In My Time (44 page)

T
he 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia was a showcase for George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism,” and as much as the mainstream media can ever love a Republican convention, they were fans of this one. They hailed the convention’s first-night theme—“Opportunity with a Purpose: Leave No Child Behind”—as something new and welcome from the GOP. When Laura Bush talked about the importance of literacy and Colin Powell spoke about community service and volunteerism, press coverage praised the theme of inclusion, and the convention’s “
softest of sells
.”

The Bush campaign communicators had worked hard to put together a convention that would present a moderate face to undecided voters, and they seemed to have succeeded. When they saw a draft of my speech, however, they worried I would undo their months of hard work. One line in particular troubled them, the refrain “It’s time for them to go,” which purposely echoed the line from Al Gore’s 1992 convention address. I was pretty sure that in the context of 2000, it would irritate the heck out of Democrats and thrill Republicans, but some on
the Bush staff thought it was too harsh. They didn’t want me to attack Clinton and Gore; they believed “red meat” might play well in the hall, but not in people’s living rooms.

I think they were hoping for a kinder, gentler Dick Cheney, and I listened to what they had to say, and then I ignored their advice. And to this day I am glad I did. It was important for the Bush-Cheney ticket to reach out to moderates, but we also had to make clear that there were big differences between us and our opponents and that it was time for a change. Watching a tape of the speech now, more than a decade later, I am struck by how well it served that purpose—and how much fun I had giving it.

As a candidate for president, Al Gore was trying his best to distance himself from Bill Clinton and the scandals surrounding him. I tried my best not to let him. Speaking of the two of them that night I said:

Somehow, we will never see one without thinking of the other. . . . They came in together. Now let us see them off together. Ladies and gentlemen, the wheel has turned, and it is time, time for them to go.

Bill Clinton had said that he planned to hold on to power “until the last hour of the last day,” and I reminded the crowd that it was his right to do so:

But my friends, that last hour is coming. That last day is near. The wheel has turned, and it is time, time for them to go.

After two nights of compassionate conservatism, the audience in the First Union Center was ready to raise the roof, and raise it they did. They chanted, “Time for them to go! Time for them to go!” before breaking spontaneously into the refrain from a sixties song, “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!” I even got into it myself at one point, signaling like a baseball umpire, “You’re outta here!” I’ll never forget looking out into the vast crowd and seeing George Shultz, a former secretary of state and one of America’s most dignified
elder statesmen, swaying back and forth and singing, “Hey hey hey, goodbye!”

I ended my remarks with a reminder to the audience of how lucky we are to live in the United States of America and how great a debt we owe to those who have preserved and protected our great nation. I described a trip I had taken many times as secretary of defense from Andrews Air Force Base to the Pentagon by helicopter. I talked about looking down at the Capitol, where all the great debates that have shaped two centuries of American history have taken place, and then flying along the Mall, where the monument to George Washington, our first president, stands sentinel. To the north was the White House, where John Adams once prayed “that none but honest and wise men may ever rule under this roof.” Next came the memorial to Thomas Jefferson, the third president and author of our Declaration of Independence, and then the memorial to Abraham Lincoln, the greatest of presidents, the savior of the Union. Finally, after crossing the Potomac, just before settling down at the Pentagon, I looked down on Arlington National Cemetery. “I never once made that trip,” I said,

without being reminded of how enormously fortunate we are to be Americans, and what a terrible price thousands have paid so that all of us and millions more around the world might live in freedom. This is a great country, ladies and gentlemen, and it deserves great leadership. Let us go forth from this hall in confidence and courage, committed to restoring decency and honor to our republic.

At the end of my speech, white banners emblazoned with “Bush-Cheney” in large red letters unfurled from the rafters, and confetti and beach balls showered the crowd. As the celebrations died down, Lynne and I stepped to the side of the stage to listen to one of our favorite singers, Lee Greenwood, end the evening with his great song “God Bless the U.S.A.”

There were many amazing moments during the Philadelphia convention. One was when I went with my daughter Mary, who had
agreed to serve as my personal assistant during the campaign, to visit my old boss President Gerald Ford. As we arrived in his suite, the eighty-seven-year-old former president walked over to Mary, put his arm around her, and said, “I bet you’re proud of your dad, aren’t you?” “Yes, sir, Mr. President,” she replied. “I sure am.” “Good,” he said. “Me too.” If it hadn’t been for President Ford and the trust he placed in me a quarter century before, I wouldn’t have been the Republican nominee for vice president, and I was grateful for the opportunity to thank him personally.

The day after Mary and I visited him, he was hospitalized, having suffered a stroke. He would live six more years, time deeply valued by those of us who loved him, and when he died, it was my great, though sad, honor as vice president to eulogize him in the Capitol Rotunda. I remembered his brief presidency, just 895 days, as a time “filled with testing and trial enough for a much longer stay.”

Even then, amid troubles not of his own making, President Ford proved as worthy of that office as any who had ever come before. He was modest and manful; there was confidence and courage in his bearing. In judgment he was sober and serious, unafraid of decisions, calm and steady by nature, always the still point in the turning wheel.

A man who never assumed airs and was known for his kindness, Gerald Ford led our nation through one of the greatest constitutional crises in our history.

On the day after the convention, Governor Bush, Laura, Lynne, and I left Philadelphia on a special campaign train, making old-fashioned whistle-stops all across the battleground states of Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois. After that we would spend most of the next nine weeks traveling separately. That way we could double the territory we covered, hold twice as many rallies and town hall meetings, and generate twice the local press coverage.

Unlike many vice presidential candidates who come to their campaigns
with a political staff largely in place, I had been gone from politics for seven years, so I used the weeks just after the convention to hire people. My longtime executive assistant, the steady and well-organized Debbie Heiden, came on board and stayed with me through all eight years of my vice presidency. I signed on Dirk VandeBeek, who had handled public relations at Halliburton, to act as my campaign press secretary. I interviewed only one candidate to be my chief of staff, Kathleen Shanahan, who had worked for President Reagan, George H. W. Bush, when he was vice president, and California Governor Pete Wilson. She was extremely competent, tough, smart, and funny, and she fit in right away with the whole Cheney family.

The campaign also assigned a team of three policy people from Austin to take turns traveling with me. I hadn’t had time to get up to speed on every one of the issues I might be asked about, so I was going to be learning on the road. These policy advisors knew the governor’s position on everything from nuclear waste and education reform, to Social Security and faith-based initiatives, and would make sure my operation and his were always on the same page. Tim Adams was a sharp and reliable hand, who later went on to become undersecretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department. Joel Kaplan was a marine with a law degree from Harvard and a great sense of humor. He came from a family of Democrats, but somewhere along the way he’d figured things out. He later became deputy OMB director and then deputy chief of staff in the White House. And Stuart Holliday combined serious knowledge of every domestic and foreign policy issue that might come up in the campaign with a great ability not to take himself too seriously. Stuart later became an ambassador to the United Nations for special political affairs.

The staff at campaign headquarters in Austin decided my first solo stop on the campaign trail should be in Florida, where I’d participate in what they had dubbed “Education Week.” My assignment was to unveil the Bush-Cheney school bonds program at a Fort Lauderdale elementary school, which sounded fine to me, but when I walked into Croissant Park Elementary on the morning of August 31, I realized that
my audience was going to be a bunch of third graders. Because I’m a team player I went ahead and gave my speech, covering the complexities of school financing for eight-year-olds sitting cross-legged on a library floor. I’ll never forget the confused looks on their faces as I talked about the importance of local bond initiatives. I am sure they were thinking, Who is this guy, what is he talking about, and how much longer before recess?

After the Fort Lauderdale fiasco, I decided to use my own judgment. I’d do what the campaign staff in Austin wanted—but only if I felt right about it. When they sent me a speech about abstinence education to be delivered at another event, I tossed it out. This wasn’t a subject I’d pronounced on before, and I couldn’t see a compelling reason to begin now.

Governor Bush and I met up again over Labor Day weekend in Illinois, where we spoke at a rally. I introduced him and he made some brief remarks to the enthusiastic crowd. Afterward, as we stood onstage alongside the podium waving to the crowd, we didn’t realize that a directional microphone was picking up our words. When the governor recognized a reporter whose coverage had been particularly unfriendly, he pointed him out to me. “There’s Adam Clymer,” he said, “major-league asshole from the
New York Times.
” I nodded my agreement: “Big time,” I said.

Our exchange was played over and over again on TV and radio, totally blocking any other messages we wanted to get out—particularly the one about restoring honor and dignity to the Oval Office. But the story finally died down, and the only lasting result—aside from burnishing Clymer’s reputation with his colleagues in the press—was that I became known as “Big Time” around campaign headquarters and beyond.

If you asked my traveling campaign staff, they’d probably tell you that my next Illinois campaign stop was even worse. We went to the Taste of Polonia street festival at the Copernicus Foundation Plaza in Chicago, where I made some brief remarks to the large crowd gathered to celebrate Polish cultural heritage and then handed the microphone back to the Illinois state treasurer, Judy Topinka. She grabbed the mike and enthusiastically announced that “Secretary Cheney will now dance
a polka with Miss Polonia!” That was news to me, but I didn’t have much time to consider my options because Miss Polonia was right there and ready to dance. So we polkaed—pretty enthusiastically, as I remember. As we whirled around I could see my daughter Mary offstage in the staff section watching in horror. She told me later that her only comfort was the knowledge that Governor Bush’s and my description of the
New York Times
reporter at the previous stop would completely overshadow any photos of my polka debut.

September seemed to go from bad to worse. The Gore campaign had enjoyed a major bounce out of their convention, and we were still fighting to catch up. Our effort wasn’t helped when the
Dallas Morning News
reported that I had failed to vote in fourteen of sixteen elections that had been held while I was living in Dallas. I can’t remember many stories that have surprised me more. As it turned out, individual jurisdictions in Texas often call elections about single issues; they aren’t well publicized and draw very few voters. So for most of the elections in question, I hadn’t even known I wasn’t voting.

Unfortunately, in the high-intensity atmosphere of a presidential campaign, facts don’t always matter. You can tell your side of the story, but the press will keep hammering, as will your opponents, who want nothing more than to knock you off message. Any moment I spent explaining why I hadn’t voted in fourteen of sixteen elections was a moment I wasn’t spending telling people why they should vote for us in this election.

But the press will get off one negative story for another one, and we were able to provide just such a diversion during a campaign stop in Shelton, Connecticut, later the same day that the voting story broke. I was scheduled to speak at an assisted living facility in the 5th Congressional District, where Mark Nielsen was the Republican candidate for Congress. Earlier that day, Nielsen had put a new ad on the air, featuring political figures he believed were “Leaders of Honor and Integrity.” These leaders included President George H. W. Bush, Senator John McCain, and Senator Joe Lieberman, my vice presidential opponent. While I couldn’t disagree with Nielsen’s characterization of my
opponent—Senator Joe Lieberman
is
a leader of honor and integrity—we were in the middle of a hard-fought campaign, and it wasn’t easy to explain to the press why this Republican congressional candidate was promoting my Democratic opponent.

In anticipation of my arrival at the assisted living center, the advance team turned off the noisy air-conditioning system, and because I was running late, it had been off for quite some time when I got there. The room was so warm that much of my audience was asleep—and I totally understood. Even I had to struggle to stay awake as I slogged through a speech on Medicare reform. My appearance before the audience of senior citizens was a fitting end to a campaign swing that began with a school bond speech to eight-year-olds. Later, my daughter Mary would write a book in which she called my early days of solo campaigning “
nine days of hell
.”