In My Time - Dick Cheney [18]
The legislative session lasted forty days, and it was a fascinating experience for me. The Republicans, usually dominant in Wyoming politics, were getting a lot of pushback from Democrats in the wake of the 1964 Goldwater debacle, and that made the session especially lively. The report I wrote on my internship won a Borden Award from the National Center for Education in Politics, and I received a check for one hundred dollars—an amount not to be scoffed at since that was nearly two months’ rent.
One of my professors gave me an application for another program run by the NCEP. This one, which was funded by the Ford Foundation, placed political science graduate students in mayors’ and governors’ offices across the country. I filled out the application and pretty much forgot about it until one Sunday night in late November when Lynne and I got back from a weekend at home in Casper and I found a telegram waiting. It informed me that I had been selected for the program and was expected at an orientation in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday morning. I had to hustle, but I made it in time to the Stouffer’s Inn where the group was gathering. I met graduate students from Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Ohio State, Ball State, and Penn State, all planning field assignments that would begin after the first of the year.
One of the most important people I met at the orientation was Maureen Drummy, assistant director of the NCEP. She would play a crucial part in my life over the next few years, and we became good friends. Maureen persuaded me that the best place for me to work would be in Madison, Wisconsin, in the office of Governor Warren Knowles. Lynne liked the idea because the main campus of the University of Wisconsin was located in Madison and had a fine English department, where she could begin work on her Ph.D. We packed up the ’65 VW bug we had acquired and headed for Wisconsin through memorably cold January weather. Along about Dubuque, Iowa, the car became difficult to steer because the grease in the steering column had stiffened with cold, and we had to put the VW in the garage at a gas station to thaw it out. Despite the freezing weather, we faithfully stopped the car every few hours so that Lynne could get out and walk around, per doctor’s orders. She was pregnant with our first child, Elizabeth, who would be born in Madison on a warm day at the end of July.
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WARREN KNOWLES LOOKED LIKE a governor. Tall, with wavy silver hair, he had been elected in spite of the Democratic sweep of 1964. I became an all-purpose aide, traveling with him all over the state. My pockets were filled with buttons emblazoned with “We Like It Here,” which was the slogan of a campaign he had initiated to promote the state. We hit all the county fairs, and my job was to follow the governor up and down the midway, handing the buttons out. I also carried a Polaroid instant camera, and I snapped pictures as we went along. When the photo slid out, I’d rip the cover paper off it and give it to the fairgoer the governor had just shaken hands with.
When I wasn’t traveling with the governor, I often worked at my desk, which someone had thoughtfully put in the center of the staff office so I could see everything going on. I participated in staff meetings and learned a valuable lesson early on. I don’t remember the problem we were discussing, but I do recall that I saw