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The former Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and Representative for the state of Wyoming, Richard B. "Dick" Cheney (1941 - 2025) was laid to rest today and I have thoughts.
On one hand I have a lot of genuine respect for the man. He had principles and he stuck to them. He didn't try to hedge, or weasel out, he bit the bullet. I don't think that anyone can reasonably claim that they never new where they stood with Dick Cheney. As Ed Morrissey says "RIP to an American Original". On the other hand his legacy is complicated.
For those too young to remember the 2000 election, Cheney was viewed one of the elder statesmen of the Republican party and what we might call today an "enlightened centrist". He and George Bush Jr. (son of Former president George HW Bush) were presented as a return to the norms of civility and collegiality after the chaos, acrimony, and culture-warring that had defined much the Clinton administration. The idea was that by embracing "Compassionate Conservativism" the conflict between traditional conservatives and what we would recognize today as the proto-woke could be resolved. It was a nice idea that did not survive first contact with the enemy. The 2000 election was decided by the supreme court which put both sides on edge, and then 8 months later everything would go up in smoke with the two towers.
This brings us Cheney's legacy. Cheney sought to change the world through democratic reforms imposed by American arms. He was the chief Architect of global war on terror and an ardent supporter of the wider trend of "globalization", give the Communists or the Jihadis a taste of McDonalds and they'll come around to our way of thinking. Again, It was a nice idea that did not survive first contact with the enemy. And because Cheney had been all in, because he hadn't tried to hedge, or weasel out, because the establishment/centrist wings of both parties had adopted his model and backed his every play, there was nowhere to deflect to when everything went to shit both at home and abroad.
He could not claim that "Real Neoliberalism/Compassionate Conservativism has never been tried" or that he only got to implement half of his intended foreign policy because the "enlightened centrists" had been given everything they wanted. The plan was tried, and it failed. Not only did it fail, it failed so spectacularly that many prior supporters including myself turned away in revulsion asking ourselves "what have we done?". Cheney's Legacy is ultimately one of failure. One that would set the conditions for the rise of both the Tea Party and Trump as well as the accelerationist woke at the expense of the of the sort of norms-based centrism espoused by publications like The Bulwark and The Atlantic and Cheney himself.
At the same time, I can not help but see his passing as the passing of an era, and I am not going to wish ill upon the dead.
Much hay is currently being made in certain circles about whether Trump and Vance were snubbing him by not attending the funeral or if they were specifically not invited, but I feel like it's a bullshit distraction, I don't think anyone can reasonably claim that they never knew where they stood with Dick Cheney
Rest In Peace Dick.
I'm not an American and was 16 when the 2000 US election happened, but wasn't "compassionate conservatism" more an attempt to differentiate the Bush campaign from the economic views of the Gingrich era than anything to do with "proto-woke" and culture warring? Like, the Bush admin certainly didn't seem like it was shying from 00s culture war when it put John Ashcroft in as the Attorney General, but also seemed like it was attempting to offer conservative-ish, Christianity-tinged solutions to traditional lib welfare state issues like education or Social Security.
As @Rov_Scam states, the term had been knocking around for a while but Bush and Cheney were the first to adopt it as their own. Policy-wise it was it was supposed to be the sort of respectability-based centrism espoused by commentators like Bill Kristol and David French and publications like the Atlantic and the Bulwark. Essentially liberal, but with some lip-service paid to Christian social norms. This was presented to the public as break from the aggressive culture warring that had defined Clinton's first term, and as an opportunity for both sides to deescalate.
But as I said, that plan would go up in smoke with the two towers.
Eh, it wasn't liberal in the slightest, it just seems like it in retrospect considering the rhetoric conservatives espouse these days. They were still pushing for tax cuts and cuts to social programs, they just talked about how well-off Americans have an individual responsibility to the poor that they can achieve through donating to the church food pantry. And then there was the whole faith-based initiatives thing that was criticized for being a cover to take money from comprehensive social programs and funnel it into churches. I knew a lot of religious Bush supporters at the time, though, and I can't recall any of them having political views that were at odds with anything the Republican Party had been preaching since the Regan Administration, and I don't remember anyone taking it seriously other than Bush.
You are wrong. He supported abortion, he supported gay marriage, he supported allowing biological males to compete in women's sports, he not only supported the Clinton's foreign and domestic policy but greatly expanded it's scope. Cheney's influence is a large part of why the establishment wing of the Republican party came to be seen as little more than an outgrowth of the Democrats. "Republicans in Name Only"
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