparing in its account of Cheney's development from an "analytical" political scientist, primarily interested in political methods, into the most powerful American conservative since President Reagan. Hayes shows how Cheney's experience in the Nixon and Ford administrations encouraged his development from a "moderate" without ideological moorings into a principled conservative whose skepticism of governmental solutions to human problems is founded upon firsthand knowledge of governmental failures.

Hayes is interested in neither gossip nor dirt. If you want that, you'll have to find a different book. Nor is it accurate to say that Hayes offers little new information. I had not known, for example, that Cheney went from being a Yale dropout and electrical-company lineman (with two drunk driving arrests) to White House insider in just a decade. If a man capable of such improbable progress fascinates you; if you do not want your preconceptions confirmed, either for or against the man; if you are curious how the "most powerful and controversial vice president" in American history came to assume that title; if you are convinced that a man ought to be judged by how he explains himself rather than by conspiracy theories; if you want to learn about the Vice President's moral and intellectual development and if you believe that it is possible, even for your political opponents, to act from moral and intellectual principle; then this is the book for you.

Hayes is a political journalist, and writes like one. As a consequence, the book is not without its faults. It is more of an "oral" biography, depending largely upon interviews, than a "literary" one, depending upon documents. Similarly, it is not scholarly biography, which might supply more background information on events, movements, and the lesser figures in Cheney's life. Because the focus is exclusively on Cheney, things get dropped without explanation. Hayes discusses Cheney's disagreement with Henry Kissinger over whether President Ford should meet with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, for example, but never reports the outcome. (Ford declined to meet with him.) These are small flaws, though, especially given the book's informativeness and easy readability. Overall, this is a superb look into the inner political machinery of the Republican Party over the past three decades, which should appeal to fair-minded opponents and supporters of Vice President Cheney alike.

76 of 103 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Damage Control! Five Stars for the research and effort alone, July 23, 2007

By	Sivakumar Nadarajah "Author of America Misund... - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Stephen Hayes should definitely be commended for the brave effort of undertaking a challenging project to look at the "other" side of Cheney, probably the most controversial, talked about and secretive vice-presidents of all time.

The carefully selected facts presented throughout this book may not convince Cheney's detractors, but the meticulous research that has been done just cannot be ignored.

Hayes writes that he spent nearly 30 hours interviewing Cheney -- one-on-one, and conducted another 600 interviews for the book. It is an unprecedented amount of face time for an author, and he has done an excellent job of presenting the details in a manner that is readable for those who even hate the Vice President to the extreme extent.

It's fascinating to read Cheney's early years in his birth state of Nebraska, his college ( and Yale) failures, his service as chief of staff in the Ford administration, and his meteoric rise as a young Republican conservative in Congress.

If you really want to know the deep roots of Cheney's current official personality, and why he prefers making secrecy rather than transparency his fallback position on almost all issues, you should definitely read this book.

N.Sivakumar

Author of:
America Misunderstood: What a Second Bush Victory Meant to the Rest of the World

38 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A close look at a man not easily understood., August 11, 2007

By	Michael T Kennedy (Mission Viejo, CA USA) - See all my reviews

The most important fact this book provides about the vice-president is how effectively he fills a unique role in American history. I am currently reading Harry Truman's memoirs. The contrast between the role Truman filled during his 87 days as vice-president, and the role Dick Cheney has played could not be greater. One reason why Cheney has been so effective is his willingness to subordinate his public image to the desires of the Bush Administration. During the vice-presidential debate, Hayes quotes several observers as saying that Cheney and Lieberman should have been at the top of their respective tickets.(Page 295) On several occasions, the Bush handlers have limited Cheney's contacts with the press to avoid unfavorable comparisons to Bush. This has resulted in the "secrecy" image of Cheney being even more persistent than his own inclinations might have wished. It has also resulted in his poor approval ratings, a new phenomenon for a man whose public image for 25 years was positive and even moderate rather than conservative. His rapid rise in government is chronicled after the false start of his Yale years. I liked this part and it reminded me of a similar situation described in General Tommy Franks' biography. He, too, flunked out of college as a result of too much partying and not enough motivation. Maybe I am more sympathetic from my own experience at that age. Cheney was a varsity athlete and star graduate of Natrona County High School in 1959. After the Yale fiasco, he returned to Wyoming and had a few years where his future wasn't promising. He and his high school sweetheart, Lynne, were married in 1964 and he returned to the University of Wyoming to finish his degree and go on to graduate school. Both worked on PhD programs and he gave up his ambition to be a professor only when the offers in politics became too difficult to turn down.

In 1969, he went to work for Donald Rumsfeld in the Nixon Administration and by 1975, he was Chief of Staff for President Ford. When Ford lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter, Cheney returned to Wyoming and, in 1978, was elected as Wyoming's sole member of the House of Representatives. Ironically, his degree from the University of Wyoming was far more helpful there than a Yale degree would have been. It was during that campaign that he suffered his first heart attack. He was 37. His Congressional career was highly successful and he was in line to be Speaker of the House when President George Bush asked him to become Secretary of Defense in the wake of the failure of the John Tower nomination. His famous discretion was in full display during an Evans and Novak TV interview after he had been offered the job but had not yet accepted it. They discussed possible candidates to replace Tower and Cheney said not a word. Novak had to scrap the interview tape the next day when Cheney was announced as the nominee.

The history of his time in the second Bush Administration is more familiar but has been grossly distorted by the hostile press. Some of this was due to the reluctance of the Bush staff to see Cheney on TV. He is extremely capable and light on his feet in interviews with the single exception of his famous mis-speaking that Saddam Hussein had "reconstituted" nuclear weapons in the run up to the Iraq War. It was a rare slip. This biography provids a rare view of this private man. His reticence is unusual in a politician and his reputation will recover after the slings and arrows of contemporary politics fade. He is one of the most important political leaders of the past 50 years and the biography should be required reading for anyone who wishes a full understanding of the post-Vietnam era of American government.