Cheney reportedly expressed great admiration for the House budget chairman Wednesday. Dick Cheney: 'I worship the ground Paul Ryan walks on'

Former Vice President Dick Cheney doesn’t want Paul Ryan to run for president — he likes the House Budget chairman too much.

“I worship the ground the Paul Ryan walks on,” Cheney said Wednesday during a rare public appearance, the Houston Chronicle reported. “I hope he doesn’t run for president because that would ruin a good man who has a lot of work to do.”


Support for Ryan’s budget plan, which includes an overhaul of Medicare, has become an early litmus test for the GOP presidential field. The plan was also a definitive issue in the special election in New York on Tuesday, where Democrat Kathy Hochul won one of the most Republican-friendly congressional seats in the country. Democrats have heralded that victory as a sign that Americans oppose Ryan’s plan.

But as the field of potential contenders for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination has narrowed, some members of the GOP have begun to call for him to run. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said earlier this week that he would welcome a White House run, saying of his colleague, “What Paul Ryan is about is real leadership.”

Ryan said Sunday on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” that he is “not running for president,” but didn’t completely close the door to being drafted or getting on the ticket as a running mate.

“You never know what opportunities present themselves way down the road,” he told host David Gregory.