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| "Like a Rock Star:" Vice President Dick Cheney appears Thursday in Topeka, Kan., where an enthusiastic crowd greeted him with cheers, sustained applause, and even a few war whoops. |
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"Heartland" Americans See Cheney as a "Rock Star"
New York Times
Mon Oct 16, 2006
Category: Weird News
Area: Topeka
TOPEKA, Kansas - Grace Mosier lives with her mom and dad, goes to birthday parties, takes ballet classes and is just like a lot of other 6-year-old girls - Except that she happens to be obsessed with Dick Cheney.
"I really, really like him," says Grace, who can tell you what state the vice president was born in (Nebraska), where he went to grade school (College View, in Lincoln) and the names of his dogs (Dave and Jackson). She gets her fix of Cheney fun-facts by visiting the White House Web site for children. It says there that his favorite teacher was Miss Duffield and that he used to run a company called Halliburton.
So when Mr. Cheney came to town Thursday, Grace was at Forbes Field, holding a little American flag and a sign that said, "Welcome, Mr. Vice President, pet Dave and Jackson for me." She watched him get off Air Force Two, step into a car and speed off to a fund-raiser.
"Like a rock star coming to town," says Dene Mosier, Grace's mother. And while Mr. Cheney might be an unusual object for a 6-year-old's fixation, it is probably less unusual here, in the heart of Cheney Country.
The terrain consists of hotel ballrooms, military bases and private homes deep in the reddest of red states like Kansas (where President Bush and Mr. Cheney won by 25 percentage points in 2004). As a rule, people still love Mr. Bush in Cheney Country, at least relative to some locales. But the president cannot be everywhere, so Mr. Cheney comes instead, exposing as he goes the durability and devotion of his party's base.
He is dispatched around the country - to Topeka last week, to Casper, Wyo., the week before, and to Wyoming, Mich., the week before that - to preside over events largely ignored by the national news media but covered big-time by the local press. He raises a lot of cash for the Republican Party and its candidates - more than $40 million at 114 events since January 2005, many of them in off-Broadway political settings like Topeka.
And he reaps a full helping of love.
"How about a big Kansas welcome for Vice President Dick Cheney?" Representative Jim Ryun, a five-term Republican, says at a lunchtime fund-raiser on Thursday.
And a big Kansas welcome he gets: cheers, sustained applause, even some war whoops - yes, war whoops. Loving ones.
"Well, that warm welcome is almost enough to make me want to run for office again," the vice president responds. "Almost."
Mr. Cheney's favorability ratings might be in an underground bunker, somewhere beneath the president's (at 20 percent in the most recent New York Times poll). Critics deride him as a Prince of Darkness whose occasional odd episodes - swearing at a United States senator, shooting a friend in a hunting accident and then barely acknowledging it publicly - suggest a striking indifference to how he is perceived. Even admirers who laud his intellect and steadiness rarely mention anything about his electrifying rooms or people.
But then there are people like these, at the Capitol Plaza Hotel Manor Conference Center in Topeka.
"It's just such a big thrill to see and hear this man," says Marvin Smith, a farmer and former teacher.
Mr. Smith says most people he knows feel the same way, "except for a few of those peacemakers." He means protesters, a smattering of whom are picketing down the street.
"We love him here," Susan Wagle, a state senator, says of Mr. Cheney.
After a sustained and rollicking ovation that inspires a rare smile with both sides of his mouth, Mr. Cheney starts into a variant of the same talk he has delivered literally hundreds of times. He tells how the first vice president, John Adams, enjoyed Senate floor privileges until they were revoked. (Mr. Cheney has told this story at least 48 times in official remarks since 2001, according to the White House's Web site.)
He skips the bit about how he had been the lone congressman from Wyoming - "It was a small delegation, but it was quality," which he has told at least 67 times as vice president.
He offers his standard homage to tax cuts, a warning about how terrorists are still trying desperately "to cause mass death here in the United States" and a derisive cataloging of the various "Dean Democrats," congressmen including Charles B. Rangel of New York, Henry A. Waxman of California and Barney Frank of Massachusetts, whose influence would grow if the apocalypse came and Democrats took over Congress.
The crowd boos.
"Don't hold back," Mr. Cheney urges.
The crowd laughs.
The lights over Mr. Cheney's head keep getting dimmer and then brighter, the kind of inexplicable distraction that can get an advance person fired but that also adds sizzle to the floor show. (There were no audible requests for Mr. Cheney to crowd-surf, shed his tie or perform "Free Bird.")
None of the Cheneyphiles here are mentioning Mark Foley, the former Republican congressman at the center of the House page scandal, or the precarious hold Republicans might have on Congress or, for the most part, the problems in Iraq. Nor is anyone mentioning Mr. Cheney's unpopularity in the polls, except in terms of all the unfair attacks from Democrats and the "liberal media."
"They throw so much trash at him, it's just unbelievable," says Morris Thomason, a rancher who lives in Belvidere, Kan., but who grew up in Casper, Wyo., Cheney's boyhood home. He spent his formative years with Dick Cheney himself.
Young Dick even came to his 13th birthday party, Mr. Thomason recalls, and gave him a bunch of stamps and a book. They water-skied together in an irrigation canal near Casper.
He has not spoken to Mr. Cheney since the latter was secretary of defense in the first Bush administration, or, Mr. Thomason says, maybe it was when he was chief of staff under President Gerald R. Ford. He will not be seeing him today, either, at least up close, because that would require a $1,000 contribution for the photo op, and Mr. Thomason's $100 ticket is only for the speech.
Mr. Cheney starts his 20-minute talk early and then is off to tour a barge factory in New Orleans and to speak at another fund-raiser.
"There was a peacefulness and a truthfulness to this man that really caught my heart," says the congressman's wife, Anne Ryun, who is clutching a Bush-Cheney placard from the 2000 campaign that the vice president has just autographed.
Ms. Ryun had spoken briefly to Mr. Cheney and says she had told him she was praying for him. She adds that his wife, Lynne, "is the most gracious, intelligent woman I've ever known of," and that she wants to model her life after her. Recounting this, Ms. Ryun's voice goes soft, and her eyes become a little glassy.
While Mr. Cheney spoke, 6-year-old Grace stayed behind at the airport and scored a private tour of Air Force Two. The Secret Service agents were impressed with her Cheney knowledge and admitted that it exceeded their own. She got her picture in the paper, made the local newscasts and became quite a sensation in her own right on the day Dick Cheney came to town, and it was a big deal.
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