It was inevitable that the Cheney sisters would fall out. Mary came out under the protection of pseudo-libertarian wealth but even the whitewash of pseudo-libertarian social policy wasn’t enough for Wyoming. So under the bus her sister directed a shove.

This generation of Cheneys had a choice: live as a united family of rich and shadowy oligarchs protected from the day-to-day consequences of their backroom power politics… or step more fully into the light of celebrity and resolve their contradictions. Being as much her father’s daughter as Elizabeth, Mary Cheney was unable to conveniently step back into the gloom. Elizabeth could have let our dark memories of her father fade and gotten on with her life of obscene wealth on the Board of Director circuit, but unlike Mary she is anointed with the hubris of the child who was both loved—as Mary surely was—and is the politically acceptable vessel of her father’s ambition to rule from the richest corner of the right.