John LeBoutillier
Thursday, July 15, 2004

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  Whether President Bush should dump Vice President Dick Cheney off the ticket this year.

This kind of talk only happens when a ticket is in Big Trouble. Republicans sense that the Bush-Cheney ‘04 team could actually lose to the most liberal senator - and this is after 9/11 and the talk in those days that Bush could “never be defeated.”

This race is basically tied - and the GOP is worried to death that Bush might follow his daddy’s foot-steps into retirement after one term in the White House. They perceive Cheney as one of the major reasons the ticket is in trouble - and thus the whispering campaign has begun.

The problem is this: to get rid of Cheney now looks panicky, weak and desperate. True, if Cheney had a real health crisis - say another heart attack - he could be removed with less political fall-out. But short of that, the ‘how’ you get him off the ticket would only hurt the President’s re-election prospects.

Dick Cheney is immensely loyal to the Bush family, especially to George HW Bush and Barbara Bush; many, in fact, believe that the Bush parents manipulated the 2000 Vice Presidential selection process to avoid another Dan Quayle fiasco and that they wanted Cheney all along.

The Bushes are loyal. Period. But they also want to win - badly. They undoubtedly have explored dumping Cheney. The problem is how to do it - and who to replace him with that really helps.

Powell, Giuliani, Frist and Rice have all been named.

But the baggage that Cheney allegedly brings - Halliburton, architect of the Iraq War, corporate ‘insider,’ excessive secrecy - are not going away with Cheney. These issues have become Bush’s problems, too.

The sadness of the decline of GW Bush is that Ronald Reagan had successfully transformed the GOP’s image from a “party for Wall Street” to the “party of Main Street.”

But this Bush Administration has allowed its enemies to re-cast the Republican Party again as the ‘playpen of the rich,’ a ‘safe-haven for crooked CEOs,’ and a ‘party more for the powerful than the little people.’

In four years this Administration has done more damage to the image of the Republican Party than anyone could have imagined. How else is it possible that a leftist like John Kerry - totally out of the mainstream for his entire public career - could even be close to an incumbent president in the polls?

The reality is not as bad as this image problem. But in politics perception is reality. There is one other Bush Family consideration to the ‘Dump Cheney’ issue: the future of Jeb Bush.

The Bushes want a clear shot to keep control of the GOP for Jeb in 2008; nominating anyone other than a Cheney-like caretaker with no presidential aspirations of his/her own presents a potential competitor to Jeb. And they don’t want that.

So they will probably keep Cheney.

And sink - or swim - with him.