News of the death of Vice President Cheney this morning is received with sadness here at the Sun. He was one of the most principled politicians of his time, and during his time in office was — in the view of the Sun — one of the stars of the administration of President George W. Bush. Even when we disagreed with him, as we did over, say, the J6 committee, we admired the way he, more often than others, based his views in a constitutional context.

Cheney was a former member of Congress from Wyoming and President George H.W. Bush’s defense secretary during the first invasion of Iraq, a war Cheney supported even when it was unpopular to do so. In 2000, Cheney headed George W. Bush’s search for a vice presidential candidate and ended up as vice president himself. He was a steady advocate of military action against Saddam Hussein.

We agreed with him and admired the firmness with which he refused to be run off his support for the war. He also refused to be run off his long-time support of Israel — including for its decision to bomb the Iraq nuclear plant near Baghdad. It was Cheney who, as secretary of defense some 10 years after Israel’s attack on the Iraqi reactor, extended, at a banquet in Washington, his and America’s appreciation for Israel’s attack on the Iraqi facility. 

Cheney’s credentials went well beyond foreign policy, though that appeared to be his favored realm. He was a corporate chief executive and a White House chief of staff — meaning, a manager and executive, as well as a strategic thinker. At the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, Cheney was among those mentioned as a potential Republican candidate for president. At the time, we issued an editorial called “Cheney’s Chance.” 

America, our editorial quoted him as saying, “is a good and an honorable country. We serve a cause that is right, and a cause that gives hope to the oppressed in every corner of this earth.” The vice president had added that: “We’re the kind of country that fights for freedom, and the men and women in that fight are some of the bravest citizens this nation has ever produced. The only way for us to lose is to quit.”

With the rise of President Trump, Cheney broke with the GOP — particularly after January 6, 2021. The former vice president backed his daughter, Congresswoman Liz Cheney. She had become an eloquent opponent of Mr. Trump and played a leading role on the January 6 Committee, which eventually cost her a seat in the House. The Sun opposed the prosecutorial bent of the committee as a violation of the constitutional prohibition of bills of attainder.

Yet we never lost our admiration for the former vice president. He articulated his views with clarity and commitment. They have been eclipsed during the drama of the Trump presidency as the neoconservative movement that Cheney embodied has faced scrutiny. We would like to think, though, as a new generation of Republicans starts to chart the road ahead, that Dick Cheney’s kind of character is one of the things for which the GOP will look.

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Correction: 2021 was the year of the January 6 breach of the Capitol. An earlier version misstated the year.