HOW HE SEES IT Cheney's power evident in speech

By JOHN HALL
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
No moment during President Bush's State of the Union message was more symbolic than midway through when the camera caught him turning ever so slightly to Vice President Dick Cheney as the president began slowly reading off the names of the allied coalition of the willing.
Bush denied charges of a go-it-alone foreign policy and claimed broad international support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
"Britain, Australia, Japan....," he said, wreathed by his mentor's famous lopsided half-smile of approval on the raised podium behind him.
Surely, Cheney is one of the most controversial vice presidents in history, as well as an unusually powerful one.
The big moments of Bush's presidency, according to those who have been allowed to get close to the action, can be measured by what Cheney has been able to work into Bush's policy speeches.
The State of the Union is the biggest speech of them all and, judging by the tone and substance of Bush's 2004 edition, Cheney's neo-conservative movement has prevailed across the board.
On national security and foreign policy, the vice president's struggle to assert his pre-emptive, unilateral philosophy over the consensus-building practices of Secretary of State Colin Powell have dominated Bush's first term.
Farewell to Powell's efforts
Powell is still a respected and feared figure in the White House. But he apparently will not be around for a second Bush term -- a fact that was leaked several months ago, some believe by Cheney's staff. Bush's applause-generating line in the State of the Union speech -- that the United States does not need a "permission slip" from anyone to defend itself -- seemed to be a final farewell to Powell's pre-invasion efforts to get a United Nations resolution of authorization, which Cheney had resisted.
A willingness to compromise on Iraq at the U.N. may be critical in coming weeks in order to work out an orderly schedule of elections and a political handover in time. But so far, attitudes in Washington seem to have hardened.
Cheney, in an interview with National Public Radio last week, said dryly he envisioned "some role" for the U.N. in Iraq -- hardly the leading role that Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair advocated nearly a year ago, reportedly over Cheney's bitter objection.
Although Powell still has a year to go as the titular foreign policy captain in this administration, some observers think he is no match for Cheney anymore. If anyone can check Cheney's influence, Blair probably has the best chance.
Cheney also has played a forceful role in domestic policy disputes within the administration. Neo-conservative influence on the president's economic policies is beginning to ring a few alarm bells among Republicans on Capitol Hill. A fight within the party has broken out over an almost cavalier attitude by the administration toward soaring budget deficits.
The vice president recently was quoted as telling former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in a private conversation that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." He was referring to massive budget deficits President Ronald Reagan rang up in the 1980s after his massive tax cut and strategic rearmament programs.
Republican values
Indeed, Cheney isn't alone among neo-conservatives who have decried old-fashioned Republican values of balanced budgets and fiscal prudence.
Since the Newt Gingrich-led revolution in the mid-1990s, some Republicans say they only lost when the party stood for green-eyeshade economics.
Other, more traditional conservatives, however, are getting a bit uneasy. About 40 Republican House members, as well as organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth, sounded an alarm last week about the deficit. Some opposed the administration's spending increases and demanded cuts.
Comptroller General David M. Walker said he did not think "American people understand the magnitude and nature of the challenge we face." He said the "fiscal gap is too great to grow ourselves out of the problem," because to do so would require the domestic economy grow by 10 percent or more above inflation for the next five years.
Cheney as yet has not publicly commented on his "deficits don't matter" quote. Since O'Neill was fired (by Cheney, O'Neill says), there doesn't seem to be anyone in the Cabinet to challenge such statements.
X John Hall is the senior Washington correspondent of Media General News Service. Distributed by Scripps Howard.