Vice President Dick Cheney makes his home in Wilson, Wyoming, which is a tinier suburb of the tiny town of Jackson in the valley called Jackson Hole. When he is "in residence" his plane, which we call "Air Force Two," is parked on the tarmac at Jackson Airport. It was here this past weekend, so we surmise Dick was in town for the Fourth of July weekend.
We sometimes run into Cheney's Secret Service detail, eating burgers at Billy's on the square in Jackson - great burgers, by the way. The detail normally gets to spend August here, which has to be some of the best duty in the Federal service. It sure beats spending August in Crawford, Texas.
Cheney has become viewed as the Cardinal Richelieu of the Bush administration, the dark eminence. It is a strange characterization for a man who made an entire public career out of being a very talented second banana. I suppose it arises out of a public perception that Bush doesn't have the fire in the belly to take tough stands, so it must be Cheney's fault. My guess is that we've read that one wrong; George of the goofy grin is probably a whole lot meaner than people think.
A piece of local political trivia: Wyoming is reliably Republican in presidential elections. In 2004, Bush/Cheney carried every county in Wyoming except Teton County, the county where Dick lives. That loss doesn't stem from Dick's personal unpopularity with his neighbors, most of whom have never met him. Like Vail and Aspen, Teton County is home to lots of wealthy liberals who have formed a mainstay of Obama supporters.
Local real estate lore says that in Teton County the billionaires are buying out the millionaires. People holding regular jobs can't afford to own there unless they bought their homes 30 years ago or inherited them. Some do rent, most commute from Idaho or where we live in Lincoln County to the south. It is unclear how commuting will work with the higher gas prices but it has certainly stimulated much development in Alpine, the northernmost town in Lincoln County.
