In My Time - Dick Cheney [139]
Lynne was on the board of American Express mutual funds, and once a year the company had a board meeting in Minneapolis to which spouses were invited. That’s where I was on the night of July 12, when I was called away from the dinner table to take a call from Governor Bush. He told me that Dr. Cooley had given me a green light on the health front, concluding that there was no reason why I could not run for and serve as vice president. Of course that was good news, but I was still looking ahead to the meeting scheduled for Saturday, July 15, at the Governor’s Mansion in Austin, where I intended to lay out the case against myself. And I wouldn’t be just going through the motions. There were solid reasons why I didn’t think I made sense as George Bush’s running mate, and I intended to put them on the table. I was so serious about talking him out of picking me that my family was confident I would come back from the meeting having taken myself off the list.
The governor, his chief strategist, Karl Rove, and I met in the yellow parlor of the Governor’s Mansion, a high-ceilinged room with portraits of famous Texans on the wall. I began by going through a list of things about me that I believed the governor should be aware of. First, I told them, I had been arrested twice when I was in my early twenties for driving under the influence, and I’d been kicked out of Yale twice.
I also had health problems. Despite Dr. Cooley’s reassurances I wanted to be sure Governor Bush understood how serious they were. At that point I’d had three heart attacks and quadruple bypass surgery. I explained what would happen on the campaign trail if I ever felt chest discomfort or any other symptom. Heart patients have to be vigilant, and I told them that if I ever felt even a twinge in my chest during the campaign, I would go directly to a hospital. It would make no difference if I were in the middle of a speech or in the middle of a debate; minutes could mean the difference between life and death. There was simply no way to judge the impact of such an event on the outcome of a presidential race, but it wasn’t likely to be positive.
I also pointed out that the governor and I both had a history in the oil business. Governor Bush had been in the oil business years ago in Midland, and I’d been running Halliburton for five years. It wasn’t hard to imagine the negative charges our opponents would level at us based on that common denominator. We also had a potential constitutional problem because we were both living in Texas. The Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution prevents the Electoral College electors from any state from voting for a president and a vice president from their state. In other words, the electors from Texas could not vote for both me and George Bush. Before moving to Texas in 1995, I had been a nearly lifelong resident of Wyoming and still had a home there. But we would need election lawyers to make sure that Governor Bush wasn’t giving away Texas’s electoral votes by putting me on the ticket.
Finally, I told the governor he needed to understand how deeply conservative I was. He said, “Dick, we know that.” And I said, “No, I mean really conservative.” I had a reputation of being somewhat moderate, partly, I think, because I wasn’t a “bomb thrower” like some of my conservative colleagues, and partly because I got along with people all across the political spectrum. I think it was also because I got my start on the national scene working for Jerry Ford, who was a moderate. I needed to make sure the governor understood that my voting record was certainly not moderate.
Karl joined me in vigorously making the case against me as the vice-presidential pick, and the governor listened carefully to both of us. When the meeting broke up, I had