The Curse of Dick Cheney, page 1

Well hopefully this Curse of Tricky Dickey continues, and takes little Lord Fontaroy (GWB) with him.

Out of context

The Curse of Dick Cheney

The veep's career has been marred by one disaster after another
By T.D. ALLMAN

Should George W. Bush win this election, it will give him the distinction of being the first occupant of the White House to have survived naming Dick Cheney to a post in his administration.

The Cheney jinx first manifested itself at the presidential level back in 1969, when Richard Nixon appointed him to his first job in the executive branch.
It surfaced again in 1975, when Gerald Ford made Cheney his chief of staff and then -- with Cheney's help -- lost the 1976 election. George H.W. Bush, having named Cheney secretary of defense, was defeated for re-election in 1992.

The ever-canny Ronald Reagan was the only Republican president since Eisenhower who managed to serve two full terms. He is also the only one not to have appointed Dick Cheney to office.

Back in Wyoming, Cheney used his connections to skim along to yet another success. "Some fellows from Casper called me," recalls former Sen. Alan Simpson, "told me they had found this amazing young man and were going to promote him for Con-gress. They gave a big to-do for him. I went to take a look. It was the first time I set eyes on Dick Cheney. You could tell right away he was a smart cookie." In the 1978 election, Cheney became Wyoming's sole member of the House.

"The top people had decided it would be Dick, so that basically settled it," recalls John Perry Barlow, a fourth-generation Wyomingite who campaigned for Cheney. "Dick had been chief of staff to a president. That made everyone assume he knew what he was doing."

In an overwhelmingly Republican state, Cheney now had a safe seat in Congress for as long as he wanted. On Capitol Hill, he combined a moderate demeanor with a radical agenda.

People who find Cheney's extremism as vice president surprising have not looked at his congressional voting record.

In 1986, he was one of only twenty-one members of the House to oppose the Safe Drinking Water Act. He fought efforts to clean up hazardous waste and backed tax breaks for energy corporations. He repeatedly voted against funding for the Veterans Administration.

He opposed extending the Civil Rights Act. He opposed the release of Nelson Mandela from jail in South Africa. He even voted for cop-killer bullets.
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[edit on 10-9-2004 by Sauron]