Dick Cheney Defends Tenure, Schools Joe Biden on Role of Vice President

In a wide-ranging, and often testy interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace, Vice President Dick Cheney defended many of the Bush Administration's most controversial decisions, and declared President Bush to have been a "consequential" president. Cheney saved his most acid observations, however, for incoming vice-president Joe Biden, who during the campaign had some rather unkind comments about Cheney's tenure as the second in command.

Cheney disagreed with host Wallace's characterzations of Bush Administration policies repeatedly, refusing to accept the premise that the Administration's sometimes far-reaching claims of Executive authority had actually resulted in a weakening of presidential powers rather than an expansion of them. Cheney said that he firmly believed that the Administration would be judged differently by history than its popularity ratings would indicate.

"We set out to do what we thought was necessary and essential for the country...I feel very good about a lot of the things we've done in this administration. I think that they will be viewed in a favorable light when it's time to write the history of the era.

I think the fact that we were able to protect the nation against further attacks from Al-Qaeda for 7.5 years is a remarkable achievement. To do that, we had to adopt some unpopular policies that have been widely criticized by our critics.

But I'm very comfortable with where we are and what we've achieved substantively. And frankly, I would not want to be one of those guys who spends all his time reading the polls. I think people like that shouldn't be in these jobs."

Next, Wallace asked Cheney to respond to a comment by his successor, Joe Biden from the vice presidential debate. Biden said that Cheney bad been, "the most dangerous vice president in history." Cheney was having none of it, and took the opportunity to fire back at Biden both on Cheney's role in the Bush Administration, and Biden's likely role in the Obama Administration.

"Well, I just fundamentally disagree with him. He also said the--that all the powers and responsibilities of the executive branch are laid out in Article 1 of the Constitution. Well they're not. Article 1 of the Constitution is the one on the legislative branch.

Joe's been chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a member of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate for 35 years, teaches Constitutional law back in Delaware, and can't keep straight which article of the Constitution provides for the legislature and which provides for the executive.

So I think--I write it off as campaign rhetoric. I don't take it seriously. And if he wants to diminish the office of vice-president that's obviously his call.

I think that President-elect Obama will decide what he wants in a vice-president. And apparently, from the way they're talking about it, [Obama] does not want [Biden] to have as consequential a role as I did."

Cheney, for better or worse, has been a consequential vice-president, and his personal popularity has paid the price for it. But Cheney couldn't care less about popularity. He cares about the country first, last, and always. He was not about to change that in his last interview as Vice-President.