by Peter Mackler
NEW YORK, Sept 2 (AFP) - Although his popularity has hit a new low, US Vice President Dick Cheney shows no sign of softening his hard-nosed ways as he campaigns for a second term as George W. Bush's right-hand man.
The darling of the Republican right accepted his nomination to the party ticket Wednesday with a strident call to arms against terrorism and a blistering attack on Bush's Democratic rival John Kerry.
He warned the Republican convention of the overriding need to defend the United States against villains "bent on our destruction" and yearning to wreak mayhem with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
He slammed Kerry, a veteran senator and decorated Vietnam war veteran, as a dangerous waffler on security, whose record "reflects a habit of indecision and sends a message of confusion."
Such "red meat," delivered in barely more than a monotone, is standard fare for the long-time Washington insider and administration eminence grise whom the Democrats call Bush's "attack dog in chief."
But if the 63-year-old Cheney is still drawing raves from conservatives, he is going into the November 2 election with as many political minuses as pluses for Bush in the closely fought White House contest.
A Gallup poll published Wednesday showed Cheney's popularity rating hitting a new low at 44 percent, compared with 67 percent after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington.
While Cheney has been hailed by some as the most influential vice president in US history, the Gallup findings showed voters split evenly over whether he had provided Bush and the country with sound advice.
They also gave his rival, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, a double-digit lead in a head-to-head matchup. But the balding, bespectacled Cheney was not about to shy away from a comparison.
"People tell me that Senator Edwards got picked for his good looks, his sex appeal, and his great hair," Cheney told the Republican delegates. "I say to them: 'How do you think I got the job?'"
Cheney is used to the public eye, having represented the western state of Wyoming in Congress for more than a decade and worked in four presidential administrations, including a stint as defense secretary for Bush's father.
But under the younger Bush, Cheney has become a gray and secretive figure who often bunks down in an "undisclosed location" for security purposes. It's a role that he appears to relish.
"Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? It's a nice way to operate, actually," Cheney said in a rare interview with American newspapers in January.
But the vice president has been accumulating unwanted political baggage since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein.
Cheney was left on the defensive by the failure of US troops to find the weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war. He still insists Saddam had links to Al-Qaeda terrorists, even if Bush himself plays down the idea.
Halliburton, an oil services company Cheney headed before becoming vice president, has been embroiled in a series of investigations of lucrative army contracts won for the supply of services in Iraq.
He has been criticized for keeping secret a list of people he consulted in the spring of 2001 while working on the administration's energy policy, and he drew headlines by publicly cursing out a Democratic senator in June.
Cheney, who has a gay daughter, has even come under fire from conservative groups for his public coolness to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. He says the matter should be left to the individual states.
The flurry of bad press sparked brief speculation that Bush might dump Cheney for the second term, perhaps using the vice president's bad heart as an excuse. But the White House quickly quashed the idea.
In any case, analysts say it's debatable whether the controversies surrounding Cheney could affect the outcome of the November election.
"It's unclear whether the vice presidential candidates will have a hugely significant impact in this election, or if vice presidents have ever had a major impact on an election," said Frank Newport, Gallup's editor-in-chief.