Dick Cheney

His father conserved soil for the Agriculture Department and his mother had been a softball star in the 1930s. The family left Lincoln for Casper, Wyoming, and Cheney finished at Natrona County High. Yale admitted him, he could not settle, and he dropped out. In November 1962, at 21, he was convicted of drunk driving, and arrested again in 1963. He said later they made him look hard at where he was headed. He worked as a power lineman, took a bachelor's and a master's in political science at Wyoming, married Lynne Vincent in 1964, and began a doctorate at Wisconsin he never finished. Five draft deferments carried him past Vietnam. His first daughter was born nine months and two days after the draft opened to childless married men.

He came to Washington in 1968 on a political science fellowship, went to work for Donald Rumsfeld the next year, and when Rumsfeld moved to the Pentagon in November 1975, Cheney inherited his job: White House chief of staff at 34. Wyoming sent him to the House in 1978 and he stayed a decade, rising to minority whip and voting against the Department of Education, against the King holiday in 1978, and against overriding Reagan's veto of the South Africa sanctions bill. He was George H. W. Bush's secretary of defense from 1989 to 1993, running Panama and the Gulf War, then spent five years as chairman and chief executive of Halliburton. In 2000 the younger Bush asked him to run the search for a running mate and then picked the man running it.

He rebuilt the vice presidency into something closer to a prime ministership, which is why the argument about him has never closed. He pressed the case that Iraq held weapons it did not have. He acknowledged signing off on the interrogation methods the government called enhanced, and members of Congress and advocacy groups called for his prosecution under anti-torture and war crimes statutes. He fought to keep his energy task force secret and invoked executive privilege against Congress. His approval reached 68 percent after September 11 and stood at 13 percent when he left. His own body was failing throughout: the first of five heart attacks came in 1978 at 37, after nearly 20 years at three packs a day, and by 2010 a centrifugal pump moved his blood and left him with no pulse for 15 months.

A donor heart replaced his in March 2012 and bought him 13 more years, in which he broke with his party. He called Donald Trump a coward and a threat to the republic in an ad for his daughter Liz's 2022 primary, which she lost by more than 30 points. In September 2024 he said he would vote for Kamala Harris. He died at home in McLean, Virginia, on November 3, 2025, at 84, of pneumonia and vascular disease. Trump issued no statement. The funeral at Washington National Cathedral drew Bush, Biden, four former vice presidents and the chief justice. Trump and JD Vance were not invited. Elsewhere, commentators called him a war criminal who was never tried.

Dick Cheney's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Operation Just Cause mission
  The invasion of Panama, run as secretary of defense 1989
• Operation Desert Storm mission
  The Gulf War, with Colin Powell as chairman of the Joint Chiefs 1991
• National Energy Policy Development Group other
  The energy task force whose membership he fought to keep sealed 2001
• In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir book
  Written with his daughter Liz 2011
• Heart: An American Medical Odyssey book
  Written with his cardiologist Jonathan Reiner 2013
• Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America book
  His late argument against the foreign policy that followed his own 2015

• November 1962 aged 21 Convicted of driving while intoxicated at 21 He was arrested again for it in 1963, and later said the arrests changed his direction.
• 1964 aged ~23 Marries Lynne Vincent, his high-school girlfriend
• 1968 aged ~27 Wins a congressional fellowship and moves to Washington He never finished the Wisconsin doctorate he left behind.
• November 1975 aged 34 Becomes White House chief of staff at 34, succeeding Rumsfeld
• March 21, 1989 aged 48 Sworn in as secretary of defense under George H. W. Bush
• July 25, 2000 aged 59 Leaves Halliburton the day Bush names him to the ticket He had been running the search committee. The retirement package was reported at about 20 million dollars.
• February 11, 2006 aged 65 Shoots the lawyer Harry Whittington on a Texas quail hunt His approval rating fell five points to 18 percent within a fortnight.
• March 24, 2012 aged 71 Receives a donor heart after 20 months on the list He had lived 15 months without a pulse on a centrifugal pump.
• November 3, 2025 aged 84 Dies at home in McLean, Virginia, at 84

• Donald Rumsfeld 1932–2021
  Twice Secretary of Defense who directed the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and pushed military restructuring. patron and predecessor
• Gerald Ford 1913–2006
  38th president who restored basic governmental stability after Watergate and controversially pardoned Richard Nixon. served as his chief of staff
• George H. W. Bush 1924–2018
  41st president who managed the end of the Cold War and assembled the coalition for the Persian Gulf War. served as his secretary of defense
• Colin Powell 1937–2021
  General, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and secretary of state who shaped post-Cold War military and diplomatic policy. his chairman of the Joint Chiefs
• Donald Trump b. 1946
  Businessman, media personality, and 45th and 47th president whose populist movement transformed American politics. called him a threat to the republic
• Kamala Harris b. 1964
  First woman, first Black American, and first Asian American to serve as vice president. voted for her in 2024