Sorry, that's classified: even Cheney's pliant hagiographer can't find the vice president's inner human.

• Author: Malanowski, Jamie
• Position: Book review

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Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President by Stephen F. Hayes HarperCollins, 304 pp.

Prognostication is a fool's game, but I would bet the farm that in 2009 and 2010, the best-seller lists will be frequently crowned by tell-all books about the Bush presidency. The administration's fervor for secrecy has ensured that there will be a large inventory of stories for the newly loose-lipped to share. More importantly, the debacle in Iraq and what is certain to be its long tail of repercussions ensures that there will be plenty of people with reputations to salvage who will zealously sidestep responsibility and aim to pin the tail on the most convenient and credible donkey in the corral. Perhaps this donkey Hill be President Bush; it would certainly make for riveting reading if we were to learn that behind his mask of peevish irritation, there was actually a thoughtful leader who was decisively trapping us in a quagmire from which there is no easy escape.

But that is not the smart way to bet. Clearly the superbly credentialed group of grownups who steered Bush onto the shoals will have to pay the price for their miscalculations. (In the documentary Iraq: No End in Sight, nothing is so damaging to the reputation of Donald Rumsfeld as the simple replays of his arrogantly preening performances at press conferences.) After the hard landings that lately have been suffered by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Libby, it's certain that before long Dick Cheney Hill have his turn being roasted on the gridiron (and I do mean on the gridiron--decidedly not at). Like Bob Haldeman and Don Regan and John Sununu and other famously hard men of administrations past who threw their weight around, Cheney Hill find that the bigger you are, the harder you fall.

Which should make Cheney very grateful for the thin pillow that Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen F. Hayes has handed him in his new biography of the vice president, Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President. The kindest thing one can say about this book is that it deserves to be the official biography for the 2008 Cheney presidential campaign that never Hill be. (You know, the campaign where the nation implores Cheney to take off his fishing waders and, like Cincinnatus, preserve the republic.) The book gives you a thorough survey of the topography of Cheney country, from his days on the high school football...