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Power broker Cheney often takes lead role
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ and ERIC SCHMITT, New York Times © St. Petersburg Times, published May 13, 2001 WASHINGTON -- A dozen House Republicans from California were seething when they met with Vice President Dick Cheney on May 1 to discuss the state's power crisis. Angry that Gray Davis, the state's Democratic governor, was trying to pin the blame for the problem on Republicans, the lawmakers urged the White House to fire back. Cheney, a former House leader, listened patiently as they encouraged him and the White House to attack Davis, before tersely cutting off the clamor. "It's not part of the White House strategy and it won't be," Rep. George Radanovich recalled Cheney saying. As quickly as he silenced talk of one option, the vice president rekindled discussion of others. "Could the government tell its offices in California to conserve energy?," legislators asked Cheney. A few days later, it was done: President Bush ordered federal offices in the state to turn down thermostats. "You talk to Dick Cheney and things happen, and he doesn't necessarily take credit," said Sen. Trent Lott, the majority leader. "There is a connection between going to Dick Cheney and getting action." Cheney has emerged as a supreme power broker within the Bush administration and -- more than any vice president before him -- between the White House and Capitol Hill. It is a role Bush planned for Cheney, the 60-year-old former secretary of defense and White House chief of staff with impeccable conservative credentials, when he picked him as his political partner. But Cheney has proved to be even more influential than was imagined during the campaign. As President Bush's consigliere, Cheney helps connect the dots for the administration as he zigzags all day long from hot-button issue to high-level meeting, discreetly imparting advice whenever his boss asks or needs to know. Behind the scenes, Cheney urged Bush to follow up quickly and unequivocally on his campaign pledge to build an expansive missile defense system. This month, Bush gave that commitment in a major speech. Last month when the White House sought to avert a divisive Republican Senate primary in Minnesota that could upset plans to challenge Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone, Cheney was asked to intervene. Shortly after the vice president called, one of the contenders, Tim Pawlenty, the majority leader of the Minnesota House, abandoned the race. "Because of the way the vice president operates, in a rather low-profile way, I think his influence oftentimes is substantially underestimated," said Sen. Larry E. Craig, R-Idaho. "His fingerprints are everywhere." Craig credited Cheney with helping win Senate approval on Thursday for a budget plan close to what Bush had proposed, clearing the way for the first big tax cut in two decades. On the eve of the vote, Cheney called a handful of senators, including Max Baucus of Montana, one of five Democrats who eventually backed the plan. In interviews and in recent television talk show appearances, Cheney has sought to paint a more prosaic picture of his work. "When you're in one of these jobs, there's the perception from the outside that you're powerful," he told CNN's Larry King. "On the inside, you're not sure of the leverage you're connected to anything. I mean, you deal with difficult problems, try to move the Congress, shape public opinion, deal with a difficult situation -- and it's usually three yards in a cloud of dust. There aren't very many home runs in this business." It is a business that begins every morning at 8 in the Oval Office, where Cheney sits down for coffee with the president to review world affairs and the day's agenda. Most days, the two men seem tethered at the hip. When Bush meets separately each week with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney is there. When Bush has his weekly economic and domestic policy briefings, Cheney sits in. When Bush meets foreign leaders and dignitaries, Cheney is usually by his side. Cheney also meets weekly for lunch with Powell, Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. "He has excellent judgment," Rice said. She said she especially valued Cheney's advice on the Middle East, a region he has known well since the Persian Gulf War. This operating style, critics say, makes Bush a figurehead and Cheney the real man in charge. The vice president rejects that perception. "I see him several times a day, but that's what the president wanted when he asked me to be his running mate," Cheney said in a television interview last month. "We work very closely together. But he's very much the CEO of the operation. He runs the show, and I do whatever he wants me to do." Cheney is getting ready to release a far-reaching energy report that was drafted by an interagency task force he led. Even though the report is expected to call for more oil and gas drilling, Cheney insists it will be balanced. "The idea that somehow only the energy industry has access just simply isn't true," Cheney said. "We'll make decisions on what we think makes sound public policy." In the coming weeks, Cheney will turn to overseeing an anti-terrorism commission that will try to make one cohesive unit of the sprawl of agencies responsible for responding to acts of terrorism. And he will probably help reconcile the Pentagon's request for billions of extra dollars with fiscal restraints imposed by the White House budget office. White House aides say Bush entrusts the vice president with so much not only because of Cheney's experience and judgment, but also because he has no presidential ambitions. "The vice president is ready to be president but he is not looking to be president," said Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff. "The vice president is on the president's team, and everyone who works for the vice president is on the president's team. That's a big change. With Reagan-Bush and Clinton-Gore, the reality is they had political interests that were sometimes not converging." When he is not tackling issues at the White House, Cheney dashes quietly around Capitol Hill, where he responds to the questions, travails and ideas of Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate as he tries to push Bush's agenda. Senate Republicans call him the 51st senator, and Cheney responds in kind by attending their weekly policy lunches. But Democrats have complained that Cheney has ignored their views and has conducted his energy review largely in secret. Cheney has accepted invitations to join Senate Democrats for lunch this Tuesday, but his aides are bracing for a contentious meeting. In the House -- where Cheney is most comfortable -- he attends Republican leadership meetings and holds court in an office just steps from the House floor, which Speaker Dennis Hastert cleared especially for him. But his involvement on the Hill goes far beyond meetings with leaders. In his quest to create a broad coalition for Bush's agenda, Cheney carves out time for just about anybody who requests a meeting. And he is direct in a way many politicians are not. "There is no deviousness or hidden agenda," said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., a friend of Cheney's. "What it is is what it is. There is no wiggle-waggling around." It is a care-and-feeding strategy with Congress that has gone a long way to win over lawmakers, who are often looking as much for an influential ear to bend as for results. "When I convey my views to the vice president, it's equivalent virtually to the president," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. The scene at the Senate Republicans' weekly luncheon last Tuesday illustrated how Cheney operates. The vice president sat at a table with seven senators, and throughout the meal lawmakers drifted over, dropped off notes or papers, and whispered requests about personnel, policy or legislation. He jotted it all down on a notepad. During the debate over the budget resolution in the Senate, Cheney practically camped out near the Senate floor, where he tried to persuade reluctant Republicans to vote for Bush's tax cut and helped soothe jittery nerves. When he was hungry, he ate in the Senate dining room. In the end, he cast two tie-breaking votes. Not one for grand entrances -- unlike former Vice President Al Gore, who often descended on Capitol Hill in a flurry of blaring sirens -- Cheney's small motorcade stops at traffic lights on his orders. He has reduced his security detail to attract less attention. The sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, who is typically charged with walking vice presidents around the Capitol, has been relieved of that duty. "He seems to be everywhere, but in an understated way," said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.
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