Dick Cheney with Nicole Hemmer

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary: This Guy Sucked

Episode: Dick Cheney with Nicole Hemmer
Host: Dr. Claire Aubin
Guest: Dr. Nicole Hemmer (Vanderbilt University, Director of Rogers Center for the American Presidency)
Date: March 5, 2026

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Overview

This episode tackles the controversial legacy of Dick Cheney—arguably one of the most powerful and consequential Vice Presidents in U.S. history. Host Dr. Claire Aubin and historian Dr. Nicole Hemmer chart Cheney’s meteoric rise from small-town Wyoming to the height of political power, dissecting his hawkish policies, relentless expansion of executive authority, and his pivotal roles in some of the darkest chapters of recent American history. Together, they expose how Cheney’s choices and ideology continue to shape politics—often for the worse.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dick Cheney: The Shadow President

• Cheney’s Reputation: Known as the “secret president” during George W. Bush’s administration, Cheney wielded unprecedented influence as Vice President, driving national security strategy, surveillance, the Iraq War, and more.
  • “During the years that he was vice president, he was often talked about in the press as the secret president, like the guy pulling the strings behind the Bush administration.” — Nicole Hemmer [05:09]
• Cheney’s approach was “unapologetically pro-executive power, pro-secrecy, anti-accountability, and anti-democratic at core.”

2. Origins: From Wyoming to Washington

• Cheney’s early life: Born in 1941 in Lincoln, Nebraska, raised in Wyoming—an unusual political origin point.
• Won entry to Yale through the favor of a rich oilman, then drank and flunked out.
  • “There was nothing academically distinguished about Dick Cheney, but somebody who had a lot of money, opened a door, got him into Yale. And what does Dick Cheney do with that…? He drinks a lot of alcohol and flunks out.” — Hemmer [09:21]
• Avoided Vietnam draft via five deferments (marriage, children, grad school).
• Entered DC politics in the late 1960s, quickly attached himself to figures like Donald Rumsfeld—initiating a career-long pattern of proximity to power.

3. Forrest Gump of the Right: Meteoric Political Rise

• Dubbed “the Forrest Gump of American right-wing politics,” Cheney is present at every major conservative inflection point from late 1960s onward.
• Became White House Chief of Staff at 34, due to post-Watergate vacuum and patronage from Rumsfeld.

4. Defining Cheney’s Brand of Conservatism (Congress, 1979–89)

• Committees: Key player on Intelligence, Armed Services. Rose rapidly to House leadership.
• Iran-Contra: Authored the minority report defending the Reagan administration, arguing that laws limiting the executive on foreign policy were unconstitutional:
  • “He writes a BuzzFeed explainer that's like, ‘Yes, there is a lawless secret government. And here's why that's good for you.’” — Aubin [27:01]
  • “It's wild because what it is is it is a statement of unitary executive theory.” — Hemmer [27:14]
• Opposed sanctions on apartheid South Africa; consistently voted against domestic social programs; backed aggressive defense spending yet advocated for military downsizing post-Cold War.

5. The Unitary Executive Project

• Cheney as architect and advocate:
  • Sought to create nearly unchecked executive power, especially in foreign policy and national security.
  • Saw post-Watergate restrictions on the presidency as obstacles to be undone.
  • “He makes it his life project to ensure that Republican presidents have unrestrained power.” — Hemmer [18:10]
• The shift toward imperial presidency accelerated under Cheney’s influence—what was once radical became mainstream.

6. Secretary of Defense (1989–93): Warmongering & Imperialism

• Oversaw invasions/operations: Panama (Operation Just Cause, 1989) and the Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm, 1991).
• Downplayed civilian casualties, justified US disregard for international law.
  • “He is there for every important thing that has happened in American politics at the end of the 20th century… and he hasn’t even gotten to a bunch of the other stuff he does while he’s there.” — Aubin [35:47]
• Set the stage for future action in Iraq by leaving Saddam Hussein in power—framing future regime change as unfinished business.

7. The Halliburton Interlude

• Left government to become CEO of Halliburton: expanded overseas operations, built deep ties with oil interests.
• Later capitalized directly (and indirectly) from the Iraq War via lucrative no-bid contracts for Halliburton subsidiaries.

8. Vice Presidency (2001–09): Cheney Unchained

• Led Bush’s VP selection committee—then essentially picked himself [46:03].
• Secured an unusually powerful VP portfolio: defense, intelligence, energy policy.
• Pushed radical executive secrecy, claim to be outside normal government transparency rules.
  • “Addington comes up with this idea that, well, technically the vice presidency is the fourth branch… and therefore is not covered by transparency and ethics laws…” — Hemmer [62:31]
• Orchestrated and legitimized extraordinary rendition, warrantless surveillance, torture, Guantanamo Bay, and other post-9/11 human rights violations.

9. 911: The State of Exception Realized

• Cheney’s conduct during 9/11: Seized command while Bush was airborne; unilaterally ordered potential shootdown of civilian planes—a presidential power he did not legally possess.
  • “He sort of claims presidential authority in that moment... who gets to give us orders?... He seizes that authority.” — Hemmer [54:25]
• Demonstrated the “state of exception” theorized by Carl Schmitt—constitutional norms vanish in crisis, leaving unchecked executive power.

10. War on Terror: A Legacy of Secrecy and Violence

• Immediate pivot post-9/11 to expand war aims beyond Afghanistan: laying the groundwork to invade Iraq practically on the day of the attacks.
• Manipulated intelligence and bullied State Dept. officials (notably Colin Powell) to make fabricated WMD case at the UN.
  • “Because Powell was the only one with credibility... but it was Cheney who was gathering the evidence, manipulating the evidence, manufacturing the evidence for Iraq.” — Hemmer [60:38]
• Oversaw secret energy task forces; built barriers to transparency; fostered surveillance overreach and information asymmetry.

11. Torture, Black Sites, and the Expansion of Impunity

• Led the legal and policy push for torture and indefinite detention, creating legalistic justifications for extraordinary measures:
  • “He is in fact one of the engines of these legal theories around both secrecy, but also again around torture, around Guantanamo Bay, around CIA black sites…” [62:31]
• Used legal contortions to create a “zone of impunity” for powerful actors—presidents, military, ICE—outside traditional accountability.
  • "We've created the Zone of Impunity for very powerful people to act... that’s why you have ICE killing people in the streets.” — Hemmer [66:48]
• Implementation of Kafkaesque rules at Guantanamo (“the contents of detainees’ brains are classified”).

12. Endgame: No Redemption

• In his final years, Cheney offered limited opposition to Trump in 2024, prompting media suggestions of “redemption”—but both hosts forcefully reject the notion that he was ever truly pro-democracy.
  • “That is his legacy, at the end of the day, is the lives that he destroyed because he didn’t think those lives were worth very much.” — Hemmer [72:27]
  • “No point at which you’re like, ‘Ah, and then he acted in the best interest of the world.’” — Aubin [76:07]
• Despite his opposition to Trump in 2024, Cheney had endorsed Trump in 2016 and 2020: “This is not a redemption arc. Like, it's just, it's very bad all the way up to pretty close to the end.” — Hemmer [76:35]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Cheney-Themed Banter & Dark Humor

• “Imagine having Bruce as your middle name and going by Dick instead.” — Aubin [03:59]
• “He is the Forrest Gump of American late 20th century right wing.” — Aubin [11:38]
• “It’s like a parade of horribles, and Dick Cheney is just the guy marching through.” — Hemmer [13:43]
• “He saw certain people as people and certain people as not people… those people could be tortured, could be imprisoned, could be killed...” — Hemmer [72:27]
• “I want to keep the foot on his neck… I want to remind people…don’t forget, still sucks.” — Aubin [77:39]

State Power, Accountability, and the Unitary Executive

• “He makes it kind of his life project to ensure that Republican presidents have unrestrained power.” — Hemmer [18:10]
• “Cheney is shaping the options; Bush is making the decisions.” — Aubin & Hemmer summary [51:36]
• “Your information belongs to me and my information belongs to me.” — Hemmer [75:21]

The Legal Gymnastics of Impunity

• “Addington comes up with this idea…the vice presidency…is in both branches—and therefore is not covered by transparency and ethics laws… and can’t be FOIAed.” — Hemmer [62:31]
• On classified prisoners’ brains: “The detainees did not know what information they held that was classified. Therefore, could never be released.” — Aubin [70:55]
• “The state is claiming that it has, in effect, ownership of your brain.” — Hemmer [70:55]

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Important Timestamps

• 03:44 — Subject reveal: “Today we are talking about Vice President Richard B. Cheney. Dick Cheney.”
• 05:09 — Cheney’s reputation as the “secret president”; overview of abuses.
• 14:43 — At 34, Cheney made White House Chief of Staff—meteoric rise.
• 27:09 — Iran-Contra: Cheney defends lawless secret government.
• 35:08 — Appointed Secretary of Defense; Panama, Gulf War.
• 43:27 — Leaves for Halliburton CEO; crucial energy/policy ties.
• 46:03 — Returns to politics, becomes his own choice for VP.
• 53:32 — 9/11: Cheney seizes power, issues illegal shoot-down order.
• 58:28 — Post-9/11: immediate push to invade Iraq; manipulation.
• 62:31 — Architecting executive branch impunity, surveillance, secrecy.
• 70:55 — The case of “classified brains” at Guantanamo.
• 76:35 — No redemption: Cheney’s post-VP record and lasting harm.

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Final Assessment

Dr. Aubin and Dr. Hemmer leave no ambiguity: Dick Cheney’s legacy is not mixed, but disastrous—criminal, anti-democratic, and catastrophic in human cost. His drive for secrecy, expansion of executive impunity, and use of power-for-power’s-sake echo through to today’s crises, from persistent war to domestic abuses of authority.
Whether or not the wider public eventually forgets the full extent of his misdeeds, This Guy Sucked will continue to remind us: Dick Cheney truly sucked.

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For more incisive, irreverent historical hatery, subscribe to This Guy Sucked and check out Dr. Hemmer’s podcast, "This Day."

Transcript

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

A list of sensitive themes and topics included in this episode can be found in the episode description. Welcome to this Guy Sucked, the show where we prove that it's never too late to have haters and you can't libel the dead. I'm your host, Dr. Claire Aubin, and I'm a historian, writer, and most importantly, as you all know, certified hater. On this show, we talk about people from throughout history with legacies that need a little updating. Whether it's because of their politics, their behavior, or their impact on society and culture, these guys actually kind of sucked. And we bring in a new scholar every week to tell us why. With me today is Nicole Hemmer, who is a professor of history at Vanderbilt University, as well as the director of the Carolyn T. And Robert M. Rogers center for the American Presidency. She also has an absolutely delightful history podcast called this Day. You should go listen to it. And you may also know her as Nixon's biggest opp on our Worst Wing episode. Welcome to the show.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

So I like to start with a little question, and for some reason today my mind was blanking on questions. But I was just wondering how your life has changed. I'm sure dramatically since winning the first ever TG presidential game show.

[Nicole Hemmer]

I mean, it's been actually really remarkable. I came back from a trip and it was here waiting for me. And what was most amazing about it was, you know, here in Nashville at the time of this taping, we've just been through a horrendous winter storm. Half of the people in Nashville lost power in like single digit weather. So that meant that they also lost heat. Water pipes were freezing and bursting all over town and I sailed through with nary a problem. And Claire, I gotta say it, I think it's the mug.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

I think you're so right.

[Nicole Hemmer]

I think it's all that good luck.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

We also so for our listeners, if you aren't aware, I made mugs as the reward, go listen to that episode because it is crazy. I was in a fugue state for an hour and then all of a sudden there was a game show episode. I made mugs for Nikki and Kevin Schultz, who is the other professor who was on the show. And one of them says world's greatest President Knower, I think, and that's yours. And the other one says world's second greatest President Knower. And I made two of each. Gave away one of the world's greatest. But I also have world's second greatest. And that might be the reason that my Life is going well right now too, I think.

[Nicole Hemmer]

So. I was talking with Kevin about this the other day and you know, world's second greatest President Knower is also the world's vice President Knower.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

You're so right. Oh, my God, I missed a trick on that one. I need to make another one.

[Nicole Hemmer]

I am all for making as many mugs as possible.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

I always say, oh, this is the only game show episode we'll ever do. But I feel like that's wrong because I think we should do wrong. I think we should do another one. We've done a president one. We should do like a British monarchs one. We should do like a different format. So if anyone wants to come on a game show for another live show. That being said, we do have another live show coming up soonish. I can't fully, fully announce it yet, but it's going to be very exciting and it's going to be with another podcast and it's going to be three historians. So everyone stay tuned for when we have a new live show announcement available for you. We should probably get into the actual topic of the show. Who are we talking about today?

[Nicole Hemmer]

Today we are talking about Vice President Richard B. Cheney. Dick Cheney.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Bruce. Richard. Bruce.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Bruce. Heck of a middle name.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

It really is.

[Nicole Hemmer]

You don't meet many Bruce as a middle name. People in the world might be a

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

reason, also crazy to have that as an option and go by Dick instead.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Can I just say Bruce Cheney?

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

You know what?

[Nicole Hemmer]

Not bad.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

It sounds. I don't know, Dick Cheney sounds to me slightly less evil. Bruce Cheney sounds like an evil person.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Interesting.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Like on the face of it, but maybe.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Can I throw you a curveball?

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Please.

[Nicole Hemmer]

His name growing up was pronounced Cheney

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

and he changed it.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Or we just all changed it. Well, we just all changed it and he went along with it.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Huh.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Interesting.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

I don't like that, though. I feel like you should be like, that's not my name.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Especially given his reputation. You would imagine at some point he would be like, hey, asshole.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

It's.

[Nicole Hemmer]

It's Cheney.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah, I would. That doesn't make me feel better or worse for him. But it's also. That's crazy. To be fair, every single president or presidentially related episode we have or like sort of executive wing episode we have, I learned something crazy. Like I didn't know about Bill Clinton's dad's bigamist marriage. What?

[Nicole Hemmer]

You know, sometimes one wife isn't enough.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah. So, I mean, I guess one name pronunciation isn't enough either.

[Nicole Hemmer]

That's right.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

What would you say Dick Cheney is most famous for, I would say the

[Nicole Hemmer]

headline on Dick Cheney is his vice presidency under George W. Bush. During the years that he was vice president, he was often talked about in the press as the secret president, like the guy pulling the strings behind the Bush administration. And in that context, known for ramping up the federal government for the war on terror, overseeing NSA collection of people's personal data here in the United States, and for illegally renditioning people in torture prisons across the world.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

So starting off strong in terms of what may be wrong,

[Nicole Hemmer]

a few breadcrumbs, sure.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

I also listeners can't see this obviously, but just so you know, Nikki was doing like a little finger tapping, string pulling through about all of this, which I think is right. Like in my head he's this like secretive, evil, shadowy figure. So I mean, I would say in terms of my knowledge of what he's famous for or how people popularly imagine or understand him, as it would be he's sort of one of the most powerful vice presidents in US History, both in terms of political power and the way that he leverages all of this immense power. Because the executive also gains a lot of extra power while he's in the vice presidency. He's a pretty central figure in like post 911 security policy, as you mentioned.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Gentle way of putting it.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah, I'm starting soft because I think this one is going to go off the rails very quickly. He's pretty influential. Again, soft word in like Iraq war decision making. His supporters love his strong national defense stuff. But you know, I had criticized for expanding executive power, supporting torture, advocating war based on faulty intelligence.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Oh, and shooting a man in the

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

face also, that one is high on the list of the things and making that man apologize to him afterwards, which

[Nicole Hemmer]

there's no power like the power of that man.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Wild, truly, truly wild. Maybe we'll start with some of his early career, early life stuff so that people understand how he get to this level of power. He's born in 1941 in Lincoln, Nebraska and he's raised in Casper, Wyoming. Caveat. I have been to Wyoming several times recently. My partner is from both Texas and Colorado and he's from the part of Colorado that's right below Wyoming. And I am for some reason a Wyoming. Stan, I love it. I think it's so great. Everyone around me when we go to visit Colorado is like, what's wrong with you? That being said, you, Dick Cheney being from Wyoming is enough to put me off the stage.

[Nicole Hemmer]

I mean it's for many Wyomingans, you know, there are like 600,000 people who live in the state. So to have someone from the state rise to a position of power like Dick Cheney did is kind of remarkable. And I would also say unexpected. He's not like George W. Bush, who would be the president he served under. Right. George W. Bush was the son of a president, the grandson of a son Senator. Here was a man who was going to do something in politics. Yeah, they thought that Jeb would probably be the president, but he always had a leg up on this question of national power for Dick Cheney. I mean, he goes to school in Wyoming into high school. He's very popular athlete. He's dating a girl that he would go on to marry who was a baton twirler. They were, I think they were prom king and queen. Like he was popular in that small town guy kind of way. And then something happens. He meets this man who's an oil man, and the guy likes Dick Cheney so much that he gets him into Yale. Okay. This is like the 1950s where this happens, where like a guy who graduated from Yale and then made a bunch of money can pick up the phone and get this random high school student from Wyoming into Yale. There was nothing academically distinguished about Dick Cheney, but somebody who had a lot of money, opened a door, got him into Yale.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

And.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And what does Dick Cheney do with that unexpected windfall of an experience? He drinks a lot of alcohol and flunks out.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah. So he left without completing a degree, which I think is hilarious that you were handed this opportunity. And you know who else went to Yale?

[Nicole Hemmer]

George W. Bush, just a couple years later. Yeah.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

So you know that like ships in the night, they pass each other. And so he goes back to University of Wyoming.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Yeah, he goes back to Wyoming. He actually works as a lineman for a couple of years while. While his then wife is working to get her degree to become a schoolteacher. He's basically just living that post Yale life, living it up, racking up DUIs, working the line during the day. And after his second or third DUI, his wife is like, this is not the life I want. So get it together. And he kind of gets it together. He goes, as you mentioned, he goes to University of Wyoming, they're married, they start having kids. It's in the middle of the 1960s. And the fact that he is married for a while keeps him from being drafted, gets him a deferment. Then he has kids and that gets him a deferment. Then he enters graduate school and so he ages out of the draft system with five Deferments and never serving in Vietnam. Much like the person he would serve under.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Sure. George W. Bush. And much like other people, for example, who might become president later. Damn. Every single. I can't. Like, he looms in the background. Everything he does. A BA and an ma I think both are in political science. Right. Or at least the MA definitely is.

[Nicole Hemmer]

The MA is. And he was going for a PhD in political science, but he actually leaves to go work in D.C. so can

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

we start there with the rise to evil. Evil power. He starts off as a. Like his career as a congressional intern slash staffer, right?

[Nicole Hemmer]

Yeah, I mean, I have a pretty low level job. He gets an internship and. And they kind of get to like talk to a bunch of different members of Congress to see who they want to work with. And one of the first people he goes and approaches is a representative from Illinois named Donald Rumsfeld.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Mm. You know, I said this before we recorded. And I've called Walter Benjamin in an episode of Past Lives, the Forrest Gump of Nazi Germany and Weimar era Germany. Dick Cheney is the Forrest Gump of The American late 20th century right wing, where he is truly associated in every way with every evil person and horrible decision that is made beginning in the 1960s. The fact that his career starts with an association with Donald Rumsfeld is crazy.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And it runs through with. I mean, Donald Rumsfeld is like his Captain Dan or his Jenny. Right? Like he's. He's there for the entirety of the story, though, holding different positions throughout. He'll actually. So Donald Rumsfeld is working for. Hey, guess what? Another monster, Richard Nixon.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Sure. I'm telling you, it's all a path.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Right. Because Rumsfeld leaves Congress to go work for Nixon in the Office of Economic Opportunity. And I think he might hold a few other roles too. So Cheney goes and works for Rumsfeld, and then he works as a White House staff assistant all through the early 1970s until Nixon leaves office.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

He. What is his relationship to Nixon? Or it just so happens that he's serving in his administration.

[Nicole Hemmer]

He has no real relationship with Nixon at this point. Like, it's really Rumsfeld who he's working with. And there's no reason that Nixon would have a close relationship with a White House staffer. And in fact, the fact that he wasn't that close to Nixon is kind of important because the people who are close to Nixon all went to prison.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

They sure did. And you know what's funny about this episode in particular is that there are so many guys that are Just going to be mentioned in conjunction with Dick Cheney. Slash. Cheney, who could also have their own episode. Like Rumsfeld could have an episode easily. Both of the Bushes Easy could have an episode we're going to talk about. Imagine every person that we talk about having their own episode.

[Nicole Hemmer]

That really is what this is. It's like a parade of horribles. And Dick Cheney is just the guy marching through.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Rumsfeld actually kind of lucks out because he gets sent to Brussels in 73. And so that means that Cheney is no longer like in a position of any sort of influence or power. So they're kind of out of the scene when like the shit hits the fan for Watergate. But then Nixon leaves. Gerald Ford, who was the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, became vice president when Spiro Agnew, another guy, we

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

do have an episode on him once

[Nicole Hemmer]

he had to resign from office. Then Ford becomes vice president, and Ford actually calls up Rumsfeld in Brussels and says, I'm about to become president, Come back and help me. And Rumsfeld serves briefly as his chief of staff. He brings along Chaney as his deputy chief of staff. And then Chaney, who's like, not that old. Right. Probably his early 30s, becomes chief of staff.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah. He's 34. That's like me, chief of staff of the White House.

[Nicole Hemmer]

It's wild because you think about his arc like he just arrived in Washington, D.C. fresh from Wyoming in like 1968.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And in 1974. 75. He's the chief of staff to the president.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

There's some dark magic going on here.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah. For sure. And he doesn't even have to be like a Skull and Bones member or whatever. Like he's. He just. There is something thing happening here that he is tapped into. What that is, I don't know because I'm not a person who researches this. But that is a truly meteoric rise. It is.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And I mean, what he's tapping into is that there is a vacuum of power.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Right. Like Ford was never. He never ran to become president or vice president. He was never on a national ticket. He didn't have years of experience in the executive branch. And all of the people who had been associated with the Nixon White House had to leave because they were in jail.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And so he doesn't have a ton of high profile, well connected lifers around him. And so he's tapping into these connections he'd made among Republicans in the House, people like Rumsfeld and through Rumsfeld, Cheney. And it's in that vacuum, into that vacuum into which Cheney steps. And it happens at this moment, you know, he becomes one of the most powerful people in the country, serving a president who has probably the least amount of power.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Of any president in the Post World War II era in the United States. And that annoys him.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

He doesn't like that Ford has to follow all of these new ethics rules and the War Powers act and is constrained in a way that earlier presidents had not been.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

He's also helping to sort of direct where the right is going to go. Right. Because he's helping to manage the executive branch during things like the aftermath of Watergate, which helps to, like, they're able to reorient what they're doing in response to that. Also, I'm pretty sure the. The withdrawal from Vietnam. Like, he's helping to manage what's happening in the executive during the Vietnam withdrawal. There's a lot of, especially the mid-70s, a lot of, like, economic challenges. There's inflation, rising unemployment. So he's like, helping to determine what the right is going to do in response to all of these things. And the direction he points it in is like, let's go down the darkest of paths, basically.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Very much so. I mean, he wants the right. In some ways, this. This will sound like an overstatement, but by the end of the episode, people will see where I'm going, but wants the right to seize power and the way that he sees it possible for them to seize powers through the presidency. Remember that Republicans have been largely out of power in Congress since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, with a few exceptions here and there. And the presidency has been where they have seen success, first through Eisenhower, who was not a friend of conservatives, but, you know, was their man to the extent that they man in the 50s, and then through Nixon. Right. Nixon was the voice of the silent majority. And people like Dick Cheney saw Watergate as a kind of plot to overturn the will of the silent majority and to force out this strong conservative leader. And Ford was a lot more conservative than I think we think of him as, obviously. Could probably do an episode on Ford, too, if you get down to it.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Sure.

[Nicole Hemmer]

But Cheney, he wanted Ford to have unrestricted power in the realm of foreign policy. You know, he is chief of staff during this period in which there are all of these investigations into the intelligence agencies to hold them responsible for things like assassinations of world leaders. And Cheney is trying to withhold that information to protect the intelligence communities, but also to empower them. He wants them to be able to carry out those assassinations nations in the name of national security. He wants them to be able to spy on the American people. And he's frustrated because Congress during this period post Nixon is trying to put real restraints on the executive branch. And Cheney is like, no, what they need is more power. Makes it kind of his life project to ensure that Republican presidents have unrestrained power.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah. And he does succeed, like to be clear, given the position we're all in right now, he does succeed at this project and we'll get further into how he does that. But I do think it's interesting thinking about the post Watergate right and the Republicans and the relationship to like paranoia and suspicion and how this creates a long term approach to politics where there is a belief that the right is being undermined by some other secretive thing and that the way that the right should respond to that is by doing more secret things and taking more power. Because you see that repeatedly happening. You see that even with things like January 6th, where there's this thing where we've been overruled and these votes aren't being counted and things are fake and it's because they just don't want us in power. That being said, your population not wanting you in power is how presidential elections work, you know, is how the president democracy works.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Right?

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah. So I think there's this sort of immediate level of whether people are aware of it or not when they're enacting it. It's sort of an anti democratic thing that starts to happen, starting like with, not with, but alongside Cheney gaining power too. And he encourages this.

[Nicole Hemmer]

If you think about what it means to be a democracy, one of the reasons why things like freedom of press, freedom of speech are in the First Amendment is because the assumption is you have to have a well informed citizenry who can go to the polls to vote. Right. They need to know what the government is doing in order to give them an up or down vote when it comes to elections. And that push for transparency was seen as a small D Democratic push. Right. This is going to make us a more open, a more fair, more democratic society because people will be able to see what their leaders are doing and hold them accountable. That idea of democratic accountability is huge in the 1970s. And in many ways Cheney dedicates his career to attacking both those things, both the democracy and the accountability. And we'll see that over the course of his next 30 or 40 years in the federal government and in the legislative branch because he is really working to roll back accountability and ultimately to

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

roll back democracy, to draw from another episode we've done on Carl Schmidt. I think there's also a sort of Schmittian approach to a lot of these things where he's saying we need to find ways of taking power for the executive branch by using things like states of Em or needs for surveillance or whatever, to argue that that's why the executive needs so much more power than everywhere else, and that's why the legislative branch doesn't need to matter that much and whatever. Even though he will, right after being in the White House with Ford, go on to be a congressman. But I mean, it is interesting that there often are on the show a lot of through lines between guys we've talked about who think things and then people who then put. Put those thoughts into practice, which kind of proves that a lot of this is in this sort of primordial soup of badness that is self referential over and over and over again. Right.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And it's not just like an instinctual primordial soup.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Right.

[Nicole Hemmer]

These are people who have connections with one another and think about these ideas. And so like, you know, people invoke Schmidt a lot these days and it's like, oh, you should have been invoking Schmidt for the last quarter of a century. Because the idea of a state of exception in particular is the driving ideology, whether openly or not, behind the power seizure in the aftermath of the 911 attacks.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah, absolutely. I have made that connection several times when I'm reading about this, where people are like, and now they're using everything as a state of exception. And I have to be like, were you alive in 2001?

[Nicole Hemmer]

I mean, honestly, some of them weren't, but.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Well, to be fair, that's actually true. Sometimes my students will tell me what year they were born, and I'm not that old. And I feel like, whoa. Woof.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Nothing like a college campus to keep you honest about how time passes.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

That is hard. My partner's younger brother is 10 years younger than him and was born two months after 9 11. And that freaks me out. I'll be so with you. Yeah, and we go out to bars and stuff. Stuff that's wild to me. Hi there, it's Claire. The episode you're currently listening to is free for everybody, but the next one won't be because we're trying to make this show independently and sustainably. We switch off between free weeks and Patreon weeks. So if you're a fan of good, accurate public history made by actual experts, consider supporting our Patreon it's only one tier, which means everyone who subscribes gets access to the same perks across the board. For the price of a pair of socks, you'll get access to a new episode every week instead of just the bi weekly free ones. And they'll all be ad free for you. You'll also get access to the full episode archive, bonus content, early access to merch, and lots of other fun Patreon exclusives. To sweeten the deal, just head over to patreon.com this guy sucked. Or follow the link in the episode description to sign up. Let's fast forward right after the Ford administration because we really need to put him at the heart of, of everything that happens. From 1979 to 1989, he is elected as Wyoming's at large Congressman and reelected five times, which is how he has this long, long term. While there, he serves on the House Intelligence Committee, the House Armed Services Committee. He becomes chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee. He's the House Minority Whip. He's again everywhere.

[Nicole Hemmer]

He's everywhere. And it's a meteoric rise again, even in Congress. Like the, the idea that like a backbencher is going to be in the House leadership within just a couple of years of coming into Congress. Granted he had been chief of staff, but still like it was a pretty quick rise to the head of the Republican leadership. And he positioned himself to be on what he saw as the most important committees when it came to US Power and frankly US Executive power. Right. So the use of the military, the use of the intelligence services, these are key presidential power. It's where it expands most rapidly and often most secretly. And you know, he's, he's kind of present throughout the Reagan years as this member of Congress. But I think the important thing that he does while he is in Congress is he serves as the ranking Republican on the House Committee that is looking into the Iran Contra affair. It would take more minutes and possibly hours than we have to talk about all the ins and outs of the Iran Contra affair. But it's basically the Reagan administration broke two big laws. Laws. One, it had been barred from helping the Contras in Nicaragua, and two, it had been barred from selling arms to Iran. And does both of those things in this massive scheme that was carried out by essentially a secret government within the government. And once it is revealed that this is happening, then there are these hearings that are happening on Capitol Hill to find out the extent of the lawlessness and the wrongdoing. And Cheney, as the ranking Republican, ends up authoring A minority report. So the committee itself authors this report that's like, hey, there's a lawless secret government. That's not great. I, I thought we weren't going to do that after Watergate. So it's a pretty hard hitting report against the Reagan administration. And Cheney writes this counter report that's basically like, well, if you think about it, those laws were unconstitutional in the way that they restrained executive power. And so yeah, he broke the law. But if the law was unconstitutional, then did he really?

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

He writes a BuzzFeed explainer that's like, yes, there is a lawless secret government. And here's why that's good for you.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Exactly. Here's why you should be happy.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

That's crazy.

[Nicole Hemmer]

It's wild because what it is is it is a statement of unitary executive theory.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And basically unrestrained presidential power. He's basically saying the President should have this power, therefore the President does have this power. And if you Congress, an institution of which I am a member, don't like it, you could go kick rocks. He's going to do it anyway. And then we should change the laws so that we don't have to have one of these messy investigations again. And so that is particularly strong statement of this idea that should be implied. Republican executives, Republican presidents should be able to do whatever they want. You get this stated all over the place. Ed Mies, who's the Attorney General, is propounding this theory throughout Reagan's presidency. Antonin Scalia, who is put on the Supreme Court during this period, also espouses unitary executive theory. But it, it is is Cheney who is in the position to leverage it the most, first on this committee, but then a decade later as Vice President.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

It's pretty wild how short people's historical political memories are often because I feel like this idea around the unitary executive theory has become something where people just accept that that is part of American politics and are unaware of how recent of a development it is. We've talked about this in of a lot of other things on the show, like Clinton and incarceration, America being the world's largest jailer, like that is a recent development. Lots of these things are recent political developments. This current iteration of the executive, no matter how enormous or monstrous or whatever it is, is recent. The way that we've thought about how the executive functions is recent. And it's, it's pushed through by an organized group of people being like, we might be part of a secret lawless government within the government, but wouldn't that be so great for you? Actually, wouldn't that be so nice if for. Wouldn't it be easier for everyone if that's how this operated? And now people are like, that's just how the government operates.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Yeah. It's framed, as you're suggesting, as a national security imperative.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And that is how you see the growth of presidential power in the 20th century. That really it's under Truman, even more so than fdr. I mean, it starts under fdr, but the Cold War state allows for this rapid expansion of presidential power through the military and through the intelligence services. And then in a bunch of different other ways, then Nixon kind of breaks the model by going a little too far. And Dick Cheney does the work of reconstructing that model in the decades after and then expanding. I mean, because unitary executive theory actually takes it so much, much further because it sort of transitions it from the executive is very powerful for the purposes of national security to honestly something that's borderline monarchical, that the president should get to do kind of whatever he wants. And if you don't like it, you either need to get Congress to impeach him or get the people to vote him out. And if for whatever reason those two mechanisms don't work, tough, tough, tough. Too bad you have a king for a while. Yeah, that's.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

And it's so interesting that that is not the long term view on this. And when we move pre 20th century, that is not the long term view on this. But it is a little bit of a frog in water situation. Right. Where people just get used to it changing by degree or changing in small amounts over time. And now all of a sudden the current administration is able to point back not even 20 years earlier and say, look, we were already doing it then. Or you know, 25 years earlier say, well, we were already doing it back then. It's actually, we've been doing this for a long time. And people are like, well, I guess they have been. That's cool. That's so wild.

[Nicole Hemmer]

It does seem to be missing the first order question, which is, okay, so it's been happening for a while. Is it a good thing?

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah, this might be the problem actually. Actually, might that be who signed off on it? The root of the problem is that it's been happening for a while. I don't know, perhaps to get back to Cheney and his time in the House of Representatives, I wrote down some things he was doing slash known for alongside Iran Contra. He, for example, opposed sanctions against apartheid South Africa. I don't think you're on the right side of history with that one. And I think back then it was known you weren't going to be on the right side of history.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Yes. Massive racist oppression was generally considered to be not a great thing.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah. And the thing that's interesting, that happens a lot when we look at people like this is someone will be like, yeah, but lots of people oppose sanctions. Well, actually, quite a lot of people thought we should have sanctions. So it doesn't work unless you're looking at both groups at the same time, really. He was also opposed to a lot of domestic social programs, just things that would help anyone in America, basically. He had a very conservative, understandably, voting record on economic, national security issues, very strong support of defense spending, which is an interesting thing that he does over and over again, where he really likes spending money on defense, but he also wants the military to be smaller is the thing that he does later, which I find interesting. Yeah, it's actually.

[Nicole Hemmer]

It's a tricky moment. This is starting to bleed into when he moves back into government, into the executive branch. But in the 1980s, you know, the Cold War is coming to an end towards the very end of the Cold War. So there had been a big surge in Cold War spending early in the Reagan administration. And then there's kind of this problem of demilitarization after the war. But there was also this concern that the defense industry would be hurt if we took the money away. And so all of the money in Dick Cheney's vision of how the world should work should be flowing to those defenses, defense industries. What's interesting about the character that you're describing when he's in office is he is deeply conservative. If you look at his voting record, he's so conservative, but he actually has the reputation for being a moderate. What, because of the way that he carries himself?

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Right.

[Nicole Hemmer]

He's not like a guy who's gonna go on later on, like, something like the Rush Limbaugh Show. He's not the guy who's gonna be out there giving, like, these crazy sound bites. He's not in search of publicity for himself. He's in search of power. And so he's not screaming. He's not talking conspiracy theories. He's working behind the scenes. And he is misunderstood in some ways, even in his own conference as someone who people thought was a lot less conservative than he really was. But as you know, as you're listening, like, he was clearly quite a conservative politician, but he was able to escape notice in a lot of ways.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

I mean, it is interesting how we associate public Persona with Private ideals or whatever. And then there are people who, by virtue of not actively being a public face on something, get away with some really, really awful stuff. For example, he also votes against the creation of a Department of Education, which is.

[Nicole Hemmer]

His wife's a school teacher.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

What? But because he's not the face of these things, he's able to get away with it, basically. And that's what happens over and over again throughout his career. He lets someone else be the public face of decisions that he's making or manipulating. Doing the being the secret government inside the government character, basically. Should we move to the next phase or do you have more for the congressional phase? We're kind of going bullet point style on this.

[Nicole Hemmer]

We are going bullet point style. But this is a very long career that he has. And your Forrest Gump analogy is really apt because he is about to enter the George H.W. bush administration.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And he gets up to some crazy stuff there, too. Speaking about being there at all of the worst moments.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

He sure does. So he's appointed by President George H.W. bush as Secretary of Defense in 1989, and he is in that role until 1993. He. Again, to use the Forrest Gump thing, he is there for the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union. He is there for every important thing that has happened in American politics in the end of the 20th century. It is insane. And we haven't even gotten to a bunch of the other stuff he does while he's there.

[Nicole Hemmer]

It's wild.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Right.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Because that is. That's an enormous position. Secretary of Defense.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Right.

[Nicole Hemmer]

He's functionally running the military and is the face of military policy in the US at, as you just mentioned, one of the most important moments for the US Military navigating the end of the. The Cold War, which in addition to being this great geopolitical challenge for the United States. What do we do now that the Cold War is over, but is also like a real ideological problem for Cheney, because the case he had been making about national security was being made in the context of the Cold War. So now he's going to have to pivot to find new threats if he wants to continue to make his national security argument. The US does get up to quite a lot militarily, even in those four short years. People may have been hearing about General Noriega recently, a leader of another country who the US Went in and invaded and then deposed. He was the President of Panama. And the US Goes in, commits a coup, and then brings him back to the United States to stand trial, which he ultimately does. And of course, Operation Desert Storm.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yes.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Which is the multinational operation that the US Undertakes in order to move Iraq out of Kuwait after it had invaded. And then that becomes, for folks who are looking forward into the future, the decision to both fight the war in Iraq and then also the decision not to depose Saddam Hussein at the end of that war becomes a big. A turning point in history if you leap forward about 10 years or so.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

It sure does. And I will add. So I wrote down some stuff about Operation Just Cause, which is the Panamanian coup thing, which is also funny if you read it as Operation Just Cause, which is kind of what's happening, too. The same way that what's happening in Venezuela is the just cause thing. But you can read it. It's supposed to be just cause, like we have a justified cause. But that happens in December 1989. He has only been in the Post Post since October. At that point, within two and a half months of taking the post of Secretary of Defense, he's like, let's go fuck with Panama. Immediately.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Immediately.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

And this is another example of the US Saying there are allegations of something happening here. This intelligence that is pretty iffy on a lot of this. They invade with 27,000 troops, capture Noriega, take him to the US to stand trial, also kill a lot of Panamanian civilians while doing so. They have these moments of heavy, heavy fighting in poor neighborhoods. Obviously violate international law is enormously disproportionate to their goal, and they make civilians pay the price. And this happens over and over and over again with Cheney, and it's treated like a massive success, or he and his administration, the people that he's not. I mean, not his administration, but the people in the administration he's working around, treat it as this. This huge success.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Yeah, it's seen as not quite America's back, baby. Because America had been feeling its oats for some time by that point in time. But this idea that, like, we are this force for democracy and justice and law around the world. And yes, maybe you break a little bit of international law on the way to law and order, but, I mean, don't you have to break some eggs to make an omelette?

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

That's like, you know, don't we deserve a little treat?

[Nicole Hemmer]

Right?

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

He's like, can't we just kill a few hundred civilians as a treat? I don't understand.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And it's not as though the US had not killed Panamanian civilians.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Well, yes.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Been doing it for, you know, a Fair amount of the 20th century.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Absolutely.

[Nicole Hemmer]

But it is that sense of American imperialism, like America can do what it wants, especially in the Western hemisphere. That is a age old concept. But this idea that America gets to decide, gets to decide where it invades, gets to decide how much war it wages, and then gets to decide, like, whether that's lawful or not lawful. That is a big through line in Cheney's presidency and on the right, more broadly. I mean, Reagan, in 1984, the US is sued by Nicaragua in the World Court for mining the harbors in Nicaragua, which is a war crime. And the World Court finds in favor of Nicaragua. And Reagan is like, oh, well, we don't recognize the jurisdiction of the World Court anymore. So that's not a problem for us. And that attitude is one that Cheney is going to take with him into the 1990s and 2000s.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

The idea that unaccountability is just a normal function of the executive or of anyone associated with it really has been borne out in pretty horrific ways. And it's interesting because in the last election, Chaney's daughter was like, let's, we don't have to do this again. And serving as his sort of kind of like a surrogate for Chaney in this way. The assumption is that people are like, oh, well, the Chaney family therefore have some problem. But like, you did this. There's a very like, we're trying to find who did this thing. And it's you, man, your dad. This is where this is coming from.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Love the idea of Dick Cheney in a hot dog suit. Dick Cheney, we're skipping forward in the story, but in 2024, Dick Cheney does endorse Kamala Harris. We can talk about whether that helped or hurt her, but it's sort of because he dies in 2025. There is this, like, way that some journalists treated this as a redemption arc.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yes.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Like, oh, Chaney actually turned out to be pro democracy this entire time. And it conveniently overlooks that he constructed the world in which January 6th was possible.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And the pardons of January 6th defendants and those prosecuted for it, as well as Donald Trump's return to office in 2024. It's just not possible without Dick Cheney. Before there was January 6th, there was the Brooks Brother riot, which led to the Bush Cheney victory in 2000. So we've skipped ahead a little bit. But for those of you whose last memory of Dick Cheney is that he turned on Donald Trump and supported Harris in the 2024 election, that's a deathbed confession or a Deathbed conversion.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah. And it's also like in the does it help her or hurt her thing, sometimes it's like, okay, but also what does it say about her? If he was like, well, her I might be aligned with her actually. And it's not worth re litigating some of these things, but I do think it's interesting that everyone is like, well, we had the, this excellent opposition. It's like, well, the excellent opposition was also endorsed by someone who truly paved a path that then later people like Trump would get to sort of skip down, you know. But to return to Janie, the number of things he does while Secretary of Defense in the late 80s, early 90s, although even late 80s doesn't really count because it's the last few months of the 80s. You've mentioned most of these because really what they do is set up the path to the Iraq War. That is really fundamentally the thing that I think in reading this is kind of most important when he's Secretary of Defense is he makes the Iraq war not only possible, but likely and clearly, in his view, kind of inevitable. And it comes at an opportune time for him. So we can pause to get there because he has a side quest in the middle which then helps him later where he becomes the CEO of Halliburton.

[Nicole Hemmer]

He sure does. Halliburton Energy Company. He is going to become a millionaire many times over for his five or six years of work with Halliburton. What is there to say? I mean, if you think about the villains of the 20th century, Big Oil is pretty strong contender there. And that's where Cheney heads. He had made his career in energy. Well, he'd made his career in politics, but he had kept these ties up with the energy industry ever since an oilman opened the door to Yale for. And these connections are going to be connections he shares with George W. Bush. And Halliburton is going to come back as a repeat character when we get into the 2000s because some of their subsidiaries won a bunch of no bid contracts to support the US Military during the long invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Isn't that so lucky for them?

[Nicole Hemmer]

Yeah, look, I'm sure it is a coincidence. Don't worry about it.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

But yes, so there is some cronyism that's happening as well. I mean, even before 9 11, Dick Cheney is holding secret meetings with energy companies and the White House to try to figure out how to make them all happy during his tenure as Vice President. So the Halliburton turn is, is an important moment for him and for the ties that he will carry with him into the White House?

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah, absolutely. And while he's at Halliburton, the company expands enormously. Their overseas operations, which interestingly will come to benefit him and the company a lot later. When, for example, there are wars in the places that they have expanded to or over the territories that they have expanded to, the company, while he is in charge of it, becomes, if not the largest, one of the largest, world's largest oil field services companies. So it's not like he's at some rinky dink, whatever oil company. He's at the oil company. And isn't it so convenient that he just gets to do that for 5ish years, a little under 5 years. Years on his way to get back into politics in a way that will benefit him financially and in terms of power for the rest of his life and career. But I do think it's interesting that he's able to just like, I'm gonna leave for a little bit, join a corporation, expand this corporation into the place that I would like to, and have already set up a possibility for war in, and then gonna go back to politics. And won't it be so great when we start a war there and our stock goes up a bajillion fold? I don't know.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's. It's hard to know whether Dick Cheney knew he was getting back into politics. I don't think it really matters one way or the other.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Sure.

[Nicole Hemmer]

I think most people had sort of counted him out. He was somebody who had even at one point in time considered running for president, which is kind of wild if you think about academy.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Imagine if we had Dick Cheney as president also.

[Nicole Hemmer]

It's hard to imagine in part because, I mean, one of the things about Cheney is that he's not terribly charismatic. Like, he doesn't have that kind of appeal that you would expect for like a presidential contender. He. He won, obviously, in Wyoming, but again, very small state in terms of population. So he'd never really been tested on the national stage prior to his run with George W. Bush. And even that kind of happens as a surprise. He knew Bush through George H.W. bush, and they were of the same generation. Even though Chaney seem much more like the elder statesman by the time George W. Bush is looking at the presidency for 2000 and George W. Bush taps him to be in charge of his vice presidential selection committee. Folks know this story now, but it's just so wild that you are put in charge of selecting the Vice President and you put up such options that when the president looks around there is no one he sees but your bright shining face as a possible Vice Vice Presidential contender.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

That is hilarious to be fair. Like not in a this is good for the world kind of way. But like it is very funny to be like sure, I will find you the perfect person for this incredibly difficult task. And it turns out that the search committee has come up with me.

[Nicole Hemmer]

It's always the internal candidate.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

It really is. We've all been there to be fair to everyone else who was up for Vice President back then. We have all gone to the fly out interview and then found out that they hired someone who was already in the department as a grad student. We get it.

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[Dr. Claire Aubin]

I'm here with a quick mid roll shout out to tell you about other multitude shows I think you might be interested in. So this week I want to talk to you about Pale Blue Pod. If you, like me, are overwhelmed by the great and terrible vastness of the universe. Universe, but also kind of want to understand it, possibly befriend it, or at least be less scared of it. This show is for you. You might know her from her wonderful TGS episode on ancient Greek astronomer Ptolemy. But on pale blue pod, Dr. Moya McTeer and her best friend Con Star sit down each week to demystify space one topic at a time. They do it with open eyes, open arms and open mouths from so much laughing and jaw dropping. I recorded an episode of Pale Blue Pod a few months ago where we reviewed the worst Bond film of all time, Moonraker, and I can personally attest to the fact that by the end of every episode, the cosmos feel somewhat less scary and a lot more fun. New episodes of Pale Blue Pod come out every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. So like the app you're currently using, go give it a listen. You know it. Also, to be fair, when I said I wonder what it would have been like to have Cheney as president. With the George W. Bush presidency, we kind of did have Cheney as president.

[Nicole Hemmer]

To be fair, this definitely was the through line of those eight years in office was this idea that Cheney was secretly president and I would push back on it just a little. Which is to say that he and George W. Bush weren't actually that close. I mean, they were close in working together. Cheney ensured when he was negotiating joining the ticket as Bush's running mate that he would have real power as Vice president. He wanted a portfolio, he wanted to be in on all of the decisions. And Bush held true to that for all eight years. Their relationship turns pretty icy by Bush's second term. And so there is some separation between the two of them. And so if you think of it in terms of like, like, is George W. Bush making the decisions? Yes, Bush is making a lot of the decisions. That is not to say that Cheney isn't running the country and in fact in more meaningful ways is guiding the direction that the country is taking during those years. It's just that he's pulling the levers of power in different ways. And that, that ranges from the conversations he's having with oil executives to mounting the case for the invasion of Iraq, to working on the, these secret programs with the National Security Agency and the intelligence agencies and the CIA for rendition programs. So he is, he is exercising presidential level power without necessarily being like the guy in charge.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

I mean, it is a kind of fascinating way to understand the presidency, to sort of see it as like there are decisions the President is making in terms of talking about, about particularly the Bush 2 presidency. Their second Bush, not the second, you know what I mean, the younger Bush presidency. That he is the President and making presidential decisions. But Cheney is shaping the contours within which he is making those decisions. Right, like.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Right. He's shaping the options.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah, he has this unusually strong role in defense policy, in intelligence, like you said, and in energy policy. So often when we're talking about oil, what we're actually talking about is like energy in general and policy around energy. And there aren't that many vice Presidents who are that into the energy sector. But again, he has a vested interest in this and he has long term connections to it. And so he's able to shape this. And we see through these wars in the Middle east that the energy sector is intimately connected with the defense sector. And so these things are, they're not the same, but there is no extricating them from one another at this moment in time. And so him being into both of them is not good. Good.

[Nicole Hemmer]

No, it's not. And I think it's too simple to say, like some of the protest signs said, like war for oil. It's not quite that one to one relationship because there are these other concerns and interests around American power. And to say democracy promotion is to use a term that isn't accurate. But you know, this idea that America gets to decide what kind of government you have, that is a real geopolitical interest of the United States and that Cheney was pursuing, doing quite aggressively into the cost of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. So it's not just for oil, but boy, are they happy to have control of that oil.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And boy, does it benefit the energy sector. And they didn't necessarily go to war for oil, but they did not go to war for oil. It was on the agenda from the very start.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah. I mean, it could be war plus bonus oil is part of this, or it can be framed as war plus bonus oil while someone else is being like, wouldn't it be great if this bonus was quite a big bonus in all of this. Can we talk about 9 11? I don't know why I phrased it that way, but can we talk about 9 11? I think we need to. I think we're supposed to be talking about 9 11, particularly in this instance.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Definitely. I mean, 911 is the actual day. September 11, 2001 is the perfect way to understand both how Cheney got the reputation of being the president and also his cavalier attitude toward law. Because it is during 9 11, as we all know, George W. Bush is down in Florida reading my pet goat to a bunch of school children when he hears the news. Then he's put on Air Force One and then flown all over the country while they try to decide, is it safe to land in Washington D.C. meanwhile, Dick Cheney is in Washington D.C. and he's taken to an undisclosed location right away because they need to keep the line of succession safe. And so he is taken to whatever underground bunker they take him to. And then he starts shouting orders and there are people standing around and they're like, are you the guy who gets to give us orders?

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah, you're actually still not the President.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Yeah. And he sort of claims presidential authority in that moment. And the most serious incident as that day is unfolding in terms of the mystery use of power. Cheney okays a shoot down order of American planes that if an American plane comes into like a commercial jet comes into a particular radius around the White House or around Congress, he gives the military permission to shoot it down. Dick Cheney does not have the authority to give this order. It has to be given from the President. And he hard to say if he fudges it, if he outright lies, that he has that authority, but he seizes that authority. And in some ways we have like a previous glimpse into that this was going to be the kind of guy he was going to be in an earlier era. He was part of continuity of government exercises in which they sort of role played what happens if the government is decapitated and how you continue governance and like the secret underground bunker. And he envisioned in those exercises a world in which Congress had no role in the line of succession, that it was just the executive. So in these scenarios they didn't include the speaker of the House or the members of Congress who were in the line of succession, they just cut them out. And he was doing this, I believe while he was in Congress. So again like he's really stabbing his branch in the back during his years there in order to sort of secure executive power. But that idea that like whoever's in the room gets to call the shots is something that he had been thinking about and advocating for for a while before he becomes the guy who's in the room calling the shots. And I think that idea that you can just grab power if it's there, if nobody else has claimed it, it's yours, is very much true to who Dick Cheney is. Like he believed he had that right in that moment, regardless of what the law said and is is so dangerous and anti democratic.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah. It really is an expression of what he is thinking and feeling in this moment. Like what he truly believes his role is as vice president or person with any sort of closeness, proximity to the presidency to immediately in that moment say, well, here are the powers I'm delegating to myself. That's pretty worrisome.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Yeah, it's not great.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Just in that moment if someone was like, well what should we do? And he was like, shoot down American planes. That's not good. Like really, really bad.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Actually it's not great as an order in and of itself, although you can understand why it might how these institutions could come to that decision. But the idea that he gets to give that order when he doesn't have the authority, what it shows you is he already has that state of exception model in his mind that, that an emergency happens. And he immediately says in his head and through his actions the Constitution has been suspended because in that moment it doesn't control.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And then he extends that state of exception for the next eight years.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah, absolutely. Thinking about that as the first moment post 9 11, which then kind of sets the tone for the rest of the post 911 Bush presidency, it makes you understand that presidency and the decisions that are made thereafter in much more color, I think, or with a lot more color to it, where you sort of are like, oh, from the second this happens, there is a willingness to just immediately throw out the Constitution in order to make these sweeping executive decisions. And the first opportunity that Cheney has to be the person to make those decisions, he absolutely leaps on it. So that kind of tells you a little bit about how he views himself and his role and the branch that he's acting within. What happens after 9 11? Like, not just in that moment, but going forward?

[Nicole Hemmer]

I mean, after 9 11, then the attention moves to what is the US response going to be? And the US war in Afghanistan in some ways was as inevitable as you get.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Right.

[Nicole Hemmer]

There's obviously enormous support from the US Public. There's kind of a wartime sugar high of popularity for the Bush administration in the months that immediately follow September 11th. But there's also support from other nations. Like, other nations are like, absolutely. You get to go into Afghanistan, you get to topple that government because we see them as responsible for housing Osama bin Laden. He pulls planned his attack from there. Okay, you're good to go. Questions about the fact that folks were from Saudi Arabia and from other places that were not Afghanistan get conveniently set aside. And I think that understanding the energy sector is a good way to begin to understand why that is. And then pretty early on, I mean, the day of, there's already talk of, okay, how do we connect this to Saddam Hussein? Basically, as the crisis is unfolding on September 11th, 11th, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other folks who he had served with in an earlier phase of his career are looking for any kind of way of making the argument of Iraq is also responsible for this. So we need to invade Iraq, and they begin seeding that case immediately. They are scraping the intelligence, trying to find ties. Sometimes they use what they know is false intelligence in order to try to convince people in Congress, people within the administration. So Colin Powell, who is the Secretary of State, I think at this point, is firmly against this invasion of Iraq. He doesn't think that the evidence is strong enough. Cheney basically bullies Powell not to give Powell a pass because Powell does it. Powell knowingly gives false intelligence to the UN and makes the case that the US Needs to go to war in Iraq so he doesn't get a pass for it. But at least he was reluctant. And it was Cheney who was putting the pressure on him to go and make this case. And the reason Cheney was pressuring Powell was because Powell was the only one with any credibility in the administration to make the case. The only people that Americans trusted when it came to making the case for the war with Iraq, because everybody else had dirty hands, right? Everybody else had ties with the oil industries, right? It just didn't look good. Had revenge motives from previous era. But Powell, they trusted. And so Powell was put up to make the case, but it was Cheney who was in the background gathering the evidence, manipulating the evidence, manufacturing the evidence in order to make the case for Iraq. Because he really, really, really wanted to invade Iraq. And again, there's a multitude of reasons for that. Oil is certainly one among them. And the invasion of Iraq was. Does happen, as you know, in the months that follow and would extend for some 10 years after.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

I mean, in the post 911 world, this is another scenario where he really is at the scene of the crime for basically everything. So if you think about it in terms of national security and domestic politics, but also in terms of the Iraq war, he's also part of. Because we've been tying this to all of the energy stuff. He's the head of the National Energy Policy Development group starting in 2001. So he shapes US energy strategy to emphasize things like fossil fuel development, expanding drilling, reducing regulatory barriers, which ends up being a huge clusterfuck, basically forever afterwards. He's constantly, as you mentioned earlier, and I'm glad that you brought this up, constantly having task force meetings with industry executives that are, like, very secret and clandestine. So we know he is pulling levers behind the scenes with all of these things while also being like, we should start a global war on terror or we should. We should participate in a global war on terror. It's bad, like kind of in every direction that you look at him. It is.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And I think it's actually worth sticking for a second with those task force meetings, please. Because one of the things that Cheney does, in part through his chief of staff, David Addington, and in part through John Yu, who works in the Office of Legal Counsel, is he is working outside of the Constitution, but he wants to create legal cover for his actions. And so he has his lawyers come up with novel legal theories, not because those theories are right, sustainable, defensible, but because it's something right, something you can hang your hat on. So Addington comes up with this idea that, well, technically the vice presidency is the fourth brain branch because it's partly in the executive branch, but he also is. Oversees the Senate, so he's also part of the legislative branch and as such exists between and outside of the branches, and therefore is not covered by the transparency and ethics laws that cover the executive and legislative branches. And therefore the Vice President's records cannot be FOIAed, cannot be subpoenaed, you cannot have access to them, they cannot be legally compelled to be shown. And so he's able to hold these task force meetings because of that. At the same time, George W. Bush is arguing that the vice presidency is an extension of the presidency and therefore it is covered by executive privilege. And so vice presidential papers can be held secret. Now this extends Back to George H.W. bush, who was an unindicted co conspirator in the Iran Contra affair. And so there's a reason he doesn't want his dad's papers being shown. But it also means that Chaney feels like his papers can be secret as well. And so there is just like this way that all of these new legal theories about executive power are being developed in this period that are protecting Cheney. And he is in fact one of the engines of these legal theories around both secrecy, but also again around torture, around Guantanamo Bay, around CIA black sites, like all of those things, even though we can sit here and say those are unlawful, those are unconstitutional, he can come back with a memo written by John Yu and saying, no, look, we got, we can explain why it's constitutional. Doesn't make it right, doesn't make it moral, doesn't make it constitutional. But that is what the LLC is churning out during these years.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

That is so. I don't even know a good crazy. Making like that feels so bizarre to think about and to consider. And like obviously these legal theories are, are fairly ludicrous, they're garbage, but they're being presented as reasonable. And because the presidency and the executive branch still at this point has the veil of sort of like reasonableness of civility over it, people are kind of like, I guess, what can you do?

[Nicole Hemmer]

There's a piece of paper that says it's constitutional.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah. Our President would never do anything knowingly that would be bad for us. Which is like they have been since the beginning, to be clear.

[Nicole Hemmer]

That's not a novel development.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

No, I mean, yeah, it's. I'm glad that you also started talking about things like Guantanamo Bay, because that to me still. Cause I was quite young at this point. I was like old enough to remember everything, to be clear, but still very young. And I remember hearing about things like black sites and Guantanamo Bay and why these were like actually necessary and needed. And I was in Oregon, which is like not a particularly right leaning state or at least the part of Oregon. That I wasn't. Where you're from. Yeah, I was gonna say, hold on, I'm from Portland. So this was a different thing, most of Oregon, different story. But knowing about it now and understanding the way that we understand it now, it is so baffling to me because I was so young at the time, that this was just, like, allowed to happen, if that makes sense. And it's because of all these other mechanisms that had been put in place to sort of circumvent any accountability and transparency and the way that things like 9, 11 were used as, like, a cudgel against people who tried to say, hold on, we shouldn't be doing this now I understand it, but as a kid, I was like, I think people are just allowed to do whatever and they're keeping us safe. You know?

[Nicole Hemmer]

And that's how it was pitched, right?

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah.

[Nicole Hemmer]

That this is about keeping Americans safe. Safe. And it even went to like, God. You want to talk about novel legal theories? The Bush administration was making the case that habeas corpus didn't exist. For a lot of these people, habeas corpus, this idea that you get to present yourself before the courts is written in the Magna Carta. Like, we're talking about very, very, very, very old ideas that are the cornerstone of the legal system are being tossed out in this moment. And the Bush administration is going to court and making the case. Case that habeas corpus doesn't exist for some people. And that's, again, like, it's crazy making. Right, because this is bedrock, not just constitutional, but, like, bedrock judicial theories. And they are being tossed aside so casually. And we are still. This, I think, is the important thing, because we don't think that much of the war on terror today because it feels like it's kind of run out of steam, but it has created the world in which we live. Those novel legal theories are why you have ice killing people in the streets. It's why you have the coup in Venezuela, the downing of the boats. Right. The reasons, unbeknownst to me, the Trump administration is taking the time to, like, write up these Office of Legal Counsel memos, too, just to say, look, we've got. We've got a legal reason why we're doing this. And I think we have to reckon with a couple of different things. And one is this kind of law washing that is done for these unconstitutional issues acts. And then an idea I'm exploring in this book that I'm. I'm writing is the idea that we've created the Zone of Impunity for very powerful people to act. And it is impunity that obviously the president has, a vice president like Cheney has. He never got marched to the Hague. But also that an ICE agent on the streets has also the member of the military who's shooting those boats has that there are just some people who are allowed to act outside of the law. And because that has been sort of dressed up in legal theories, we act like there's nothing we can do about it. And I'm not sure that that's the case. But I think we have to understand that, like, we are inheriting some 50 years of this argument that some people should be immune from justice. And we're going to have to reckon with that.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

I will add to the novel legal theory thing. So my. My master's was in human rights law, in international human rights law at the University of Edinburgh. The program is headed by. She's amazing. She was my supervisor for my thesis. She's incredible. But one of the things that she built her career on was going with lawyers to Guantanamo to defend people being kept at Guantanamo. And so she would tell us things, the things that she was allowed to tell us, things that she had seen, things that they had used. And she used a lot of that to explain what was happening in international human rights law. Law. The most insane thing I have ever heard during my brief period as a legal scholar was one of the things she told me about Guantanamo, and it goes with this habeas corpus thing and this, like, way of avoiding it or circumventing it. She basically explained one day in class that one of the hardest parts of the jobs of the defense lawyers is that the argument being presented to them for why their clients could never get out of Guantanamo would be forever prisoners, no matter what, would always, always be held, was that they had classified information in their brains. Their brains had been considered classified, and they did not know what information the people knew. Like, the detainees did not know what they knew that was classified. Like, weren't aware which information they held that was classified. And there therefore could not go to trial, could not ever be released, because the contents of their brains contained classified information that would allow them, if they were out in the world, to pass on that classified information so they could never, ever be released. Is that not the most insane thing you've ever heard in your life?

[Nicole Hemmer]

It's hard to wrap your mind around, right? The state is claiming that it has, in effect, ownership of your brain. Brain, yes. And we often talk about how nuts the classification regime has gone. The historian Sam Leibovich is excellent at this. But the idea that they can classify your brain like your thoughts is actually might be in 1984, if not, maybe it was impossible to think that dystopianly.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

And this was something that was already happening pre the current style of classification. When I think about that, particularly based on the idea that the reason that, that people can't be released is not just that what's in their brain is classified, but that those specific people like you or I don't know what the classified information is in our brain. So someone is telling you you know something that's bad and you can never share with anyone, but we can't tell you what the bad thing you can never share with anyone is. So I can hold you in a torture prison forever. That is so frightening to try to imagine and understand that. And, and like Dick Cheney is a huge advocate for this style of the application of or misapplication of American law and of very clearly unconstitutional legal theory. I learned so many insane things while I was doing my master's, but that is still the thing that has stuck with me as, like, I didn't even know that was a option. And the fact that some lawyer somewhere, or team actually of lawyers were paid to come up with that and push it through is bananas.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Yeah. And it reminds you too, I think, that to put it quite baldly, Dick Cheney saw certain people as people and certain people as not people, or at least not people who have rights, people who deserve to have lives, people who had the same right to freedom that he saw himself as having. And those people could be tortured, could be imprisoned, could be killed, and they were in pretty significant numbers. And that is his legacy, at the end of the day, is the lives that he destroyed because he didn't think those lives were worth very much.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah. I mean, and this happens in so many different ways and in so many different places. It's not like this is relating to one single thing that he did, but over the course of his career, you can see him doing that with South Africa, you can see him doing that with, with Panamanian civilians, with Iraqi civilians, with even members of the military that he's ostensibly running. And like, he doesn't care about them either because they are pawns in this scheme for him, all for the sake of gaining and maintaining power over the course of his life. And perhaps there are moments in which he does truly believe in something, but the things that motivate that belief are not the things that would motivate you or I to act for the most part, I don't think maybe I'm reading into this. We have barely even talked about things like his approach to surveillance, for example. There are so, so many things that are so awful that to me, sometimes it's like kind of mind boggling to think about him.

[Nicole Hemmer]

This is why I think that he is perfect candidate for this show is because he sucks so much in so many different ways. I mean, let's just very quickly, just to take the surveillance thing. You know, he signs off on the NSA program that allows for surveillance of basically every phone call coming into the United States. And so a lot of Americans end up getting spied upon. But this goes hand in hand with his preference for secrecy, right? Like his information gets to stay secret. Our information belongs to him. And so it's this idea of like, like he understands power as control of information and that's why he is so aggressive in attacks on what he sees as espionage or leaks or those kinds of things. I mean, even back in, in the 1980s, Cy Hirsch, Seymour Hersh is writing about Iran Contra and Dick Cheney wants to have him prosecuted under the Espionage Act. And of course the Espionage act is going to come into full flower. A second Bush administration and then also the Obama Obama administration. And Cheney is one of the people who's like mainstreaming that again. So, like, your information belongs to me and my information belongs to me, and that's his view of the world and of power.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

We could talk about him for so much longer than this, but we're already at almost an hour and a half long. Like there is truly so much. And this was like just us going point by point through his career. There are so many other things that can be said about the long term legacy of this, some of which we touched on. But then the weird redemption arc that you mentioned later in his life and how when he died, which was very recently, people were like, well, we should really think of him in a more global sense in the long term arc. And like, I will say we just looked at him since the 1960s and we're like, no, it's really all bad from start to finish.

[Nicole Hemmer]

War crimes all the way down.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna say it's. There's no point at which you're like, ah. And then he acted in the best interest of the world, like May. And maybe he did like, like in the sense, maybe he believed that that's what he was doing. I find it really hard to make that argument when you look at the sort of longer, broader arc of his life and career.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And I think, just to put it like a closing note on it, like. Like he didn't endorse Donald Trump in 2024. He did endorse Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Yes.

[Nicole Hemmer]

This is not a redemption arc. Like, it's just, it's very bad all the way up to pretty close to the end.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

I mean, it is. And again, we've said that, like, his daughter gets used as this weird surrogate for him and it's just like, okay. Like, I don't find any part of any argument that he might have been good. Not that there are that many of those particularly compelling. Like, I think he's like, in my mind, a Kissinger esque level of, like, evil from start to finish in terms of what he enacts and what he endorses and who he participates in all of these things with. And I don't think there's redemption to be found there. And I think the desire to find redemption is more of a psychoanalytic issue than it says anything about his life and him as a person, to be honest.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Strongly cosine.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

Well, thank you so very much for coming on the show. Hey, he sucked so much. I hate Dick Cheney. We were like, let's do an emergency episode. And then we waited a little while and I think that maybe was good because I want to keep the foot on his neck.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Basically, you want the yeast of your hatred to rise its full potential.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

I don't want him only to have mean episodes in the two weeks after he dies. I want to remind people, six months

[Nicole Hemmer]

later, don't forget, still sucks.

[Dr. Claire Aubin]

He still sucks and we still hate him. Thank you again for coming on. For listeners at home, Nicole Hammer can be found on Bluesky at Pastpundit and on Instagram astpunditry and you can get yourself copies of her books or go listen to this day at the links in our episode description. Thanks for tuning into this episode of this Guy Sucked. A member of the Multitude Podcast collective. This episode was hosted by me, Claire Aubin, featuring special guest Nicole Hemmer, and edited by Rootin Tootin Jumpsuitin Julia Sheffini. All of our theme music was written and produced by Soy Sauce Savant Marshall Dean Williams. If you'd like to support the show and get access to all episodes, including two extra episodes per month and access to our full archive of episodes, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or to our [e-mail] thisguysucked See you next week.

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