Donald Trump won the presidency by promising to lower costs and end wars. A year and a half later, he is a wartime president contemplating whether to send U.S. ground troops into an expanding conflict in Iran. Gas prices are spiking and Trump is urging Americans to be patient. Everything adds up to a perilous situation for Republicans in the midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. The president did little to sell the war to skeptical voters before it started, and he defended his leadership on Wednesday night in his first major presidential address on the conflict.

In Dick Cheney's hands, the vice presidency became a nexus of influence and manipulation — no longer the timid office where its occupants had tended their boss's ambitions. For George W. Bush's vice president, bunkering in secure undisclosed locations after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was less an inconvenience than a metaphor for a life of power that he exercised to maximum effect from the shadows. Cheney died Monday at age 84. Cheney defended until his death the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed after the 9/11 attacks. The Republican also became a fierce critic of President Donald Trump, branding him a "coward" who tried to steal the 2020 election.