In My Time - Dick Cheney [155]
We notified the Bush camp and told them that doctors would soon be holding a press conference to talk about the second test results. In that briefing, the slightly elevated enzyme levels were the focus, and since in the medical world elevated enzymes are synonymous with heart attack, Dr. Alan Wasserman, who held the press conference, didn’t use that phrase. Karen Hughes, watching from down in Texas, called to warn us that the press would now be absolutely convinced that the Bush-Cheney campaign was engaged in a cover-up. She told us that the doctors had to go back out and say the words heart attack. At my family’s urging, the George Washington medical team held a second press conference, using the phrase heart attack and explaining that the heart damage I had suffered was minimal. “This would be the smallest possible heart attack that a person can have and still have it classified as a heart attack,” Dr. Reiner said. But some members of the press remained suspicious that we were hiding some grave news about my condition. I knew that wasn’t true—and I decided not to worry about it. My job was to recuperate.
As a family we did face another immediate challenge: Thanksgiving dinner. I’d be in the hospital Thanksgiving Day, which wouldn’t have been such a big deal had I not been the one who always cooked the family’s Thanksgiving dinner. No one was in the mood to eat hospital cafeteria food, so we started trying to figure out how to have a traditional feast. Mary, my usual backup cook, was in Colorado, so Liz volunteered. Knowing she was short on experience when it came to turkeys, I wrote out instructions for preparing a Thanksgiving dinner on the back of some recount talking points. They were very clear and complete, beginning with “First, remove plastic wrap from outside of turkey. Second, remove bag of giblets from inside turkey.”
We were all relieved when Liz called later to say that Alma Powell, Colin’s wife, had offered to cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner for our family. When Liz went to pick up the dinner on Thursday afternoon, she looked around the Powells’ kitchen and realized that Alma had, in fact, cooked two entire turkey dinners—one for us and one for her own family. She had probably been up most of the night to get it all done. It was one of the kindest gestures we could imagine and one we’ll never forget.
Kathleen Shanahan and some of her friends contributed more food for the occasion, and we were able to enjoy a wonderful, if unique, family Thanksgiving with plenty of turkey to share with the Secret Service agents who were stuck spending the holiday with us in the hospital.
A few days later I was back at home when Katherine Harris finally certified George Bush and me as the winners of the Florida recount. My six-year-old granddaughter, Kate, had fallen asleep on the red couch in our TV room. After the announcement, Lynne whispered in her ear, “Katie, wake up. Grandpa just got elected vice president of the United States.” Kate rolled over and gave voice to what many Americans were undoubtedly thinking at that point. “What?” she said. “Again?”
The U.S. Supreme Court had already agreed to hear our challenge to the Florida Supreme Court’s decision allowing the hand-recounted ballots. But now that we had been certified as the winners in Florida, our campaign had a major decision to make. We knew that the Gore challenge would continue, but we had to consider whether pushing this to the U.S. Supreme Court now constituted a risk for us. What would happen if they ruled against us? Would that put us in a worse position than we currently occupied, having been certified the winner? Jim Baker and his team in Tallahassee put together a memo laying out the pros and cons of moving ahead, and we had several conference calls going over the possibilities. George Bush listened to the arguments and then made the decision that we would