In My Time - Dick Cheney [170]
Instead, I took out a piece of my official stationery with the words “The Vice President” written across the top. I wrote the date—March 28, 2001—and then this:
Dave Addington—You are to present the attached document to President George W. Bush if the need ever arises.
—Richard B. Cheney
“Okay, David,” I said, looking over the top of my glasses. “I won’t give specific instructions about when this letter should be triggered.” I pointed at him, still holding the pen I’d used to sign the letter. “But you need to understand something. This is not your decision to make. This is not Lynne’s decision to make. The only thing you are to do, if I become incapacitated, is get this letter out and give it to the president. It’s his decision, and his alone, whether he delivers it to the secretary of state.” “Yes, sir, Mr. Vice President,” David said.
I did not want a situation where, should I become incapacitated and there was an effort to remove me from office, my family or my staff stood in the way. The only one who had the right to make that decision was the president of the United States. And he was the only person other than Addington with whom I discussed the letter. I thought it was important that he be aware of it.
Addington double-wrapped the letter in two manila U.S. government envelopes, took it home, and put it in his dresser drawer. He had made a conscious decision not to keep it in his safe at work because he didn’t want to find himself unable to get to it in the event the worst did happen and the White House was in crisis mode. When a fire destroyed his home a few years later, David grabbed two things after he got his family out of the house—the folder with his family’s financial documents and birth certificates in it and the envelope containing my letter of resignation.
ONE OF THE MOST enduring decisions a president makes is choosing a nominee for the Supreme Court. With lifetime appointments, Supreme Court justices can impact American life long after the president who nominates them is gone from office. The first time I observed a Supreme Court nomination from up close was when President Gerald Ford selected John Paul Stevens, who served on the court for thirty-five years. He is a fine man and a well-regarded jurist, but his record on the court was consistently liberal. The same thing was true of Justice David Souter, appointed by George H. W. Bush. He is a man whom I respect, but he was a predictably liberal vote on the Court.
As we took office we did not know whether there would be a vacancy on the Court during our term, but President Bush wanted to be prepared. He wanted to begin a process to review potential candidates, and I convened a group that included Attorney General John Ashcroft; White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales; Chief of Staff Andy Card; my chief of staff, Scooter Libby; and the president’s counselor Karl Rove. When Al Gonzales became attorney general, Harriet Miers joined the group as White House counsel. Gonzales and Miers took the lead in preparing large briefing binders with information about potential candidates that included their experience, their records, how they had ruled on important cases, and how they were viewed by their fellow judges. We cast our net widely, beginning with appellate court judges, then looking at some district court judges, as well as a small number of state court judges and some lawyers who hadn’t served on the bench before, but our focus was certainly on appellate court judges. Other factors such as age also entered into our recommendations. It would be better, all other things being equal, to go with someone in his or her fifties rather than sixties, simply because the younger candidate would be likely to serve longer on the Court.
When Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement on July 1, 2005, we were able to move quickly to bring in some of the leading candidates we’d considered for interviews. We conducted these sessions at the Vice President’s Residence and in the wardroom of the White House Mess. We covered a broad range