In My Time - Dick Cheney [127]
We are, indeed, fortunate that George Bush was our president when the nation faced the first major crisis of the post Cold War era—the invasion of Kuwait. . . . From the earliest days of the crisis, he refused to ignore or pander to aggression. His clarity of purpose focused the world on the need for action.
I offered my personal thanks as well. “I will always be grateful to you, Mr. President, for the opportunity you’ve given me to serve as your Secretary of Defense.” George Bush had been a tremendous leader. His wisdom had seen us through changes more significant than any of us could have imagined we would see in our lifetimes. Serving as his secretary of defense was one of the highest honors of my life.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Out of the Arena
As noon approached on Inauguration Day, I gathered my few remaining belongings in the office, said goodbye to my staff, and left the Pentagon for the last time as secretary of defense. Although I would still be secretary for another few hours—until the Senate confirmed Les Aspin and he was sworn in later that afternoon—the moment at which Bill Clinton was taking the presidential oath seemed to be the appropriate time for me to leave.
I was out of public office for the first time in fourteen years, and Lynne and I were moving home to Wyoming. We packed a big U-Haul truck full of furniture and the boxes of my congressional papers, and with help from my new son-in-law, Phil Perry, I strapped a large display case filled with the battle streamers earned by the U.S. military during my time as secretary of defense to the back of the truck. The streamers were a unique and thoughtful farewell gift from the military, but because each one was about four feet long, the glass-fronted display case was too big and too fragile to pack inside the truck with our other belongings.
Phil, who had married Liz just three weeks earlier, would be joining me on the cross-country drive to Wyoming. It takes someone with a strong constitution to agree to make a two-thousand-mile road trip alone with his father-in-law less than a month after joining the family, but Phil stepped up to the task. Luckily he is a man of few words, just as I am, so neither of us worried much about having to make small talk along the way.
When we got to Wyoming, we stopped at the university in Laramie so I could drop off my papers and the battle streamers for safekeeping at the American Heritage Center. The staff seemed surprised when we pulled up in the U-Haul to deliver the materials personally, but it never occurred to me to get them there any other way. Lynne met me that night in Jackson, where we began unpacking and planning for our new life in the private sector.
I KNEW AT LEAST two things for sure: I wanted to spend more time with my family, and I wanted to spend more time fishing. Of course, I also needed to earn a living—hopefully doing useful things—and I wanted to continue to contribute to the major policy and political debates of the day. So, I signed on with the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. I also agreed to join the boards of directors of Procter & Gamble, Union Pacific, US West, and Morgan Stanley. Having spent most of my career in government or academia, I knew I’d learn a lot by serving on the boards of some of the finest corporations in the country.
During that first summer out of office, I had plenty of time to think about the future on an eight-thousand-mile road trip I took alone across the country. I drove from Washington, D.C., to British Columbia, and then doubled back to Wyoming, giving speeches along the way, some paid and some unpaid, and traveling through beautiful country in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and the Canadian Rockies, including Banff