Steve Hayes on the Life and Legacy of Dick Cheney

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2025

⏱️ 79 minutes

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Summary

Dick Cheney (1941-2025) is widely regarded as one of the most consequential vice presidents in American history. To discus his life and legacy, we are joined by Steve Hayes, CEO and editor of The Dispatch and author of Cheney (2007), who had extraordinary access to Cheney during his time as vice president. In this Conversation, Hayes shares his personal reflections on Cheney’s character, views, and decades of public service, which spanned from the Ford through the George W. Bush administrations. Hayes reflects on the ways in which Cheney was understood—and misunderstood—by the media and public, and what the story of Cheney's life can teach us about the last half century of American political history.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.
0:15.0	Welcome back to conversations.
0:16.7	I'm very pleased to be joined today by my good friend, a former colleague for got quite a while,
0:22.2	almost two decades, I guess, at the weekly standards, Steve Hayes, now the editor and CEO of the
0:28.3	dispatch, author of an excellent biography on Dick Cheney that was published in 2007.
0:35.2	And we're going to discuss the Lake Dick Cheney, who passed away a couple of weeks ago.
0:39.4	And this is Wednesday, November 19th.
0:41.8	Actually, the funeral is tomorrow, which will be an event here in Washington and deserve one in my view.
0:49.3	But anyway, we want to talk about this man in his really remarkable career.
0:53.4	So, Steve, thanks for joining me.
0:55.4	Of course, happy to be with you.
0:57.9	I mean, it really is.
0:58.7	Well, I'm going to just ask you at the book first.
1:00.6	I think it's so interesting you were youngish at the time, not not junior, but, you know, not super small.
1:06.4	Unlike today.
1:06.9	Unlike today at the weekly standard.
1:08.9	You decided in 2004 or five, you've done an awful lot of work covering 9-11,
1:15.2	right after 9-11 pivoting to cover that. It's aftermath and wars and so forth. I guess you got to know
1:21.5	Vice President Cheney as people in that period, but why the decision? There are many, many books you could have written on Iraq and on other people involved.
1:30.3	Why the decision to write about Dick Cheney?
1:33.3	Yeah, I think it's largely the context that you suggest.
1:38.3	It was, it was obvious that he was playing this outsized role as vice president.
	...

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