From time to time, I have felt Dick Cheney’s pain. We are both about the same age–I am some months older–and we both had our first heart attacks in our mid-30s. Over the years, we have been similarly inconvenienced by heart attacks. The elephant has stepped on his chest four times, and on mine twice. Cheney has had one multiple-bypass operation; I have had two of them. We have both had angioplasties, with stents. A couple of years ago, I drew ahead of Cheney in the fancy-therapy category by having DNA injected into my myocardium in order to induce the growth of new vessels–angiogenesis, a still experimental but highly promising technique that has, in my case, worked miraculously well. The Bush-Cheney situation produces role-reversal jokes–about Bush being a heartbeat away from the presidency, and so on. Having lived through medical experiences similar to the Vice President’s, I have a wary and complex attitude toward the fact that the most important man in Washington aside from Bush has been playing peekaboo for so long with his own mortality. Since Cheney is not vice-presidential standby equipment but rather a vital part of the Bush Administration, his medical fragility
