Loyal service under four Republican presidents and a decade of leadership in Congress brought Richard B. Cheney (born 1941) to the inner circle in President George Bush's cabinet as secretary of defense. Assuming the post in March 1989, he faced Panamanian and Iraqi crises as well as an altered relationship with a disintegrating Soviet Union. President Bush's son and governor of Texas, George W. Bush, selected Cheney as his vice presidential running mate on the Republican ticket in the 2000 election. After controversial vote recounts in Florida, Bush and Cheney were sworn in as president and vice president respectively on January 20, 2001.

After weeks of contentious testimony, the senior President George Bush suffered the first major defeat of his presidency when former Senator John Tower of Texas, his original choice for secretary of defense, was rejected by the full Senate. A day later, on March 10, 1989, the president nominated Representative Richard Bruce Cheney...