Cheney Offered to Step Aside as Veep, Bush Says in Memoir

Former Vice President Dick Cheney volunteered to step down as second-in-command in 2003 so then-President George W. Bush could choose another running mate for his 2004 reelection campaign, Bush says in his soon-to-be-released memoir, "Decision Points."'

Bush writes that he considered Cheney's offer because the vice president "had become a lightning rod for criticism from the media and the left," even though he helped "with important parts" of the Republican base, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. In the end, Bush stuck with Cheney after kicking around with aides the possibility of adding former Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee to the national ticket.

The book, due out Nov. 9, is loaded with anecdotes and behind-the-scenes nuggets from the White House, the Post said.

The 43rd president tells of errors in the Iraq war and his "sickening feeling" when no weapons of mass destruction were found in the country. At some points, starting with the 9/11 attacks and culminating with the economic crisis in 2008 -- toward the end of his last year in office -- "I felt like the captain of a sinking ship," Bush says in the book.