BY JON WARD
PREVIOUS PAGE: AP PHOTO/CLIFF OWEN
>> When Liz Cheney moved to Wyoming, in 2012, her path
to the Senate seemed clear enough. Cheney had a famous
name, a high-profile media presence, an impressive CV,
and plenty of money. The Republican incumbent, a backbencher named Mike Enzi, was expected to retire. Most
political pros would have had an easy time gaming out the
next few moves: First, meet Enzi to divine his intentions.
Make sure to kiss the ring. Maybe offer a nudge while
you do so. Then sit back and let him to do the right thing.
When it’s done, offer some gracious praise on the occasion of his retirement. And then await a coronation.
It’s a good bet that’s how Dick
Cheney, a famously effective backroom operator, would have handled it. His cable-bred daughter,
though, was not content to quietly
make Enzi an offer he couldn’t
refuse: She simply called him up
and informed him she was moving
toward running against him. Not
for the last time in the campaign,
the shock and awe approach backfired. “I think Enzi would have
dropped out if she hadn’t announced so early,” one Enzi donor
says. “But Enzi did not want to be
seen as being shoved out.”
Last week, it was Cheney who
left the race, citing family reasons.
(An insider describes the issue as
something non-life threatening
involving one of her daughters.)
But there were political considerations, too. Cheney was trailing
badly in early polls and having
trouble finding a Washington firm
to set up a super PAC. Which all
added to the aborted campaign’s
central mystery: Why did this
well-prepared, well-connected,
well-known political figure put on
such an amateurish performance
when she finally ran for office on
her own?
Cheney’s campaign was marked
by a Palinesque series of news stories involving ham-handed politics
and small-time personal dramas:
There was the kerfuffle over whether her dad was an old fly-fishing
Previous
page: Liz
Cheney
addresses the
Conservative
Political
Action
Conference in
Washington,
D.C., on Feb.
18, 2010.