Hey, everyone. Dick Cheney has passed away, former vice president, a guy who unlikely,

as it is, wound up being a major force in American politics for, I don't know, 20, 30 years, 40 years.

I'm JVL from the Bulwark here with Bill Crystal to talk about Dick Cheney and his life and his legacy and all of that.

And Bill, I guess it's interesting in a way that we're now in a world of dynastic politics

with like the bushes and the Clintons and the Trumps.

And Cheney sort of comes from a very different place, right?

You're very much a self-made guy.

It comes out of Wyoming, a small state with no electoral importance, and winds up as a secretary of defense and the vice president and an important actor in American politics.

Yeah, and actually, I mean, has this meteoric rise as a very young man,

comes to the White House in 1989.

He went to Yale.

I guess he drops out, if I'm not mistaken, finishes his degree elsewhere.

Studies in political science in grad school for a year or two.

I don't think he got his degree, but he knew a lot, actually,

of surprising about political science and certainly American history history, and obviously his wife, Lynn, a general professional historian. But anyway, he comes to Washington, and I heard about him at the time really through my father's circles, I would say, and just through the newspaper. And he's a junior staffer in the Nixon White House, ends up as chief of staff to Gerald Ford, what, five, six years later. That would have been 1975. So that would have been when he was 34 years old. So you actually understated in the way his, I mean, he is White House chief of staff at age 34 and ends up in his 80s being a major force as a Republican and conservative, genuinely conservative

critic of Donald Trump. So that's 50 years, really, right? In the public eye, stunning.

Really, and really, as you say, due to his talents, there was no, he had no, you know, I mean,

Ramosfeld was his boss in the White House, I guess was his patron early on, you could say, but it was, and then he went, but it was entirely due to a self-made man in a way, had a great American story. You know, he leaves the White House after Ford loses. And I remember that he says, he goes back to Wyoming and people's, I'm in grad school at the time,

I guess, but a little bit in these circles. And I hear he's going to run for Congress. There was

Dick Cheney, he's like a consummate inside operator. Right. Serious, sober guy, not Mr. Charisma,

not Mr. Popular demagogue at all. This is the late 70s. He was a Ford guy, and Reagan is in the ascendancy in the Republican Party, runs for Congress, Wyoming becomes obviously a very, and then very quickly becomes, I think, number three in the House leadership. I mean, I think literally within two terms or something of being elected to Congress. So I've been a time to fact- check all these things since the death was just a couple

hours ago, but we were announced just a couple hours ago. But anyway, it is really a remarkable

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