In My Time - Dick Cheney [64]
In the meantime the campaign continued with Lynne filling in for me at meetings, rallies, and speeches. She was so good at it that many friends suggested my vote totals would have been higher if I’d just stayed in the backyard and let Lynne do all the rallies.
I had plenty of time to think about how my heart attack was likely to impact voters. My friend Bob Teeter flew in from Michigan, and we talked about a poll to assess voter attitudes, but concluded that the situation had so few precedents we wouldn’t even be able to figure out what questions to ask.
We shot a TV commercial of a group of people sitting around talking about prominent political leaders, including Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, who had suffered heart attacks and still served productively in office. But my instinct was that the finished product would make people uncomfortable, and we never put it on the air.
In the end we decided that I should send a letter to every registered Republican in the state explaining why I was running in spite of the heart attack. I described some of the reasons why I had decided to run—the public policy and budgetary issues that had motivated my decision. At the top of the second page I became more personal:
But a man’s political beliefs are only a part of what motivates him, and in June an event in my life gave me reason to evaluate why I am running for Congress from a different perspective. While I was campaigning in Cheyenne, I suffered a mild heart attack. At thirty-seven years old, I had hardly expected such a thing to happen.
I noted that doctors in both Cheyenne and Casper had told me that I could expect a full and complete recovery. I reflected Rick Davis’s diagnosis when I wrote, “They saw no reason why I should not return to an active schedule in August. I have worked hard all my life, and the doctors said, after a period of rest, I could continue to do so—as long as I take proper care of myself.”
I continued with more personal thoughts:
An event like a heart attack, however mild it might be, causes a man to reflect upon himself and what is important to him. I must admit that when I found out what had happened, it occurred to me that there are certainly easier ways for a man to spend his life than in running for Congress and being a public official, ways of life which are easier on his family, on his privacy, on his pocketbook.
But as I talked to my family, it became clear to me that while public life is sometimes difficult, it is also, for the Cheneys at any rate, immensely satisfying. All of us, Lynne, our two daughters, and myself, like being involved in an effort which goes beyond our own personal interests. Trying to achieve goals which benefit many people gives all of us a good feeling, an uplifting sense of purpose.
The letter was an unusual campaign document because it didn’t ask for anything. The heart attack gave me an opportunity during a political campaign to talk to people on an important subject, with politics set aside.
In time I came to think that the heart attack, much as I might have wished it had not happened, helped from a political point of view. It increased my name identification in the months before the primary election and even helped raise a little money. Wags joked about forming a “Cardiac Patients for Cheney” group, but Foster Chanock, my young assistant from the Ford White House, actually took it upon himself to contact my friends and tell them to send campaign contributions in lieu of flowers. In a typically generous gesture, Bill Steiger, who didn’t face much of a challenge in his race for reelection to his Wisconsin congressional seat, urged supporters of his to contribute to me.
The heart attack had occurred on June 18, 1978. One afternoon at the end of July I walked over to a nearby park where some senior citizens were