In My Time - Dick Cheney [145]
September seemed to go from bad to worse. The Gore campaign had enjoyed a major bounce out of their convention, and we were still fighting to catch up. Our effort wasn’t helped when the Dallas Morning News reported that I had failed to vote in fourteen of sixteen elections that had been held while I was living in Dallas. I can’t remember many stories that have surprised me more. As it turned out, individual jurisdictions in Texas often call elections about single issues; they aren’t well publicized and draw very few voters. So for most of the elections in question, I hadn’t even known I wasn’t voting.
Unfortunately, in the high-intensity atmosphere of a presidential campaign, facts don’t always matter. You can tell your side of the story, but the press will keep hammering, as will your opponents, who want nothing more than to knock you off message. Any moment I spent explaining why I hadn’t voted in fourteen of sixteen elections was a moment I wasn’t spending telling people why they should vote for us in this election.
But the press will get off one negative story for another one, and we were able to provide just such a diversion during a campaign stop in Shelton, Connecticut, later the same day that the voting story broke. I was scheduled to speak at an assisted living facility in the 5th Congressional District, where Mark Nielsen was the Republican candidate for Congress. Earlier that day, Nielsen had put a new ad on the air, featuring political figures he believed were “Leaders of Honor and Integrity.” These leaders included President George H. W. Bush, Senator John McCain, and Senator Joe Lieberman, my vice presidential opponent. While I couldn’t disagree with Nielsen’s characterization of my opponent—Senator Joe Lieberman is a leader of honor and integrity—we were in the middle of a hard-fought campaign, and it wasn’t easy to explain to the press why this Republican congressional candidate was promoting my Democratic opponent.
In anticipation of my arrival at the assisted living center, the advance team turned off the noisy air-conditioning system, and because I was running late, it had been off for quite some time when I got there. The room was so warm that much of my audience was asleep—and I totally understood. Even I had to struggle to stay awake as I slogged through a speech on Medicare reform. My appearance before the audience of senior citizens was a fitting end to a campaign swing that began with a school bond speech to eight-year-olds. Later, my daughter Mary would write a book in which she called my early days of solo campaigning “nine days of hell.”
As I began to get my campaign legs back, I realized that the 2000 campaign was actually pretty similar to the Ford campaign twenty-four years earlier. The rallies, the speeches, the whistle-stop train tour were the same kind of events we’d been doing in 1976.
Our granddaughters, Kate and Elizabeth, joining us on the campaign trail in California, October 2000. (Photo by AP)
Obviously, the technology had improved exponentially, and the news cycle was now twenty-four hours. But it wasn’t rocket science, and as I got into the swing of it, it was a lot of fun. We had great events, and I enjoyed the bands and confetti and cheering crowds. Who wouldn’t? Still, there were some stories in the press that said I didn’t like campaigning. Maybe they were based on the fact that I’m not a traditional, backslapping, glad-handing politician. But nobody ever bothered to ask me—nor, I noticed, did they ever point out that my approach worked. I had actually won every campaign I’d conducted in which my name was on the ballot—six statewide races in Wyoming at that point.
The best part of the campaign was that it was a family effort. Lynne and Mary were on the campaign trail with me nearly every step of the way, and Liz was there most of the time with my three granddaughters in tow. We’d introduce the kids at rallies and then usher them offstage before they stole the whole show. Afterward, we’d gather to recap the highlights