When Dick Cheney took office as George W Bush’s vice president in 2001, says The Washington Post, one of his predecessors, Dan Quayle, privately warned him he would spend most of his time attending funerals and fundraisers. Cheney flashed his trademark crooked grin and replied: “I have a different understanding with the president.” So it proved. Cheney, who has died aged 84, became the most powerful vice president in US history. He persuaded Bush to invade Iraq, to subject terror suspects in Guantánamo Bay to what he called “robust interrogation” (what most people call torture), and to authorise the electronic surveillance of millions of US citizens. Asked early in their first term how many times he had met privately with the president, he replied: “Let me see – three, four, five, six, seven times… today.”

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cheney won a scholarship to Yale but dropped out and wound up fixing electricity lines and drinking too much. After an ultimatum from his wife, he straightened out, moved to Washington and by 34 had become the youngest-ever White House chief of staff, to Gerald Ford. He spent more than 10 years in Congress – once demanding a correction when a newspaper described him as “moderate” rather than conservative – before heading up the oil services giant Halliburton. His “defining moment” was 9/11. With Bush on Air Force One, Cheney took command at the White House. Without hesitating, he authorised the military to shoot down any passenger jet thought to be under terrorist control, and asked his lawyer to start thinking about what “extraordinary new powers” would be needed to respond to the attack. “I’ll freely admit,” he said in 2009, “that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities.”

🦆😫 Cheney’s low point – besides several heart scares – came in 2006 when he accidentally shot and wounded a 78-year-old lawyer during a quail hunt in Texas. “I have no intention of becoming a lame-duck president,” Bush said the following year. “Unless, of course, Cheney accidentally shoots me in the leg.”

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