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Jewish World Review Dec. 12, 2001 / 27 Kislev, 5762
Jules Witcover
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com -- LAST Sunday, when Vice President Dick Cheney surfaced from his "undisclosed location" to be the featured guest on NBC's "Meet the Press," it was considered in television land to be an impressive "get," as bookers call bagging a prime guest for an interview show. They have been rumored to offer their first-born for such catches. But, even if Cheney were not under presidential orders to make himself scarce most of the time for security reasons, he is on television's most-wanted list because he has come to be seen as the man closest to President Bush in decision-making and in implementation. This was the case well before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 dictated his confinement in what Cheney calls, in his well-known penchant for hilarious comments, his "cave." Beyond that, the vice president's stature represents a remarkable development in the history of the office he occupies. It wasn't long ago when the vice presidency was the subject of endless derision and a job any political figure with a future avoided like a bad case of measles. The first vice president, John Adams, recently resurrected in the best-selling biography by David McCullough, thought so little of the job that he wrote to his wife, Abigail, that "my country in its wisdom has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." At the same time, however, Adams understood that under the presidential succession established by the Constitution, it was like buying a lottery ticket. "In this I am nothing," he observed, "but I may be everything." He did become president, but in his own right, only after George Washington made it through two terms. Others, over succeeding years, have joked about the task of awaiting the fate of the president. Thomas Marshall, Woodrow Wilson's veep, said his job was "to ring the White House bell every morning and ask, 'What is the state of the health of the president?'" And when Wilson did indeed suffer a severe stroke, his wife would not even tell Marshall of its severity or permit him to see the president. Wilson himself once said of the vice presidency that "the chief embarrassment in discussing this office is, that in explaining how little there is to be said about it, one has evidently said all there is to say." And FDR's first No. 2, John Nance Garner, dismissed it, in the sanitized version, as "a bucket of warm spit." So how is it that Dick Cheney has now risen to such eminence? The man who picked him - after having asked Cheney to recommend the best choice - deserves much of the credit for selecting a vice president of broad government experience and a confidence-building demeanor. Bush also can take a bow for giving Cheney major responsibilities and letting the world know about it. In addition, Cheney's own low-key style combined with decisiveness have made him seem more his own man than most earlier vice presidents, even as he has managed to convey a deferential manner toward the president under whom he serves. But it took some cosmic events before the vice presidency itself was elevated to its present esteem. The knowledge that Harry Truman succeeded FDR without knowing that the atomic bomb was in development didn't immediately guarantee the choice of quality people in the second spot. Choices continued to be made to strengthen the ticket geographically or philosophically, itself a dubious notion. Even capable vice presidents like Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and Nelson Rockefeller were either ignored or treated like doormats in the job until Jimmy Carter brought Walter Mondale into the White House as a near-partner. It was a practice continued by Bill Clinton with Al Gore and one that the junior Bush also is now following.
The current President Bush may also have learned from his father's unhappy experience with his selection of the much-maligned Dan Quayle as his vice president. In any event, there is no question today that the vice presidency has come a long way since the days of John Adams, as seen in the almost exalted position in which the once-dismal office is now occupied by the elusive Dick
12/07/01: September 11th and December 7th
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