7/24/00 5:10 p.m.
Cheney Reaction
A target and an asset.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

he biggest problem with Dick Cheney as Bush's running mate — this weekend's hot rumor — can be seen on page A14 of today's New York Times: It's a picture, taken outside Cheney's townhouse in McLean, Va., and the former SecDef is sitting in an SUV after having backed his Mercedes into a garage door. He's apparently on his way to the airport, to fly to his home in Texas — not his other home, in Wyoming — where he heads an energy company. That's three homes in three time zones (one of them inside-the-Beltway), two ritzy cars, and one oil corporation during a time of soaring gas prices. What a wonderful opening for Al Gore's populist incarnation.

Cheney would bring a few assets to the Bush ticket: He is a good and decent man who would serve the country well if he had to assume presidential responsibilities, voters will remember him fondly from the Gulf War, and he has a solid conservative record. But there are questions, too: He has a clean bill of health, but this nonetheless will be the subject of an inevitable and unhelpful debate. Remember, health concerns may have delivered a fatal blow to Bill Bradley in New Hampshire last February. There were deferments during Vietnam, although these were completely above-board. Finally, there's that lip curl, so familiar to anybody who has watched Cheney on television. If Bush has a smirk, Cheney has a sneer. (See also NR editor Rich Lowry's take on Cheney.)

Could Cheney be a decoy — a trial balloon floated over the weekend so Bush can pop it with a different choice on Tuesday or Wednesday? "He would not participate in a deception," says a longtime friend of the Cheneys. "And it's inconceivable the Bush family would use him that way."