Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney is an American politician and businessman whose 50-year political career has produced his service as the 46th Vice President of the United States across 2001–2009 under President George W. Bush — producing one of the most-influential American Vice Presidencies of the 20th and 21st centuries. He was born Richard Bruce Cheney on January 30, 1941, in Lincoln, Nebraska. His father Richard Herbert Cheney was a U.S. Department of Agriculture soil-conservation agent and his mother Marjorie Lauraine Dickey was a homemaker. The family relocated to Casper, Wyoming, when Cheney was 13.

His education at Yale University (1959–1962, dropped out twice) and the University of Wyoming (B.A. in Political Science 1965; M.A. 1966) launched his early-career path. His breakthrough came across his 1969–1970 Office of Economic Opportunity service under congressional fellow Donald Rumsfeld — and his subsequent 1971–1973 Nixon administration White House staff service. His 1975–1977 White House Chief of Staff appointment under President Gerald Ford — at age 34, the youngest White House Chief of Staff in American history — launched his subsequent national political career.

His 1979–1989 service as the U.S. Representative for Wyoming's at-large congressional district produced his 1989 election as House Republican Whip — the second-highest House Republican leadership position. His 1989–1993 service as the 17th U.S. Secretary of Defense under President George H. W. Bush — across the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War and the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama — produced his 1990s American national-security-policy leadership.

His 2001–2009 service as the 46th Vice President of the United States under President George W. Bush — across the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the subsequent 2001 launch of the Afghanistan War, and the 2003 launch of the Iraq War — produced one of the most-influential and most-controversial American Vice Presidencies of the 20th and 21st centuries. His subsequent 2010s and 2020s public profile has been shaped by the 2014 publication of his memoir Heart and his daughter Liz Cheney's 2017–2023 service as the U.S. Representative for Wyoming's at-large congressional district. He married American author Lynne Vincent in 1964 and the couple has two daughters.

His name Dick began as the English diminutive of Richard (from the Old Germanic root meaning "powerful ruler"). Dick was a popular American boys' name through the early-to-mid-20th century.