USTIN, Texas - By the time he invited Dick Cheney to his ranch in early July, Governor George W. Bush already had set aside the idea of making the former defense secretary his running mate. He'd put the question to Cheney months earlier, and Cheney, nearly a decade out of public life, had said no.
But as the two men huddled that July day in a den at the ranch in Crawford, going over other possible contenders for most of the morning, Bush had a nagging feeling that his list was incomplete. They broke for lunch, and as the assembled guests made sandwiches, Bush confided in his wife.
''This would really be the best man, if he would do it. I wish he would,'' Laura Bush recalled her husband saying July 3, according to a senior aide.
That wish came true for the Texas governor yesterday, as he offered, and Cheney accepted, the role of vice presidential candidate. The choice, heralded as a sound and sensible one by many Republicans and derided by Democrats as a throwback to the administration of former President Bush, marked the first major decision that Bush has made since emerging as the likely Republican contender earlier this year.
Bush had long said his choice would be the first by which the public could measure his judgment. He also long ago laid out three qualifications for his vice president: a shared political philosophy, personal compatibility, and the unquestioned ability to serve as president should the need arise.
Dismissing concerns about Cheney's heart problems and rejecting the temptation to pick a running mate from a politically significant state, Bush telephoned Cheney at home at 6:22 a.m. yesterday and invited him onto the Republican ticket. Hours later, the two men, flanked by their wives, shared the stage in a University of Texas conference room to make their announcement.
''I was impressed by the thoughtful and thorough way he approached his mission, and gradually I realized that the person who was best qualified to be my vice presidential nominee was working by my side,'' Bush told the crowd of 200 or so campaign workers and supporters.
''I honestly did not expect that I would be standing here today,'' Cheney said in response. ''But I had an experience that changed my mind this spring.''
That experience, as recounted yesterday by several Bush aides, involved weeks of persuasion by the Texas governor and even input from his father, the former president, who placed a key telephone call last week to settle questions about Cheney's health.
Cheney, 59, who served as Pentagon chief in the Bush administration after spending 10 years representing Wyoming in the US House, rose to the top of the Texas governor's short-list almost as quickly as the Republican primaries came to an end, aides said. During a meeting in the Governor's Mansion in Austin in March, Bush asked Cheney, a close adviser on foreign policy matters and longtime friend, to think about joining the ticket.
But Cheney, the chief executive officer of Halliburton Co., a Dallas-based energy and construction services business, declined. He instead agreed to run the vice presidential selection process, and began, on April 25, to solicit voting and other public records from willing candidates.
Cheney vetted numerous contenders, including Governors Frank Keating of Oklahoma and Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania. (Ridge yesterday issued a statement saying he had privately withdrawn from the running July 6 after concluding that a national campaign would be ''daunting on a personal level.'') Cheney spoke with Bush on an almost-daily basis. As the weeks passed, the two men ''developed a great friendship,'' communications director Karen Hughes said.
Yet as he surveyed his possible running mates - which at times included as many as 20 or 30 Republicans - Bush returned repeatedly to his original preference, aides said. Over the July 4 weekend, he again broached the topic with Cheney, taking him out on a back porch to ask him to reconsider.
This time, Cheney said he would.
Having suffered three mild heart attacks more than a dozen years ago, Cheney flew to Washington on July 11 to undergo a physical exam. The following day, his doctors ''gave him a clean bill of health,'' Hughes said. Bush, seeking an independent evaluation, called his father to request that he put Cheney's doctors in touch with Dr. Denton Cooley, a Houston cardiac surgeon and Bush family friend.
Around the same time, on July 15, Bush brought Cheney to Austin to meet his top ring of advisers. Even then, however, Cheney continued to evaluate other contenders, meeting with John Danforth, the former senator from Missouri, in Chicago on July 18.
But Bush was persistent. The following day, July 19, he placed an early morning phone call to Cheney telling him he wanted to ''seriously consider'' him. At Bush's request, Cheney met with members of his company's board and raised the possibility that he might leave.
Throughout, Cheney said yesterday, Bush was ''always firm and always fair. And in the end, I learned how persuasive he can be.''
Despite the phone calls former President Bush made during the discussions about Cheney's health, the Bush campaign downplayed the idea that the governor relied on his father's counsel to reach a decision. His role was primarily ''that of a loving father,'' Hughes said. And over this past weekend, while visiting a retreat in California, the former president gave no indication, in conversations with friends, that he had tried to influence his son. Former Wyoming senator Alan Simpson, who saw the elder Bush on Friday, said the former president simply described the choice as ''interesting.''
''Some people say it shows his dependence on his dad's thinking; I think it shows his independence,'' said Republican strategist Kellyanne Fitzpatrick. ''I didn't know he would have the ability to resist the calls to choose from among the cast of governors and the calls of opinion leaders to go with someone that is bold and titillating.''
Bush advisers also insisted that Cheney had been fully vetted, despite his role as an independent selection committee chairman. Campaign manager Joseph Allbaugh oversaw the analysis of his public records; when it came to more personal matters, such as financial records and personal history, the Texas governor handled the vetting himself, aides said. ''Cheney discussed with him his own finances the way other candidates discussed theirs with Cheney,'' Hughes said.
Yesterday, after a weekend of rumors and numerous leaks to media outlets that Bush had settled on Cheney, the governor placed the decisive phone call. As Cheney got off the phone, according to Hughes, he told his wife: ''Honey, let's sell the house. I quit my job. We're going back into politics.''
Bush and Cheney plan to debut their ticket today in Wyoming, making a joint appearance at a rally before returning to Texas later in the day. Cheney will also travel with Bush on Friday, aides said.
Early polls suggested that the public viewed the Cheney pick as solid but perhaps uninspiring. According to a Gallup Poll of 644 registered voters, 55 percent of respondents said the selection was ''excellent'' or ''pretty good'' - 11 points higher than when President Bush selected Dan Quayle as a running mate in 1988. But only 14 percent of Republicans said it would make them more likely to vote for the GOP ticket. In 1996, 26 percent said they would be more likely to vote Republican because Senator Bob Dole chose Jack Kemp.
