The Co-President at Work

By David Bromwich

The Dark Side: The Inside Story on How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
by Jane Mayer, Doubleday, 392 pp., $27.50

Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency
by Barton Gellman, Penguin, 483 pp., $27.95

The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism
by Ron Suskind, Harper, 415 pp., $27.95

Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy
by Charlie Savage, Little, Brown, 400 pp., $25.99

What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception
by Scott McClellan, PublicAffairs, 341 pp., $27.95

The Bush Tragedy
by Jacob Weisberg, Random House, 271 pp., $26.00; $16.00 (paper)

Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President
by Stephen F. Hayes, HarperCollins, 578 pp., $27.95

The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006–2008
by Bob Woodward, Simon and Schuster, 487 pp., $32.00

When George W. Bush testified before the 9/11 Commission, Dick Cheney was with him in the Oval Office. What was said there remains a secret, but throughout the double session, it appears, Cheney deferred to Bush. Aides to the President afterward explained that the two men had to sit together for people to see how fully Bush was in control. A likelier motive was the obvious one: they had long exercised joint command but neither knew exactly how much the other knew, or what the other would say in response to particular questions. Bush also brought Cheney for the reason that a witness under oath before a congressional committee may bring along his lawyer. He could not risk an answer that his adviser might prefer to correct. Yet Bush would scarcely have changed the public understanding of their relationship had he sent in Cheney alone. "When you're talking to Dick Cheney," the President said in 2003, "you're talking to me."