In My Time - Dick Cheney [130]
ONCE THE MIDTERMS WERE over, it was time for me to make a decision about 1996. Did I want to run for president or not? Was I prepared to do all that would be required to mount a successful campaign? At Christmas our family gathered again in Jackson Hole, and as the snow fell outside our windows, we had a running conversation over several days about whether I should run. Although some family members were more enthusiastic than others, I knew I would have everyone’s full support for whatever I decided to do.
And what I decided was not to seek the presidency. After stacking up the pros and cons, I looked at it this way: I believed I’d had a great twenty-five-year career in public life, including service as White House chief of staff, secretary of defense, and Wyoming’s congressman for ten years. I felt that I was still young enough at fifty-three to have another career in the private sector, and that possibility was certainly more appealing than putting my family through the meat grinder of a national campaign for what would be the long-shot prospect of getting elected president. So, on January 3, 1995, I gave a heads-up to some of my key supporters that I wasn’t going to run and then issued this press statement:
After careful consideration, I have decided not to become a candidate for the presidency in 1996. I appreciated very much the kind words of encouragement and support I received from many Americans who had urged me to seek the presidency. I look forward to supporting the Republican nominee for President in 1996.
WITH MY CAREER IN politics now apparently over, I turned my attention back to fishing. I had already been lucky enough to fish some of the world’s great waters. During my time at the Defense Department, my counterparts in other countries had invited me to fly-fish while I was visiting. After a NATO meeting in Scotland, while everyone else went golfing at St. Andrews, I was treated to trout fishing with a ghillie, a Scottish fishing guide. The Chileans took me to the wilds of Tierra del Fuego. The Canadian armed forces invited me to the Eagle River in Newfoundland, where I fished for my first Atlantic salmon—big, powerful fish that are very challenging to catch—out of an historic fishing camp that Generals Hap Arnold and George C. Marshall had enjoyed on stopovers as they returned from Europe via the great circle route during World War II. The premier of Newfoundland invited me to fish in the Grand Cascapedia, another of his country’s superb salmon rivers.
Now I also had time to go back to places that I loved, such as the Dean River in British Columbia, where Oregon friends had taught me to fish for steelhead—a fish that hatches in fresh water, goes to sea after a couple of years, and then a few years later returns to fresh water to spawn. Rather than dying, they go back to sea and return to spawn again, all the time growing bigger and wilier. They are fast, challenging to hook, tough to land—a real test of skill. And you fish for them in some of the most beautiful parts of North America.
I continued fishing the Snake River in Wyoming and Idaho and the Bighorn in Montana with Wyoming friends as passionate about the sport as I am. My longtime friend Dick Scarlett usually arranged our trips. I made time every year to fish in Pennsylvania with my dear friend Don Daughenbaugh, a retired schoolteacher and coach, who knows more about fly-fishing than anyone I’ve ever known. I also fished some new territory, going twice to New Zealand, and taking an amazing trip with my daughter Mary and my friend John Robson