In My Time - Dick Cheney [224]
My favorite line of attack on Edwards was to call him “Senator Gone,” which is what his hometown newspaper had dubbed him since he was so frequently absent from the Senate. I further observed:
In my capacity as vice president, I am president of the Senate, the presiding officer. I’m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they’re in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.
I later found out that I had crossed paths with Edwards once before, at a prayer breakfast in downtown D.C. in 2001. But our meeting clearly hadn’t left much of an impression and didn’t take the edge off my charge: This guy was a less than serious senator.
I enjoyed listening to the after-debate commentary. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who usually turns red in the face and starts shouting at the mere mention of my name, paid me a compliment, describing the debate between Cheney and Edwards as the howitzer versus the water pistol. Mike Barnicle of the Boston Herald was also kind. The only thing that surprised him, he said, was “that at the end of the debate, at the end of ninety minutes, Dick Cheney did not turn to John Edwards and say, ‘By the way, give me the car keys too.’”
At the presidential debate a week later, moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS asked John Kerry, “Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?” Kerry answered, “We’re all God’s children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was, she’s being who she was born as.”
Now it was obvious that there was a concerted effort by the Kerry-Edwards campaign to remind viewers that my daughter Mary was gay, to bring her into the debate and into the campaign. I don’t recall another instance of a candidate for the presidency attempting to use the child of an opponent for political gain. Later that evening, when Fox’s Chris Wallace asked Kerry’s campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, about the remark, she replied that my daughter was “fair game.”
Lynne was furious. She hadn’t been scheduled to speak at the post-debate rally we were attending, but she took the podium anyway, and let John Kerry have it. “The only thing I can conclude,” she said, “is that he is not a good man. I’m speaking as a mom. What a cheap and tawdry political trick.” She was exactly right, and I told the crowd I sure was glad she was on our side.
Most of America reacted the same way we had. It didn’t matter where you came down on the issue of gay marriage or whether you identified yourself as a Republican or Democrat. Seeing a candidate for president be so obviously opportunistic did not inspire feelings of confidence. In fact, it had quite the opposite effect, and the Bush-Cheney campaign got a bump in the polls. We all started referring to it as the “Mary Cheney bounce.”
We ended the campaign with a huge swing that took us to Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico, Hawaii, Colorado, Nevada, and finally to Jackson, Wyoming, on November 1, where an airport hangar full of friends greeted us. The next morning Lynne and I voted at the fire station near our home in Jackson and headed back to Washington, D.C. The exit polls were bad; so bad, in fact, that I knew they were wrong. I was sure we were going to win.
On the campaign trail with Lynne in 2004 (Official White House Photo/David Bohrer)
We didn’t have our victory celebration that night, but the next afternoon instead, in the auditorium of the Reagan Building. Screaming Bush-Cheney supporters were hanging over railings and maybe even from the rafters. We had won 51 percent of the popular vote to Kerry’s and Edwards’s 48 percent and 286 electoral votes to their 251. Wednesday, November 3, 2004, was a very nice day.
Being sworn in for the second time as vice president of the United States, January 20, 2005, with Lynne, Liz and Mary. My good friend, Speaker of the House, Denny Hastert administered the oath of office. (Official White House Photo/David Bohrer)
AS WE GOT READY for the second term, it