Poring over Lynne Cheney's long and impressive resume -- which includes an eight-year tenure as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities -- curiosity seekers may find a reference to The Body Politic, a comic novel that Mrs. Cheney co-wrote in 1988 with Victor Gold, one-time press secretary to vice president George Bush and full-time humorist.
The book is a knowing and very funny send-up of Washington life in general and, in particular, an extended satire on the office of vice president. Its story revolves around an empty-suit politico named Bully Vandercleve, who is elected vice president and (ahem) dies inconveniently of a heart attack (ahem) in the arms of a glamorous network news correspondent "not his wife," as they used to say. The plot that follows is a series of evasions and ruses made possible by the strangely inconsequential nature of the vice presidency itself -- well captured by Gold and Cheney in such asides as this:
For a Type A overachiever, the Vice Presidency is the worst kind of a career move. Under the Constitution the only thing the job calls for is waiting: waiting for the President to die or be impeached; waiting for the Senate to wind up in a tie vote so the Vice President can break it.
That's all the Vice Presidency is about -- waiting. Everything else is make-work. Like chairing the President's Special Commission on Territorial Reform (which took Bully to Guam in August). Or attending state funerals (which took him to Iceland in December). Or filling in at some political/cultural event that the President for one reason or another can't make (like the East Passaic Young Republican Pasta Festival).
A year on the job, waiting, waiting, waiting, and Bully was ready to climb the Executive Office Building walls . . .
Does Dick know about this?