From Wikipedia: “He then joined the staff of Donald Rumsfeld, who was then Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity from 1969–70. He held several positions in the years that followed: White House Staff Assistant in 1971, Assistant Director of the Cost of Living Council from 1971–73, and Deputy Assistant to the president from 1974–1975. It was in this position that Cheney suggested in a memo to Rumsfeld that the Ford White House should use the Justice Department in a variety of legally questionable ways to exact retribution for an article published by The New York Times investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.”

I think that Cheney learned his lessons about controlling power in order to cover up any crimes (or near-crimes). If one party can control all three branches of government then the president can pretty much have his way. We've seen Bush try to do this (and succeed in large part in doing this).

I think the previous people he worked for were able to keep Cheney in check because Cheney went along with their rules… but that didn't stop him from trying to influence them.

I think Cheney was chosen as the VP for Bush because he had a lot of Washington experience and placed the interests of the GOP over that of the country. Cheney certainly wasn't chosen because of his abilities to negotiate effectively with the Dems (he could do no such thing).

Because Bush 43 was weak and without a clear principled direction Cheney was able to fully ingratiate and insinuate himself with Bush until Bush relied upon him too much and Cheney had too much power.

So certainly I don't think Cheney would have been Cheney if Bush hadn't been Bush, but the Cheney that manifested itself was the innner Cheney yearning to be free. He was able to do that because of who Bush was.

Cheney wanted to control everything in government for the benefit of the GOP and he nearly did it. The fortunate thing about America is that many GOP ideas didn't work and so they were exposed and voted out of office. The strenght of a two (or more) party political system is when you have adults willing to sit down and negotiate towards a solution. The attitude under Bush'Cheney of, “You're either with us or against us” is just plain destructive and doesn't allow for the necessary debate.

Bush was a hand-puppet from day one. I believe Bush Sr. may have had a hand in the Cheney-Bush hand-puppet arrangement. After all, who would know his knuckleheaded son better than Daddy-CIA anyway? Wasn't Bush Sr. present and meddling in CIA-land back when Johnson was Kennedy's Veep? [Rhetorical question]

Hmmmm….

I actually lived in Wyoming while Cheney was a congressman and the image I remember was of a very level-headed solid guy, not a radical.