20 years after he helped outline America’s post-9/11 international coverage, former Vice President Dick Cheney has turned his fireplace inward — towards the political motion that many argue grew from the seeds he as soon as planted. By backing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2024, Dick Cheney wasn’t simply rejecting Donald Trump; he was, in a way, repudiating the very pressure of fear-driven nationalism that his personal presidency helped legitimise.
When historical past closes its ebook on Dick Cheney, the legacy it leaves will likely be one in every of paradoxes. The previous US vice chairman — who died in the present day at 84 — helped outline America’s post-9/11 order, a world formed by concern, pressure, and the regular enlargement of presidential energy.
But in his remaining years, Dick Cheney grew to become one of many fiercest critics of Donald Trump and the populist motion that now dominates the Republican Get together he as soon as helped command.
That contradiction isn’t unintended; it’s the essence of Cheney’s story. The person who spent many years fortifying the American presidency finally lived lengthy sufficient to observe his personal occasion wield that energy in methods he might now not defend. The person who preached unyielding nationalism overseas discovered himself denouncing it at house.
The architect of a brand new American order
Within the wake of the September 11 assaults, Cheney emerged as probably the most influential vice chairman in fashionable historical past — the shadow government who formed America’s “conflict on terror.” His worldview was easy and absolute: america should strike earlier than it’s struck. It was Cheney who championed the invasion of Iraq, approved expanded surveillance powers, and defended using “enhanced interrogation methods” that the remainder of the world known as torture.
His insurance policies reshaped not solely US international coverage however its political DNA. The Cheney doctrine of pre-emptive energy and ethical certainty normalized a brand new form of politics — one outlined by suspicion of dissent, government secrecy, and the primacy of “us versus them.” On this new world, power was measured not by restraint however by dominance.
That environment of everlasting emergency — cultivated within the identify of safety — grew to become fertile floor for one thing darker. The populist authoritarianism that Cheney would later decry was, in some ways, the logical finish level of his personal political mission.
The delivery of Trumpism from the ashes of the conflict on terror
Dick Cheney’s “unitary government” philosophy gave presidents extraordinary energy to behave unilaterally, typically bypassing Congress and the courts. 20 years later, Donald Trump would inherit that equipment — utilizing it not for nationwide safety however for private grievance and political theater.
The politics of concern that Cheney deployed towards international enemies grew to become Trump’s device towards home ones: immigrants, journalists, political opponents. The identical anti-institutional anger that had fueled help for the Iraq Battle’s architects now turned on Washington itself.
In making an attempt to safeguard the American state, Cheney had constructed the framework for its inner siege.
The break from his personal creation
And but, to his credit score, Cheney acknowledged that hazard. When a lot of the Republican institution fell in line behind Trump’s strongman politics, Cheney — as soon as the occasion’s enforcer — refused. His daughter, former congresswoman Liz Cheney, grew to become one of many few Republicans prepared to confront Trump straight, and her father stood squarely beside her.
In one in every of his remaining public statements, Cheney known as Trump “a coward” and “the best menace to our republic” within the nation’s historical past. Coming from the person who as soon as embodied the American proper’s hardest edge, the phrases carried ethical weight — and no small irony.
Dick Cheney’s late-life break with Donald Trump was not a political rebranding; it was a reckoning. He had helped construct a system that rewarded absolutism, demanded loyalty, and punished nuance. Trump merely changed the language of nationwide safety with the language of vengeance.
The paradox of the patriot
For all his ruthlessness, Cheney was by no means a demagogue. He believed in hierarchy, secrecy, and management — not chaos. He noticed the world as a harmful place requiring sturdy males to make unimaginable decisions. However he additionally believed within the endurance of American establishments. That, maybe, is the place Trump’s motion broke from him fully.
In loss of life, Cheney’s legacy forces a deeper query: how a lot of the current disaster in American democracy was inevitable as soon as concern grew to become the organizing precept of its politics? Was Trumpism a betrayal of Cheneyism — or its fruits?
Historical past could conclude that Cheney, in making an attempt to save lots of America from its enemies, inadvertently taught it to concern itself.
A legacy of contradictions
It’s tempting to see Dick Cheney’s remaining years — his endorsement of Joe Biden in 2024, his open criticism of Trump, his unwavering protection of constitutional norms — as an ethical redemption arc. However maybe it’s extra trustworthy to view it as a late recognition of trigger and impact.
The empire he helped assemble — the surveillance state, the imperial presidency, the zero-sum politics — grew to become the muse for a brand new period of home strongmen. Cheney spent his remaining years making an attempt to place the genie again within the bottle.
There was, finally, one thing tragic about him: a person of immense conviction who lived lengthy sufficient to confront the unintended penalties of his personal energy.
The ultimate irony
In life, Dick Cheney embodied the American century — its navy would possibly, its ethical contradictions, its boundless religion within the energy of command. In loss of life, he stands as a warning of what occurs when the instruments constructed to defend democracy are turned towards it.
For a person who as soon as believed that power alone might protect the republic, his remaining years proved a quieter reality: that unchecked power can simply as simply destroy it.
