Campaign Counter-spin: We inoculated ourselves early. There was no way we weren't going to use the president's response to 9/11 as a cornerstone of our ads and campaign; the bloody convention is in New York after all. So now we've got the flap over with eight months before the election. The story has no legs and we can run any ad we want from now on. And there’s plenty of time for negative ads, we were smart not to lead with them.

Sinister. That word keeps cropping up in descriptions of Dick Cheney's public countenance.
I don't quite understand how or why this came to pass. But I'm now suspicious that it's a plot. Maybe the image wizards at the White House figured out that in post-9/11 America, having a dark, secretive, powerful sorcerer behind the throne was the perfect tactic to create awe and obedience amongst us Muggles.
After all, Dick Cheney didn't used to be Dr. Strangelove.
As a congressman and Defense Secretary, Cheney was actually a pretty fun guy. He was open with the press, relatively spin-free for his peer group and popular for the deadpan wisecracks issued from his famously curled mouth. He was a Republican that Democrats liked. Republicans did too.
The transformation is so odd that it really isn't totally crackpot to wonder if it was intentional.