Needless to say, he was talking about Dick Cheney. Perhaps the most hated figure in an administration crawling with them, Cheney is surely the spookiest veep in American history, a man who spent most of the last three years in some undisclosed location, seemingly unable to decide if he's Dr. No or He Who Must Not Be Named. Now that it's election time, he's turning up everywhere, serving up dripping red meat at Republican fundraisers, defending the honor of the nice folks at Halliburton, and contrary to all evidence, insisting on Saddam's links to 9-11. Oh well, at least William Safire believes him.

When Bush first chose him, he was considered a reassuring Number Two. "His unique talent," writes James Mann in Rise of the Vulcans, "was to convey a sense of soothing solemnity; Cheney could make whatever he said so obvious, reasonable and self-evident that listeners often didn't stop to question it." Moderate in manner if not in essence—his House voting record was to the right of Newt Gingrich's—he developed a mystique as the acme of hard-nosed competence

http://villagevoice.com/issues/0429/powers.php