President George W. Bush considered dropping Vice President Dick Cheney from his 2004 re-election ticket to dispel the myths about Cheney’s power in the White House and “demonstrate that I was in charge,” the former president says in a new memoir.
The idea came from Cheney, who offered to drop out of the race as the two men ate lunch one day in mid-2003.
“I did consider the offer,” Bush writes, and spent several weeks exploring the possibility of replacing Cheney with Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, then the majority leader, before opting against the switch.
“While Dick helped with important parts of our base, he had become a lightning rod for criticism from the media and the left,” Bush writes. “He was seen as dark and heartless — the Darth Vader of the administration.”
But in the end, Bush writes, “the more I thought about it, the more strongly I felt Dick should stay. I hadn’t picked him to be a political asset; I had chosen him to help me do the job. That was exactly what he had done.”
Bush wrote that he trusted Cheney, valued his steadiness and considered him a good friend.
So “at one of our lunches a few weeks later, I asked Dick to stay and he agreed,” Bush wrote.
Bush discloses the episode in a new book, “Decision Points,” to be published next week by Crown and obtained Tuesday by The New York Times.
The New York Times
