Richard B. Cheney, who served as the 46th vice president of the United States and whose decadeslong career in Washington included a lengthy stint as Wyoming’s sole congressman, died Monday night.
His death was caused by complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said in a statement. He was 84 years old.
Cheney’s Washington career began in 1968 with a one-year stint as a congressional fellow and included service on then-President Richard Nixon’s Cost of Living Council, at the Office of Economic Opportunity and within the White House.
He served on the transition team when Gerald Ford assumed the presidency in 1974 and eventually rose to become Ford’s White House chief of staff.
After briefly returning to Wyoming, Cheney then ran for the state’s sole congressional seat in 1978. Despite facing a serious Republican opponent and suffering a mild heart attack – one of what would be several throughout his life – he won handily.
At the time he came to Congress, he was the junior member of the minority party. He quickly rose in the ranks despite those circumstances and was elected chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee after one term by challenging veteran lawmaker Marjorie Holt of Maryland – a move considered relatively audacious for a newcomer.
Though his image in the House was one of a moderate pragmatist, his voting record reflected his position as one of the most unyielding members of the Republican right. When then-Rep. Jack Kemp of New York left his job as GOP conference chairman in 1987 to run for president, Cheney stepped into that role.
But he displayed a stubborn streak as well: In 1985, he helped lead a GOP revolt to President Ronald Reagan’s tax overhaul legislation, blocking its initial floor consideration because he and other Republicans’ felt excluded from the legislative process, which largely entailed Reagan and then-Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, a Democrat. Though other Republicans leaned on him to reverse course, Cheney was unmoved. Still, he ultimately built strong alliances with the Reagan administration, despite Reagan’s 1976 presidential challenge to Ford.
During his time in the House, Cheney served on the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, proving himself to be what the 1986 edition of “Politics in America” called “an able conciliator” between environmentalists and pro-development forces.
Cheney was elected House Republican whip in 1988, but three months later was tapped to serve as President George H.W. Bush’s secretary of Defense in 1989. He served during a period that saw the first Gulf War as well as the U.S. invasion of Panama.
In 2000, Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush selected Cheney as his running mate. Cheney served as Bush’s vice president from 2001 to 2009, becoming a key player in Bush’s “War on Terror” and an advocate of broader executive powers after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He is considered one of the most powerful vice presidents in U.S. history.
In a statement, the younger Bush called his death “a loss to the nation and a sorrow to his friends” and said he was a “calm and steady presence in the White House amid great national challenges.”
“I asked him to join my ticket in 2000 after first enlisting him to help me find the best running mate,” Bush recalled. “In our long discussions about the qualities a vice president should have – deep experience, mature judgment, character, loyalty – I realized that Dick Cheney was the one I needed. I’m still grateful that he was at my side for the eight years that followed.”
In his later years, Cheney grew to criticize the party he’d served his entire career. In 2024, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the presidential election, issuing a blistering statement saying Trump “can never be trusted with power again” due to his actions involving the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
“Rarely in our history have immense organizational competence, far-sighted vision, and sheer force of will coincided as they did in the leader who served as White House Chief of Staff, U.S. Representative, Secretary of Defense, and Vice President of the United States,” former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement.
“From his stewardship of the Department of Defense from the end of the Cold War through the Gulf War to his steady counsel to President Bush when terrorists launched a war against America on September 11, 2001, his intellect, experience, and resolve made America safer.”
Among those who survive him are his wife of 61 years, Lynne, and two daughters: Liz, who also served as Wyoming’s sole House member, and Mary.
“Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the family said in a statement. “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”
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