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TODAY o July 26, 2000
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Cheney expands ticket's resume
Conservative brings congressional and Pentagon experience.
Saeed Ahmed and Laylan Copelin - Staff
Wednesday, July 26, 2000
Austin --- In the end, the searcher became the searched for, and for conservatives who were wary of some of Gov. George W. Bush's vice presidential flirtations, the choice of Dick Cheney as the Republican running mate came as a relief.
Considered a conservative Republican Party stalwart, Cheney, 59, brings with him a wealth of foreign policy and legislative experience and a resume more far-ranging than Bush's own six years as governor.
He has faithfully served two Republican administrations and has a voting record that is consistently pro-business, anti-abortion and pro-defense.
As a member of Congress from Wyoming from 1979 to 1989, Cheney opposed the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights, even in cases of incest or rape. He supported a balanced budget amendment and prayer in schools.
He was one of just 21 lawmakers in 1985 to vote against a ban on armor piercing "cop killer" bullets. He was one of only eight lawmakers to oppose passage of the Clean Water Act in 1987.
The following year, he was one of four lawmakers to vote against banning plastic guns that could be smuggled past metal detectors.
"If you view his voting record, it's rock-ribbed conservative," said Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), who has known Cheney for 30 years. "He's very conservative, but he believes you've got to make government work. He's not mean-spirited about it."
Former Rep. John Bryant of Texas, one of Congress' most liberal members, was less charitable. "The impression I got, he was a very intense guy who internalized a lot of anger at the Democrats," Bryant said. "He's as conservative as any one in the (Republican) Party, but he wasn't a screamer like the (Newt) Gingrich crowd."
Born in Nebraska in 1941, Cheney grew up in Casper, Wyo., and then headed East to attend the Bush family alma mater, Yale University.
He dropped out in his sophomore year ("I had a lack of direction," he told Business Week in 1988), and eventually earned a political science degree from the University of Wyoming in 1965.
After winning a postgraduate fellowship that took him to Washington, Cheney took a job in the Nixon administration as a special assistant to the White House counsel.
In August 1974, after President Richard Nixon resigned, he helped President Gerald Ford deal with the difficult transition in the wake of the Watergate scandal and eventually became his chief of staff, the youngest ever, at age 34.
After Ford's defeat by Jimmy Carter, Cheney decided to run for office himself, winning Wyoming's House seat in 1978. He was accused of being a carpetbagger, not having lived in Wyoming for years. He also suffered the first of three heart attacks.
As a congressman, he quickly rose through the party ranks to the leadership post of whip, and his low-key demeanor enabled him to make fewer enemies than those who served before and after him.
The National Right to Life Committee gave Cheney a 100 percent rating for his anti-abortion voting record during his tenure. He co-sponsored the President's Pro-life Bill, which attacked Roe v. Wade and would have permanently banned federal funding for abortions.
After suffering two more heart attacks in 1980s, Cheney left Congress when President George Bush tapped him for secretary of defense.
Despite his lack of a military background, he earned widespread praise in this position, particularly for his handling of the Gulf War in 1991.
In 1996, Cheney briefly considered a presidential bid himself, but instead moved into private business, serving as chief executive officer of Halliburton Co., the world's largest oil services company.
In a speech to the Institute of Petroleum, he joked of his transition, "I am often asked why I left politics, and I explain that I reached the point where I was mean-spirited, short-tempered and intolerant of those who disagreed with me, and they said, 'Hell, you'd make a great CEO,' so I joined the private sector."
When Bush began looking for a running mate, Cheney was the Bush family loyalist picked to screen the candidates. He knew the stakes well, having been briefly considered as a replacement for Dan Quayle when some questioned the vice presidential choice in 1992.
As vice president, Cheney would bring a genial personality and intellectual heft that makes his conservatism more palatable in the halls of power, those who know him say.
"What he brings to the position is a level of experience and a sense of gravitas," said Jack Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College political science professor who worked for Cheney on the House Republican Policy Committee. "Even in Congress, he had a tremendous ability to bridge all the parties' ideological factions, working closely with liberals, conservatives and moderates."
However, his longtime friend Leach said Cheney did not expect to return to politics. "I think he assumed public service was behind him. But when a potential president asks you, you are obligated to consider it."
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