Dull. That’s how some historians describe Dick Cheney, the man who spent more than 30 years in federal office, serving four Republican presidents.

Not Mike Pence dull. Or even George H.W. Bush dull (a man whom I can remember hearing women describe as reminding them of their “first husband”). No, Cheney was dull the way that men from the 1950s, the gray-suited company men of lore, were dull, and in fact he never quite shook the appearance of a relic from that decade. If, in those years, he had been an adult instead of child, growing up first in Nebraska and then in Wyoming, he could have fit in very nicely as a factotum to the Eisenhower administration. Then again, he could have fit in very nicely 30 years earlier—in the Coolidge administration.

It is remarkable, therefore, to consider th

See Full Page