American vice-presidents are by definition a heartbeat from the presidency of the most powerful country in the world. Now the next vice-president may be Richard Cheney who has survived three heart attacks himself.
This has not prevented Governor George Bush from choosing Mr Cheney to be his running mate in the US presidential elections. In any case, Mr Bush had received assurances from cardiac surgeons that Mr Cheney is fit for a vigorous campaign.
From being the man chosen to vet possible vice-presidential running mates for Mr Bush, Mr Cheney has become the running mate. He is widely viewed by friends and political opponents as superbly qualified for the job, yet there is also a sense of let-down following Mr Bush's promise of an "electrifying choice".
Democrats had feared and Republicans had prayed that the widely admired Gen Colin Powell would join Mr Bush on a so-called dream ticket. Others had hoped that Senator John McCain, who did electrify the country with his campaigning during the primaries, would be Mr Bush's choice. But Gen Powell continued to refuse going on the ticket although he may yet be Mr Bush's Secretary of State.
The quiet-spoken 59-year-old Mr Cheney's experience as a former head of the Pentagon as secretary of defence during the Gulf War, as a former chief of staff to President Gerald Ford and as a six-term Congressman from Wyoming, will bring to the Bush campaign the gravitas and experience many see as lacking in the 53-year-old son of former President Bush.
Politically, Mr Cheney is probably even more conservative than Governor Bush. During his 12 years in Congress he voted consistently against gun control, affirmative action to help minorities and the women's equal rights amendment, and for the Reagan Star Wars initiative and anti-abortion measures.
Mr Cheney is coming from being chief executive of Halliburton, one of the biggest oil industry service companies in the world. So there will be two oilmen on the Republican ticket, a fact that Vice-President Al Gore will try to exploit in his campaign, which is strongly critical of the oil industry for the present high petrol prices in the US.
Mr Cheney's conservative record has not prevented him from being widely liked by both political colleagues and opponents. He was on a fast track to being a likely speaker of the House of Representatives when President Bush choose him as secretary of defence in 1988. Instead, the more abrasive Newt Gingrich became speaker following the Republican landslide in 1994.
Mr Jerald ter Horst, who was President Ford's press secretary when Mr Cheney was the White House chief of staff at only 33, describes him as very capable, very calm: "He's almost completely unflappable. There's usually a sort of half-smile on his face. He takes everything in his stride."
Mr Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, where his father was an agriculture official, and soon moved to Caspar, Wyoming, where he grew up and won a scholarship to Yale University. But he dropped out after a year, later explaining: "I didn't like the east, I wasn't a good student."
Back in Wyoming, Mr Cheney took a master's degree in political science and studied for a doctorate at the University of Wisconsin. He received four student deferments from being drafted during the Vietnam War and later he received a fifth because of the pregnancy of his wife, Lynne.
Thus, it was without any military record that Mr Cheney took charge of the Pentagon and US defence policy. He showed himself to be a forceful leader there and dismissed one air force general and reprimanded another for straying into the political sphere.
During the Gulf War Mr Cheney worked closely with the then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Powell, and with Gen Norman Schwartzkopf in drawing up Operation Desert Storm, which was carried out against Iraq with minimum American casualties.
Mr Cheney also built up a close relationship with President Bush, who is believed to have strongly supported him as his son's choice of running mate. Mr Scott Reed, who ran Mr Bob Dole's unsuccessful presidential campaign four years ago, says Mr Cheney "adds gravitas to the Bush ticket and sends a strong signal to US allies and adversaries overseas about how serious this candidate is".