Dick Cheney death reframes conservative legacy

Dick Cheney, who died Monday at 84, is being reassessed in the Trump era as a hard-edged but traditional conservative—reviled for championing surveillance, renditions and brutal interrogations, and for insisting Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, yet remembered by rivals as serious, partisan but willing to engage. Once the Bush administration’s most forceful advocate for the Iraq war, he never recanted. In 2024, Cheney broke with his party over Donald Trump and said he would vote for Kamala Harris, a characteristically blunt coda from a back seat power.