In My Time - Dick Cheney [134]
Dad was handling the end the way he had handled so much in his life—with quiet courage and dignity. But there is no denying the pain of closing out a home and life full of memories. One morning after all the furniture and belongings had been moved into the garage and tagged for sale, Sue arrived at the house to find Dad sitting in the garage alone, among the belongings of a lifetime, with tears running down his face.
By the spring of 1999, he had been in the hospital a number of times with the symptoms of congestive heart failure. He had seemed to be on the rebound at the end of May, when he lay down for an afternoon nap and never woke up. Just before he fell asleep, Bob, Sue, and I had all placed calls to him at nearly the same moment. Bob and I both got busy signals, but Susie got through and spoke to him one last time.
Before Dad died, word came that Congress had decided to name the federal building in Casper after me, making it the Dick Cheney Federal Building. He got a big kick out of that. It was a building he’d worked in for a number of years, and now it would have his son’s name on it. I thought of my dad and his pride in his long years of service for the federal government as I stood in front of the building for the rededication ceremony in the summer of 1999. I also thought how proud I was to be his son and namesake.
IN THE FALL OF 1999, Lynne and I hosted a party at our home in Dallas for the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and its Celebration of Reading programs. Governor Bush and Laura came, and the governor asked if there was a place we could talk for a few minutes. We went into the library, a quiet, paneled room at the back of the house, where he said that he would like me to manage his campaign for the presidency. I told him that I was honored by the request, but that I had to say no. I had a fulltime job, and there was no way I could also manage the day-to-day operations of a presidential campaign. I told the governor he had my support and that I’d help in any way I could. But a fulltime campaign position just wasn’t in the cards for me.
Several months later, in the early spring of 2000, Joe Allbaugh came to see me again. The primary race wasn’t completely over, but it was clear George Bush was going to be the Republican nominee. This time Joe wanted to know if I would be willing to be considered as Governor Bush’s running mate. Again, I said no. I was very honest with him about it. “Look, Joe,” I told him, “that just doesn’t make sense for you guys or for me.” I went through all the drawbacks, including my three heart attacks and the fact that the governor and I were both oilmen, which our opponents would use against us. In addition, both of us were then living in Texas—which would preclude Texas electors from voting for both of us.
Besides, I was very happy running Halliburton. I’d been there for about four years, and we were involved in energy projects all around the world. Through Brown & Root, we did construction as well, everything from a railroad across the outback of Australia to a baseball stadium for the Houston Astros. We also had a large contract to provide logistical services to the U.S. Army. One of the lessons we’d learned in Desert Storm was that it is both more effective and cheaper to have a private contractor with the right gear and equipment set up and maintain camps and provide food service and other basics of support than it is to have fulltime active-duty military personnel do these jobs. Brown & Root was good at what they did and apparently remains so, because under the Obama administration the army has continued to award the company significant contracts.
I was accomplishing things I was proud of, including the acquisition of Dresser Industries, which made Halliburton the largest energy services company in the world. After being sideswiped by a recession in Asia, our