They might be contemplating moving into the vice presidential mansion, looking forward to a life of relative luxury, having their garbage taken out for them and their lawn neatly mowed at government expense. Or they'll be out of the political rat race, free to exercise a fortune in stock options, to continue serving on company boards, moving in those incestuous circles of corporate influence where nobody draws nasty conclusions when you make a huge killing just for showing up or just because the price of oil goes through the roof.

Makes you wonder why Cheney ever agreed in the first place to run for an office that John Nance Garner, vice president in the first two administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, said "isn't worth a pitcher of warm spit." Cheney has belatedly declared that if he's elected he will forfeit his perfectly legal right to exercise the lucrative stock options conferred on him as a goodbye kiss from Halliburton Co., the oil drilling giant he recently headed.

Who in all this presidential race has made a more demonstrable sacrifice for the dubious honor of having his family's private life pawed over, his privacy crudely invaded, his income and finances investigated? Still, it would seem that Cheney, who's supposed to be a smart man, has made two very elementary miscalculations. He naively assumed nobody would notice that the Republicans had nominated not one but two Texas oilmen with all the unfortunate baggage oilmen carry into political life. This is about as dumb as nominating two HMO presidents or two executives from the pharmaceutical industry. More tellingly, when he departed politics, having been a congressman and secretary of defense, both he and his wife deeply immersed themselves in the corporate world, made a ton of money and acquired a truckload of potential conflicts of interest.

His wife, Lynne, took big money to be a director at several companies including Lockheed Martin, a major defense contractor. I suppose they wanted to draw on her combative experience as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, where she fought wars against political correctness. And while he was building a fortune at Halliburton, Cheney took seats on the boards of Procter & Gamble, Union Pacific, and Electronic Data Systems Corp.

These are typically the actitivites of former politicians who want to cash in on the contacts and celebrity they built up while serving on government salaries well below their true earning power. Nothing wrong with that, but now the Cheneys want to waltz back into politics without penalty.

Obviously, it did not occur to Cheney at the end of George H.W. Bush's administration that Bush's son would some day be so impressed by him that he'd draft him for vice president. Anyway, nothing in Cheney's robotic and colorless campaign style gives a clue in hell as to what gave Bush this bright idea. But, if I were Bush, I'd be exceedingly worried about it. Can it be that Cheney gives the impression that he doesn't care if he wins this election because he doesn't?

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