Newspaper Article

Cheney's Enigmatic Influence

Ignatius, David

2007

Overview

\"What has defined the OVP since Scooter left is listlessness,\" says one [Cheney] ally. \"For 18 months, it was defined by its torpidity. That was deeply distressing\" to Cheney's conservative supporters, who feared that [Bush] had become captive to overly cautious advice from his senior military commanders, Gen. John Abizaid and Gen. George Casey. This month's change in Iraq policy, in which Bush turned away from the patient strategy his military commanders had advocated, may have marked a return of Cheney's influence. But insiders caution that it's a mistake to see Cheney as some kind of puppet master on Iraq policy and that the key decisions have been made by Bush himself. \"Over the years, he got tired of suffering fools,\" says one longtime Cheney friend. \"He thinks it's all BS.\" This contempt for Washington developed when Cheney was a top White House aide in the Ford administration during the cacophony that followed Watergate, this friend says, and it ripened when he made enough money as chief executive of Halliburton that he didn't have to care what people in Washington thought. The danger is that in encouraging Bush to ignore polls and even elections, Cheney has helped set up a confrontation between Congress and the executive branch that could undermine any hope of achieving a bipartisan approach on Iraq.

• Publisher: WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post
• Subject: Bush, George W / Cheney, Richard B / Influence / Policy making / Political power