In My Time

by Dick Cheney

  Our motorcade pulled under the portico on the east front of the Capitol. I met Lynne, who had been riding with Tipper Gore, and we walked down the hallway together to room S-106, where we would wait until it was time to walk to the inaugural platform. Our movements at the Capitol were tightly scripted. The schedule for the morning reads, “11:18: Mrs. Cheney and Mrs. Bush announced at Platform Door; 11:20: Vice President–Elect departs Hold Room en route Platform. 11:25: Vice President–Elect is announced at Platform Door.”

  It is hard to describe the emotion I felt as the announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice President–Elect, Richard Bruce Cheney.” I thought of my parents, neither of whom lived to see this day. My mother, who was the family archivist, had documented every important family event for years, taking photos and carefully pasting news clippings into the family scrapbooks. If she had been on the platform, she would have had her camera, and I knew how proud she would have been. My father was a man of few words and a lifelong Democrat, until he switched parties to vote for me in my first Republican congressional primary. He would have taken immense pride—and probably enjoyed a chuckle of disbelief—at seeing his son sworn in as Vice President of the United States.

  Four brown leather armchairs were arranged in a semicircle near the podium for George Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and me. The morning was cold and drizzly, and we had space heaters at our feet. Lynne, Laura Bush, and the Bush girls were seated directly behind us. Mary and Liz were two rows back, seated with Laura Bush’s mother, Jenna Welch, and the president’s parents, Barbara Bush and President George H. W. Bush.

  The family Bible we had chosen for the occasion belonged to my grandfather, Thomas Herbert Cheney, who had signed the first page in pencil, “T. H. Cheney, Sumner, Nebraska 1895.” It was a very large Victorian Bible, the kind you could imagine a mother or father reading from as the whole family gathered around a fireplace together. It was so large, in fact, that when Barbara Bush saw Liz holding it on her lap before the ceremony, she said, “Boy, you guys are serious about this, aren’t you?”

  Shortly before noon I joined Chief Justice William Rehnquist at the podium, raised my right hand, placed my left hand on the Bible, and surrounded by my wife and daughters, became the vice president. It was an emotional moment for all of us, made even more so by the battle of the thirty-seven-day recount. I saw the tears in my daughters’ eyes and felt my own emotions well up. We’d been through an election like no other, but here we were. And here was America, once more showing the world the way we peacefully transfer power.

  AFTER AN INAUGURAL LUNCH in the Capitol, Lynne and I rode in the inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, then got out of the car and walked the last few blocks to the White House.

  With Lynne, Liz and Mary in the presidential reviewing stand at the inaugural parade, January 20, 2001 (Official White House Photo/Karen Ballard).

  Still in our winter coats, we visited my new office in the West Wing. It had been stripped bare. The furniture was gone, the carpets had been pulled up, and the walls were getting a fresh coat of paint. By the next day it would be ready for me to move in. Twenty-four years earlier, on January 20, 1977, I had walked through the West Wing hours before power transferred to a new president. It was nice to be back, on the incoming team this time. My new office stood next door to the one I’d occupied as President Ford’s chief of staff when I was just thirty-four. Now I was nearly sixty, and as a helpful staffer pointed out, the oldest guy in the West Wing.

  On my sixtieth birthday my family threw a surprise party for me in the vice president’s ceremonial office, a beautiful space in the Old Executive Office Building. Each new vice president learns that there is a special drawer in the desk in this office. Pull it open, and under a sheet of Plexiglas you’ll find the signatures of every vice president since Harry Truman. On top of this desk, on January 30, 2001, my family unrolled my birthday gift, a hand-painted map showing the battles my great-grandfather Samuel Fletcher Cheney had participated in during the Civil War. For the eight years of my vice presidency, this map would hang behind my desk, surrounded by the American flag, my vice presidential and secretary of defense flags, and the flag of the state of Wyoming.

  IN ADDITION TO BEING the oldest guy in the West Wing, I was also the only one the president couldn’t fire. As vice president, having been elected and sworn in, I carried my own duties as a constitutional officer. There were only two of them: succeeding the president if he was unable to complete his term and serving as president of the Senate, where I got to cast tie-breaking votes. Beyond that, my role depended on George W. Bush. I had no line responsibility. I wasn’t technically in charge of anything. I could only give advice. And the impact of my advice depended first and foremost on my relationship with the president. At the end of the day, it wouldn’t have mattered how many years of experience I had or how many other offices I’d held, if the president wasn’t interested in what I had to say.

  From day one George Bush made clear he wanted me to help govern.

  With President Bush in the Oval Office. In 2000, George W. Bush told me he wanted a vice president who would play an important role in governing the nation, and he was true to his word for the entire 8 years we served together. (Official White House Photo/David Bohrer)

  He had given a tremendous amount of thought, time, and attention to the issue of what his vice president would do. To the extent that this created a unique arrangement in our history, with a vice president playing a significant role in the key policy issues of the day, it was George Bush’s arrangement. For all the eight years we served together, he kept his word that I would have a major role, and I will always be grateful to him for that.

  As I think back on what made the relationship work, several things come to mind. First, I made clear early on that I would not be running for president myself in four or eight years. The president never had to worry that I was taking a position with an eye toward how it might be perceived by voters in Iowa or New Hampshire. I also decided to limit my exposure to the press. When I’d been White House chief of staff and secretary of defense, I’d spent a fair amount of time backgrounding reporters and granting interviews, but as vice president I wanted a much lower profile. Members of the press were most often interested in what advice I had given the president on a particular issue, and he needed to know that I wasn’t walking out the door of the Oval Office to brief reporters on what I’d just said.

  In addition, from the transition onward, there were media stories that I was somehow in charge. They weren’t true, and stepping out too much too publicly would only have fed them. I did do a number of memorable and important press interviews, including one with Tim Russert on the Sunday after 9/11, but I was generally much less accessible to the press than I had been in the past. I soon discovered that this was not a strategy for enhancing my image or reputation. For one thing, it limited my response to false charges made against me. But I decided then and believe now that the best way for me to serve the president and the country was to do so without briefing the media every step of the way.

  When trouble develops between a president and vice president, it often begins with staff conflict. To avoid that, we decided to integrate our staffs in key areas. Mary Matalin, my communications director, wore two hats. She served as my assistant and as an assistant to the president. This was also true in national security, where Scooter Libby carried both titles. In legal matters, my general counsel, David Addington, worked closely with the lawyers in the White House counsel’s office every day. My speechwriter, John McConnell, was also one of the president’s top speechwriters. Staff meetings and the policy processes were very well integrated. There were disagreements, of course, but the system worked pretty well most of the time.

  SHORTLY AFTER I WAS elected, the Speaker of the House, Denny Hastert, and soon-to-be chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Bill Thomas, asked to see me. Bill was an old friend and colleague. We’d both been political scientists before being elected in 1978,
and now he was about to head one of the most powerful committees in Congress. It was a position that carried with it the rights to some of the best space in the Capitol. Bill and Denny told me that they knew I had an office on the Senate side of the Capitol, but they considered me a man of the House and wanted me to have an office on the House side as well. Bill gave me two offices to choose from, and I picked H-208, just off the House floor. During most of my ten years in Congress, it had been Danny Rostenkowski’s office, and I had never seen the inside of it. Now, the space was mine.

  To my knowledge, no vice president before or since has had an office on the House side of the Capitol, and I used it for meetings with House members when we were working on key pieces of legislation. I also hosted buffet dinners there before presidential addresses to Congress, including the annual State of the Union. The tight security surrounding a presidential address means that most people who sit in the chamber have to arrive hours before the speech. Lynne and I invited the cabinet and Republican congressional leadership to join us for dinner on these occasions, then shortly before the speech was to start, they could file in to take their seats in the House chamber. This tradition ended in 2006 when the Democrats regained control of the House and Charlie Rangel became the new chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He reclaimed the office—as I’d expected he would.

  Beginning the first Tuesday I was in office, January 23, 2001, I was invited to attend the weekly Senate Republican policy lunch on the Hill, and throughout my eight years as vice president, I tried to make it to this lunch whenever I was in town. I was grateful for the senators’ hospitality since as an institution the Senate does not always take kindly to vice presidents, who have a foot in the executive branch as well as in the legislative. When Lyndon Johnson was about to become vice president, he laid out a plan to preside over Democratic caucus meetings in the Senate that infuriated many of his colleagues. “I don’t know of any right for a vice president to preside or even be here with senators,” one of them declared. In the end, Johnson did not preside—or even attend very often. Harry Reid made it clear that my successor, Senator Joe Biden, would not be welcome—which is too bad. I found these sessions to be important for building relationships and alliances and for getting things done.

  With with members of the Senate on the North Portico of the White House. As president of the Senate, I worked hard to develop relationships with my senate colleagues, and with members of the House of Representatives, that would help us accomplish our legislative agenda. (Official White House Photo/David Bohrer)

  I seldom spoke at the caucus lunches, though occasionally, if there was a particularly important issue on the agenda or if I’d been asked by the Republican Senate leadership, I would say a few words. For the most part, I preferred to listen, not to lobby for administration positions. I wanted the Republican senators to view me as an ally in the West Wing—and to continue to invite me to their weekly sessions.

  The relationships I had in both houses of Congress meant I was often the first person in the White House to hear if there was a problem. I’d get a call from Speaker Denny Hastert or Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, for example, giving me a heads-up if a piece of legislation was going off the rails. It was a very effective way, most of the time, to make sure the White House and Republicans on the Hill were on the same page.

  Much has been written about my advocacy of a strong executive, and it is true that I am a firm believer in protecting the president’s prerogatives, especially when it comes to the conduct of national security policy. But I loved my time in Congress, and I will always consider myself a man of the House. My respect for that institution and my understanding of how Congress works, including the pressures that individual members feel, was important as I worked to get George Bush’s legislative agenda enacted.

  We needed every Republican vote as the 107th Congress opened in January 2001. Not only had we just triumphed in one of the closest presidential races in history, but the Senate was deadlocked with fifty Republicans and fifty Democrats. My tie-breaking vote as vice president gave the Republicans the majority. Trent Lott, the majority leader, and Tom Daschle, the minority leader, worked out an arrangement for evenly dividing up seats on committees, but each committee was chaired by a Republican.

  SECURING TAX RELIEF WAS one of our most important campaign promises, and we proposed reform across the board for what would become the largest tax cut since 1981. It was our belief that taxes ought to be as low as possible, especially when it came to those elements of the tax code that affected savings and investment, economic growth, and job creation. We wanted to reduce rates on capital gains and interest and dividends, as well as lowering overall income tax rates for the American people. We believed, as do most conservatives, that the estate tax should be eliminated or significantly reduced. We saw it as fundamentally unfair, because it represents double taxation for those who have to pay it.

  Because there was a significant budget surplus, there was bipartisan support for a tax cut of some size, but the Democrats, particularly in the Senate, wanted a much smaller package than we did. On April 3, 2001, I cast my first tie-breaking vote and stopped a Democratic effort to reduce the size of the tax cuts. On April 5, my tie-breaking vote returned money to the tax cut package for relief of the marriage penalty. I also took part in the negotiations with Senate Republicans and Democrats over the ultimate size of the package. Sitting in Trent Lott’s office on April 4, I picked up a napkin imprinted with “Office of the Majority Leader,” took out my pen, and wrote out the two numbers representing what we wanted—$1.6 trillion—and what the Democrats wanted—$1.25 trillion. In between the two numbers, I wrote, “1.425 trillion,” and I circled it. Ultimately, we would be successful in securing a package of $1.35 trillion in tax relief for the American people. The package included a phased-in reduction of the estate tax, with elimination in 2010. All the tax changes were passed as part of the budget reconciliation process, which exempted them from filibuster, but also provided an expiration date.

  As the tax cuts were set to expire in 2010, they were, fortunately, extended for two more years. Although the estate tax was reinstated by President Obama, the current law allows for a five-million-dollar exemption, more than seven times the exemption allowed before President Bush acted.

  In the midst of the debate over tax cuts, it looked as though the Republicans might lose their one-vote majority. As we debated the budget resolution throughout the spring of 2001, Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont made clear that he wanted significantly increased funding for special education programs. Although we were increasing the education budget, we weren’t allocating the funds the way Jim wanted, and he threatened to switch parties, which would put the Democrats in control in the Senate.

  I know Jim cared deeply about the education program he was proposing, and even though he ended up switching parties, he kept his commitment to us to vote for the final tax cut package. In the end, I think his decision to switch had more to do with the committee chairmanship that Tom Daschle offered him than with anything else. In the Senate committee chairmanships are normally decided purely on seniority—the longest-serving member of the majority party on any committee traditionally becomes the chairman. But it was so important for the Democrats to get Jeffords to switch, Tom Daschle moved him to the head of the line and made him chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. With his party shift, every chair of every Senate committee also shifted hands as the Democrats took control.

  We worked hard to prevent Jim from switching, and certainly weren’t pleased when we failed. But as I look back now, I believe that Jeffords’s switch actually contributed to our victory in the 2002 midterm elections. He put the Democrats in control, but their margin was so narrow there was very little they could actually get done. Their inability to show any real accomplishment hurt them and helped us when the voters went to the polls a little over a year later. The president’s poll numbers were also high, near 70 percent, and when the midterm
results were in, we had increased our majority in the House by eight seats and gained two in the Senate, thus returning that body to Republican control. The last time a president’s party had gained seats in both houses of Congress in the first midterm election of his term was when FDR was in office in 1934.

  IN 2003 THE PRESIDENT proposed a second major round of tax cuts, and I again spent a good deal of time securing the votes we needed to get them passed. Even though we had enlarged our majority in the House and taken control of the Senate, the task wasn’t easy. While all Republicans favored a tax cut, there were a few who didn’t want to go with the $550 billion the president was proposing. They were worried about the deficit, a concern I generally appreciated. I have been quoted as saying around this time that “deficits don’t matter” and citing Ronald Reagan to bolster the case, but of course I thought deficits mattered. I just believed that it was important to see them in context, to note that while Ronald Reagan’s dramatic increases in the defense budget and his historic tax cuts did push the deficit from 2.7 percent of the gross domestic product in fiscal year 1980 to 6 percent in fiscal year 1983, his spending on defense helped put the Soviet Union out of business, and his tax cuts helped spur one of the longest sustained waves of prosperity in our history. The result was a peace dividend, increased federal revenues, and, eventually, lower deficits.

  In 2003, with the deficit just 1.5 percent of the GDP and the economy in the doldrums, the tax package the president proposed certainly seemed justified to me, but Senators Olympia Snowe of Maine and George Voinovich of Ohio thought it was too large. Chuck Grassley, needing their votes on a budget resolution, agreed to a cap of $350 billion on the tax package, a deal to which Majority Leader Bill Frist gave his blessing.