Dick Cheney, Former Vice President, Dead At 84

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who served under George W. Bush, has died at age 84. According to a statement from the family, Cheney succumbed to complications from pneumonia, as well as cardiac and vascular disease, per CNN. "Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing," they noted, adding that his wife Lynne, and daughters Mary and former Wyoming Representative Liz.

Cheney is often regarded as one of the most powerful vice presidents in U.S. history. During his tenure in the No. 2 job, Cheney captained America's foreign and defense policy in the nation's post-9/11 era, dubbed the "war on terror." He played a major role in the Bush administration's push to invade Iraq in 2003, based on inaccurate intelligence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. He was also the driving force behind the highly controversial "enhanced interrogation techniques" enacted by the administration during the war.

His productive time in the VP seat rounded out a successful career in conservative politics, which was also characterized by his roles as secretary of defense under former President George H. W. Bush, a congressman, and chief of staff under Gerald Ford. In recent years, Cheney didn't hold back his disdain for President Donald Trump and even endorsed Kamala Harris, calling Trump (via Newsweek) a " threat to our republic."

Cheney had a long history of heart problems. He experienced his first heart attack in 1987 during his first run for Congress in Wyoming. The former VP was in his mid-30s and decided to quit smoking — one of the sure-fire ways to make your heart healthier. He had his second and third heart attacks within the next ten years. The latter episode prompted him to undergo a quadruple bypass surgery. In 2000, just before stepping into the vice presidency under former President Bush, Cheney once again found himself in the emergency room. After his fourth heart attack, he underwent an angioplasty and began cholesterol maintenance with medication. The Republican politician was later given a pacemaker, which, as he gleefully confessed in a speech at the 2009 Baylor Health Care System Foundation Heart and Vascular Dinner, never needed to assist his heart.

However, in 2010, after a historic time in the No. 2 job in the White House, Cheney suffered his fifth heart attack. In 2012, at 71 years old, he received a heart transplant, which he told Stanford Medicine in their "1:2:1" podcast was "the gift of life itself." Aside from his history of heart disease, Cheney was fairly healthy, which is why his doctor, ​​Jonathan S. Reiner, told The New York Times in 2012 that "it would not be unreasonable for an otherwise healthy 71-year-old man to expect to live another 10 years." He lived another 13.