Meet Edgar. Part 1

From Truthout:

Dick Cheney's Psychology
Part 1: Almost Pleasantly Adrift
By John P. Briggs, M.D., and JP Briggs II, Ph.D.
t r u t h o u t Special Report

Wednesday 11 July 2007
The name Dick Cheney conjures images of Svengali or Rasputin. Even Republican White House staffers have called him "Edgar," referring to the vaudeville ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy, whom they see as Bush.

But has the man who's considered a master at manufacturing false realities successfully manufactured one about himself?

Adversaries and defenders alike find Dick Cheney a puzzling character: taciturn and so obsessed with secrecy that he is willing to go to any (sometimes paranoid) lengths to elude accountability and remain in the shadows; simultaneously arrogant and non-egotistical; a problem-solving technocrat or a Machiavellian monster, depending on your point of view; an avuncular presence with a soothing voice capable of delivering untruth or preposterous distortion with such breathtaking reassurance that even experienced politicians or journalists come away convinced; reassuring to some, vicious to others; a factotum to his political masters and yet, somehow, their behind-the-scenes puppeteer; a brilliant opportunist; a man who always seems in control and careful, yet is sloppy and takes aggressive risks; an apparently committed ideologue who is also apparently utterly amoral and without real principle except for a determination to accumulate power (but not necessarily for himself); self-sacrificing of his own personal ambition (to be the president, for instance), yet nonetheless ruthlessly ambitious; a man whose mature "adult" demeanor is contradicted by an adolescent locker room snideness; a personality tinged with gloom and resignation.

From a psychological point of view, how do all these odd pieces fit together, and, most importantly, what effect does the psychodynamic that binds them have on the processes and the policies of the administration of President George W. Bush?