AYNE, Pa. - Having traveled up the winding, wooded road, Dick Cheney's motorcade emerged into a sunlit field, where the guests stood waiting in a neatly ordered double line.
Anything less would have been in violation of command. This was, after all, the Valley Forge Military Academy. It was also one of the safest venues for the former secretary of defense to give a speech calling for more defense spending.
The result was a low-key reiteration of Cheney's views. They were warmly received by the cadets in Eisenhower Hall; they are mostly ignored elsewhere.
The next day, in New England, was little different. The first stop was at a Maine subcontractor that makes submarine valves. Then there were visits to a New Hampshire maker of night-vision equipment and to a Vermont veterans' group.
It was an agenda that seemed more designed for a Pentagon chief than for a vice presidential candidate. And that seems to be the way the Bush campaign wants it.
When Cheney was named George W. Bush's running mate, the campaign said he wouldn't be relegated to minor markets, but that is where he often appears. Cheney was heralded as a nonpolitical choice when the Texas governor was sky-high in the polls, and when, perhaps, he thought he might easily be elected president.
Now that Bush is in a tight race with Vice President Al Gore, the limits of Cheney the campaigner have become apparent.
The question is not whether Cheney, 59, has the makings of an excellent vice president. Many Republicans and Democrats say that the former Wyoming congressman, and the former chief of staff to President Gerald R. Ford, might be the most valuable asset for Bush - if Bush is elected president.
But so far, there is scant evidence that Cheney is helping Bush to get the top job. GOP grumblings continue that he may be hurting the ticket.
Some longtime Republicans voice particular concern about Cheney's role, given the evident campaign chemistry between Gore and his running mate, Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut senator.
Lieberman's zest on the stump is obvious. Cheney can seem impatient with the give and take, and the occasional indignities, of life on the trail.
At a fund-raiser Friday in Vermont, a contributor, Fred Bertrand, former chief executive officer of the National Life Insurance Co., asked Cheney whether the campaign would change strategy. Cheney brushed aside the question by saying he always felt the race would be close.
Cheney, Bertrand said later, ''was not a spectacular choice,'' but a ''safe'' one. He added that the campaign ''was not helped'' by the controversy over reports that Cheney was in line to receive $17.2 million in stock options.
Some leading Republicans, who spoke privately, voiced irritation that the campaign had been prepared neither for questions about Cheney's wealth nor for his record as one of the most conservative members of the US House.
Almost from the start, the choice has raised eyebrows.
Hours after Bush announced that Cheney was his choice, Cheney appeared on ''Larry King Live'' and talked about the money he would lose by leaving Halliburton Co., the worldwide oil conglomerate that he headed.
''What happens financially, obviously, is I take a bath, in one sense,'' Cheney said.
In fact, Cheney was in line for millions of dollars in stock options. After weeks of press accounts about the windfall, Cheney announced that, if elected, he would forgo the options that are not vested.
A Cheney spokesman, Dirk Vande Beek, said yesterday that this would amount to $3.6 million of Cheney's retirement package. The remaining $13.6 million he would keep, no matter what happened on Election Day.
Cheney said through his spokesman that he had no second thoughts about the logic behind his choice as a running mate. Cheney initially had the job of vetting vice presidential candidates before taking the position himself. Some of the candidates who were bypassed might have secured a significant electoral state for Bush, such as Pennsylvania Governor Thomas Ridge or former Missouri Senator John Danforth.
The problem for Cheney is that his strengths may be inconsistent with Bush's political needs.
Thus:
Some polls have found that the state of the military is not a key issue.
Wyoming is a reliable Republican state with only three electoral votes.
Cheney's tenure as head of an oil conglomerate may further irritate voters upset at rising oil prices.
Jude Wanniski, a Republican economic specialist who has known him for 30 years, said Cheney was ''the perfect pick'' for vice president, but added that people around Bush ''are now telling him he made a great mistake in picking Cheney.''
Wanniski said the same thing happened after Bob Dole picked Jack Kemp in 1996: ''The process begins by which the establishment blames Cheney for losing the election. Cheney will be kept off TV and relegated to backwater spots, as Jack was in 1996. Then they will tie Cheney's hands in talking about things he may disagree with Bush on.''
Wanniski said: ''The more Cheney appears on Sunday talk shows talking about issues, the better he will look, because he is great on issues and unflappable.''
A hint of Cheney's discomfort at strongly stating some of his own views was evident on Wednesday. Asked whether he backed President Clinton's decision to use force in Kosovo, which was supported by Bush, Cheney hedged.
''I had reservations about it,'' Cheney said. ''It was a tough call, a close call. Once the president made the decision to use force, then I think there clearly was an obligation to support him.''
So what would Cheney have done? Again, he hedged: ''If I was commander in chief, I don't know that I would have made exactly the same decision.''
Cheney has also weathered several smaller issues, including reports that he has given only 1 percent of his income to charity in the past 10 years, and that he skipped voting in 14 of 16 elections in five years as a Dallas resident.
Bush campaign advisers say that in the end, voters will appreciate that Bush chose a man not by calculation, but for competence. For all the complaints about Cheney, there has been little talk about whether he is qualified to take over the presidency in a heartbeat. And that is the most important question about a vice president.
''You can't think of a person more qualified and capable as Dick Cheney,'' said a friend and former Reagan White House chief of staff, Ken Duberstein. ''Dick Cheney should be reassuring to the American people. After all, the campaign is one thing, but the goal of a campaign is to govern.''
Cheney's top issue is his assertion that the military is not sufficiently prepared to fight wars of the future. That has prompted Democrats to report that military spending began to decline under Cheney, who, under an agreement in 1990, authorized a 25 percent reduction in manpower over five years.
Cheney is in many ways an antithesis to the modern campaigner, as epitomized by President Clinton. Where Clinton's campaign appearances were symbolized by his comment that he ''feels your pain,'' Cheney sometimes makes listeners aware of his own discomfort.
This should not be a surprise: Cheney has always been a low-key, somewhat taciturn politician, valued for his intellect rather than for charisma or people skills.
Life on the road for Cheney is designed to be safe, predictable, and relatively news-free. On a swing through the Northeast last week, Cheney made a series of appearances that seemed designed to avoid controversy.
He visited Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut, which have a combined 22 electoral votes, as well as the stop at Valley Forge in the crucial state of Pennsylvania, with 23 electoral votes. Most were invitation-only events, closed to the voting public, although a few protesters showed up at a Vermont rally waving signs that criticized Cheney for backing billions of dollars for the military and for opposing Head Start as a US House member.
An analyst, Charles E. Cook Jr., editor of the Cook Political Report, a Washington journal, said Cheney would have little positive or negative impact on the election, ''which is the norm'' for a running mate. ''Lieberman is the exception,'' Cook said. ''That was an outside-the-box selection that triggered Gore's comeback.''
Cheney, despite all of his years dealing with the press in Washington, does not appear comfortable with reporters. That seemed especially the case last week, which began when a microphone caught Cheney agreeing with Bush's vulgar condemnation of a New York Times reporter.
Although Cheney had just 10 journalists with him on his jet last week, aides said they could not persuade Cheney on Wednesday or Thursday to chat with the press in the back of the plane, either on or off the record, as Bush often does.
He held a brief news conference at Valley Forge and canceled a tentatively scheduled interview. The schedule did not seem heavy, with two or three daily public events, along with some fund-raisers. Nothing was public after 6 p.m.
On the stump, Cheney leaves no doubt that he is in command of his facts. To those who remember the way Dan Quayle struggled through such appearances when he was picked for the vice presidential slot in 1988, Cheney is the un-Quayle. No question is too obscure, and like a good professor, he rephrases many questions that the general audience may not understand.
But Cheney shows little interest in trying to win points for style. A Cheney address is just that - an address. The head is cocked at a 45-degree angle, the lip is curled, the tone is flat and stern. He typically begins his speeches by saying that ''life was good'' this summer before Bush ''put the arm on me'' to be his running mate, leaving the suggestion, perhaps unintended, that he doesn't really want to be there.
''I am a Westerner, a man of few words,'' Cheney says. Asked about his religious belief, he contrasts himself to the way Lieberman injects Orthodox Judaism into political discourse. He says he is a Protestant and has never talked publicly about his private beliefs - and he is true to his word.
Cheney made perhaps his most revealing comment on Thursday in Manchester, N.H., when he told a roomful of veterans and employees of a military subcontractor how much he loves to be alone.
''I am an avid fisherman and hunter,'' Cheney said. ''I like to get out all by myself with a fly rod; there's no one else around. That's one of the more enjoyable parts of life.''
