At The Corner, the always-thoughtful Shannen Coffin has a short but very eloquent, and well-deserved, tribute to his old boss, Dick Cheney. I think it safe to say that Dick Cheney has been the most important vice president (AS vice president; this doesn’t count the later work of Veeps who eventually became president) in American history. Not just important, but important for the better. What a tremendous public servant Cheney was, and for what a long period of time! Cheney is a great American, one to whom we all owe a great debt of gratitude — and, may I add, we also ought to be grateful for his wife Lynne Cheney, whose services to the nation and whose scholarship also has been impressive, and whose next project, a biography of James Madison, is one whose completion we should all eagerly await. I remain sorry that Cheney did not run for president in 1996; I still think he could have won, and that our country would have been far better off had he done so.

But read Shannen’s tribute linked above; it says it better than I can.