Soft-spoken and supremely confident in his own judgment, Cheney’s career epitomized the transformational possibilities—and crippling anxieties—of his country’s ever-evolving role in the world. He balked at the post-Vietnam restraints placed on the deployment of U.S. forces overseas, initially questioned and then shared the triumphalism of the United States’ Cold War and Gulf War victories at the outset of the 1990s, embodied Washington’s fearful and aggressive reaction to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and ultimately, in pursuit of perfect security in a chaotic world, helped orchestrate the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq that surely ranks among the worst strategic decisions in U.S. history.

Born in 1941, the year the United States entered World War II and fundamentally transformed its relationship with the wider world, Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney parlayed connections and conviction into a meteoric rise to the epicenter of U.S. political life by the time he reached his mid-30s. He remained there for nearly four decades. Cheney died from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease on Nov. 3, at age 84.

Born in 1941, the year the United States entered World War II and fundamentally transformed its relationship with the wider world, Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney parlayed connections and conviction into a meteoric rise to the epicenter of U.S. political life by the time he reached his mid-30s. He remained there for nearly four decades. Cheney died from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease on Nov. 3, at age 84. Soft-spoken and supremely confident in his own judgment, Cheney’s career epitomized the transformational possibilities—and crippling anxieties—of his country’s ever-evolving role in the world. He balked at the post-Vietnam restraints placed on the deployment of U.S. forces overseas, initially questioned and then shared the triumphalism of the United States’ Cold War and Gulf War victories at the outset of the 1990s, embodied Washington’s fearful and aggressive reaction to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and ultimately, in pursuit of perfect security in a chaotic world, helped orchestrate the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq that surely ranks among the worst strategic decisions in U.S. history.

By the time he formally left public office in 2009, his counsel was largely ignored, and his country was poorer, weaker, more divided, and less globally popular than when he had begun. It also had not suffered another 9/11-like attack on the U.S. homeland.

Dick Cheney listens to others speak

Reared in Nebraska and Wyoming, Cheney’s youth revealed the intelligence required to succeed in public life but not the discipline. Twice dismissed from Yale University after spending too much time with classmates who “shared my belief that beer was one of the essentials of life,” he returned home to a construction job and an uncertain future. “I was headed down a bad road after I had been kicked out of Yale. I was arrested twice for DUI when I was 22 years old,” Cheney recalled in 2015, using the acronym for driving under the influence. “I was in jail … and that was a wake-up call.” Equally motivating was an ultimatum from his high school sweetheart, Lynn Vincent, whom he later explained “made it clear eventually that she had no interest in marrying a lineman for the county.”

At the same time, Cheney had no interest in involving himself in the U.S. military’s quagmire in Vietnam. He received five family and academic draft deferments. “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service,” he said decades later, including graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, where Lynn studied literature and he pursued a doctorate in political science that he never finished. Once he had aged out of eligibility for military conscription, Cheney eagerly accepted a congressional fellowship that offered him a chance to engage in politics, not merely study it.

“I flunked the interview,” he explained of his first meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, then a young Illinois representative. Fellows had to find congressional sponsors, and, having failed to impress Rumsfeld enough to gain a place on his staff, Cheney initially settled into the office of U.S. Rep. William Steiger of Wisconsin. Rumsfeld nonetheless hired Cheney later to work for him at President Richard Nixon’s Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). Rumsfeld and Cheney remained politically and personally entwined for decades. When President Gerald Ford asked Rumsfeld to lead his White House staff in 1974, Cheney became his principal assistant at the age of 33.

Dick Cheney talks with Donald Rumsfeld and Betty Ford.

Cheney’s astounding ascent from congressional fellow to presidential adviser in a mere five years proved the power of proximity and personal connections but also of perseverance. He overcame his initial poor impression on Rumsfeld by volunteering an unsolicited reorganization plan for the OEO, and he proved himself loyal, reliable, and available as Rumsfeld rose to national prominence. “When you gave something to Dick,” another OEO staffer explained, “it happened. It got done.”

Ford took notice. When a broad reorganization took Rumsfeld to the top spot at the Department of Defense in 1975, the president elevated Cheney to chief of staff. At age 34, he was the youngest White House chief of staff in history and became the no-nonsense functionary that Ford’s troubled administration required.