Tuesday Morning, NY Times White House correspondent Peter Baker was a guest on the Morning Joe program. He was there to discuss the account of the Bush administration published in his new book, “Days of Fire.”  During a conversation with host Joe Scarborough, Baker put to bed the meme of the mainstream media that Vice President Cheney was a Svengali controlling the dim-witted President Bush.

Scarborough: 

Let's talk first of all, here's George W. Bush being gracious as he often is at these events, but their relationship which started close got so bad by the end that they were constantly clashing weren't they?

Baker: 

Yeah it wasn’t a personally bitter relationship but it was a relationship that drifted apart. You know, we had this sort of cartoonish version, I think, of President Bush and Vice President Cheney as if Cheney was the puppet master and was the weak-willed President simply did what he was told.

Scarborough: 

It was never that way.

Baker: 

It was never that way

When discussing Baker's book on her program yesterday (without the author) fellow MSNBC host Alex Wagner described the Bush/Cheney relationship this way:

And by the end, sort of the Pinocchio understood, or I don't know is Svengali a better metaphor, the point is, there was a real rift between these two men.