Weekly Standard author to write official bio of Dick Cheney

Vice President Dick Cheney is finally getting the book-length biography treatment-and he's playing along. We hear that the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes is hot on the case and plans to publish a bio titled, naturally enough, Cheney as early as next spring. "I'm not a historian," Hayes fesses up. "I approached it like a long magazine article." A very long article, considering Cheney's been in the public eye for some five decades. "It's a pretty unique perspective of American history over the last 50 years," Hayes says of Cheney, who worked in three administrations before being tagged by George W. Bush as veep. As is Bush with biographer Robert Draper, we hear Cheney, his staff, and friends are cooperating. So what's surprised Hayes so far? Cheney isn't just a hawk but a strong advocate for the "softer side of the Bush doctrine, advocacy of democracy." Also: "He's much more a normal person than his public persona." And maybe one reason that Cheney floundered at Yale: Pals told Hayes that he "pined" for his girlfriend Lynne, now Mrs. Cheney.