Cheney is asset and liability on GOP balance sheet

By Mike Allen
The Washington Post

KEITH SRAKOCIC / AP Vice President Dick Cheney throws out a first pitch in Altoona, Pa., yesterday. His granddaughter is behind him.

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"This is the good part of the speech," Cheney told a sweltering blue-collar crowd in Parma, Ohio. At two stops in a row, Cheney accused Kerry of "amnesia" about his own record and described him as being "on the left, out of the mainstream, and out of touch with the conservative values of the heartland."

Cheney's relish for the attack makes him an effective campaign tool, allowing Bush's team to level tough charges that will get wide attention while allowing the president to keep his distance.

But Cheney is a blunt instrument in an age when politics is delicately choreographed, and his willingness to speak his mind continues to provoke unwanted controversies.

A number of prominent party members continue to talk privately about the possibility that Cheney will be replaced before the party's convention in August.

One GOP official, exasperated with Cheney's continued talk about Iraq's supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, compared him to the Japanese guerrillas who filtered out of the jungle in the 1950s, not realizing World War II was over.

The three-state bus trip, Cheney's first major swing of this campaign, was a crucial chance for him to prove to Republicans that he is still an asset to the ticket, as he was in 2000 by lending experience and gravitas when Bush was a rookie on the national stage, and not the liability that Democrats and some pollsters say he has become because of diminished appeal and credibility.

White House officials said the trip was a signal that the question has been settled: Cheney is staying, and will be deployed — not just to conservative strongholds, but to swing states as well — to do what he does best, which is attack the opposition and talk tough about protecting the U.S.

In the calculations that go with a presidential campaign, Bush's advisers have concluded that although Cheney's most important contribution is revving up conservative voters, he won't hurt Bush's effort to appeal to independents and could even help in reaching out to swing voters.

"Dick Cheney was made for this campaign," Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman said, adding that the vice president has longtime credibility on the central issues of national security and the economy.

A Cheney aide said that independent voters in places such as Pennsylvania want "strong, serious, experienced people defending them from terrorist attacks around the world, and they know he is that."
 
"Suburban moms like that strong tough guy protecting their kids," the aide said. "The blue-collar worker who hears Dick Cheney give a straightforward, between-the-eyes answer says, 'Damn right,' whether it's [Cheney] sticking it to the enemy or it's him being honest about some foreign leaders and some international institutions not doing as much as they could."

But Republican frustration with Cheney increased recently when a White House effort to raise his profile, after years of near-invisibility, produced mixed results. Most notably, he used a four-letter word on the Senate floor to insult Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who Cheney said had attacked his integrity. Cheney later expressed no regret and told an interviewer he "felt better" after the outburst.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative group that is a crucial White House ally, said in a telephone interview that Cheney's outburst contributed to the coarsening of politics and said the decision not to apologize is "telling of who he is as an individual."

About the same time, Cheney drew the president back into broad claims about links between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network, the day before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks called the connection minimal.

Some Republican officials also said they are concerned about the renewed scrutiny Cheney will receive in coming weeks when Kerry names his running mate.

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, said the risk of Cheney's campaign appearances in swing states is that he "will raise the profile of the things that people don't like about Bush," including secrecy and the administration's case for invading Iraq.

A CBS News/New York Times Poll last month put Cheney's favorable rating at 22 percent, compared with 39 percent for Bush. Cheney's unfavorable rating was 31 percent — nearly tripled from 11 percent in mid-2002. Bush had a 79 percent approval rating among Republicans, while Cheney's was 48 percent.

Democrats contend that Cheney helps do their work for them, by symbolizing their charges that the White House is too secretive and more concerned about energy companies than average workers.

Cheney's defense of his ties to Halliburton, the energy firm that he headed and that is the biggest beneficiary of U.S.-funded contracts in Iraq, gets a close-up in Michael Moore's new film, "Fahrenheit 9/11." Comedian Jon Stewart has made repeated use of a clip of Cheney denying to an interviewer last month that he had made a statement connecting Iraq to the 9-11 attacks, followed by a clip of Cheney making the statement two months after the attacks.

Kerry pollster Mark Mellman called Cheney "a ball and chain that Bush is carrying around." Tad Devine, a Kerry strategist, said Cheney "embodies a lot of the negative traits" about Bush, including that he is "stubborn and ideological."

Mary Matalin, Cheney's former counselor who plans to accompany him on some key campaign trips, vowed that he will become "the king of swing," referring to plans for Cheney to campaign in battleground states.

"This campaign is about substance, and that's what he does best," Matalin said.