“Dick Cheney played a paramount role in decisions that ranged from war and peace to the economy, the environment, and the meaning of the law,” wrote Barton Gellman, author of “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency.” “His hand was often unseen even by colleagues.”

The implacable Cheney also brought to the White House a deeply held belief that presidential power needed to be restored after being restricted too much by Congress.

“The brain trust of President George W. Bush — particularly Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld,” wrote Garry Wills in “Bomb Power,” “took office with him in 2001 to lead what they considered a counter-revolution. They denounced a congressional ‘coup’ that had hampered executive power in the 1970s.”

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Cheney promulgated the “One Percent Doctrine,” also known as the “Cheney Doctrine,” which stated that the United States needed to attack anyone who could conceivably pose a threat to it — preemptively. That doctrine played a huge role in the Bush administration’s foreign policy, particularly the invasion of Iraq, and helped place the nation on war footing indefinitely.

“We realize that wars are never won on the defensive,” Cheney said in August 2002. “We must take the battle to the enemy.”

A lightning rod for those on the left, the assertive Cheney would sometimes be likened to “Star Wars” villain Darth Vader. Years later, former President George H.W. Bush would call him “Old Iron Ass” and say Cheney amassed too much power during his son’s presidency.

“He had his own empire there and marched to his own drummer,” the elder Bush told author Jon Meacham of Cheney’s vice presidency.

As the years went on, Cheney would be treated both as a nefarious abuser of American power — “Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney,” said Edward Snowden, exiled leaker of secret documents, “is the highest honor you can give to an American” — and a virile symbol of it: “Darkness is good,” Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon said in November 2016. “Dick Cheney, Darth Vader, Satan. That’s power.”

But Cheney would also side with his daughter, then-Rep. Liz Cheney, in opposing Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and calling him out for his conduct on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I watched my dad serve in the highest offices in our country for nearly 50 years,” she wrote of him in “Oath and Honor.” “From him, I learned what it means to have the courage of your convictions.”

Cheney, left, and President George W. Bush attend a White House meeting on Jan. 4, 2008. | Lawrence Jackson/AP

Richard Bruce Cheney was born Jan. 30, 1941, in Lincoln, Nebraska.

His father, Richard Herbert Cheney, was a soil-conservation agent for the government who was evidently pleased