Former senior White House adviser Karl Rove on Tuesday said he was not in favor of former President George W. Bush choosing Dick Cheney to be his running mate in 2000.
Rove was asked during a Fox News appearance about Cheney, who died Monday night. Anchor Bill Hemmer asked Rove if he wanted Bush to choose Cheney as his vice president.
“No,” Rove said with a chuckle. “No. In fact, the president — then-governor — called me … he was coming back to town from campaigning. He knew I was against the idea. He said, ‘I want you to come to the governor’s mansion [at] 10 tomorrow morning. I want you to make the case to me why I shouldn’t go with Cheney.'”
Rove said he still has a piece of paper with “eight reasons” to not choose Cheney, which included the fact Cheney had a heart attack at 37 years old and that “people think he’s not going to last.”
“‘We’ve worked really hard to develop the image of you as your own man, not Mini-Me to your dad,'” Rove continued, referring to former President George H.W. Bush. “‘Let’s pick the guy who was secretary of Defense during a time of war for your dad, you know? People are worrying about you being a Texas oilman. What the heck, let’s get the guy who’s the leader of the largest oil service company in the world!'”
“I had him, I had him,” Rove said. “So this goes on this whirlwind. As the data can tell you, Bush was not a monologue guy. So we’re like the World Wrestling Federation for 30 minutes. When I finish, I realize I can’t unbutton my coat because I sweat through my shirt.”
Bush replied to Rove, “You made a good case there,” according to Rove. Bush then turned to Cheney, “who had been sitting there for a half an hour” listening, Rove said.
“Dick?” the former president said. “Got any questions for Karl?”
“I agree on some of what you had to say,” Rove recalled Cheney saying as they later left the room, imitating the former vice president’s gravelly voice.
Rove said Bush chose Cheney because he wanted someone who would formulate good decisions and someone who was “loyal and executing in the best way possible.”
“And he also knew how a White House operated,” Rove said.
The Republican strategist said he and Cheney became close friends. Earlier in the interview, Rove called Cheney “a great and good man.”
Cheney, 84, died from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said in a statement.
Prior to his eight years as vice president, he served as former President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff, as a Wyoming congressman and as former President George H.W. Bush’s secretary of Defense.
During the second Bush administration and as vice president, Cheney was one of the most vocal voices supportive of the “war on terror,” and eventually became one of the most influential vice presidents in modern American history.
Cheney also claimed there were connections between the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and Iraq before the invasion, and suggested that Iraqi citizens would treat U.S. troops as liberators for “regime change.” But these claims did not materialize.
The release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report in 2014 concluding that enhanced interrogation methods were used during the “war on terror” was met with Cheney’s defense that he would “do it again in a minute.”