Dick Cheney

American regent

- —KARL VICK

IN A HALF-CENTURY NAVIgating the heights of U.S. executive power, Dick Cheney went from being widely admired as the competent public servant overseeing the U.S. victory in the first Gulf War, to profoundly polarizing, albeit in ways that might now make many wistful: the divisions Cheney inveigled were grounded not in personal aggrandizement but in differing concepts of duty to nation.

His legacy, at the time of his death on Nov. 3 at 84, was as the most powerful U.S. Vice President in history, who after 9/11 intrigued for the CIA to use torture; for the National Security Agency to scoop up the communications of every American; and for the invasion of Iraq, which killed hundreds of thousands, shifted the balance of regional power to Iran, and ultimately expanded the terrorist threat.