In My Time - Dick Cheney [68]
There was also a third group, known as the Wednesday Group, which had more of an ideological edge. Its members were moderate Republicans, such as Jim Leach of Iowa, Bill Green of New York, Pete McCloskey of California, and John Anderson of Illinois, and there was some overlap with SOS and Chowder and Marching. When I was invited to join the Wednesday Group, I turned down the invitation because I considered myself a conservative and saw little value in being identified with liberal Republicans, but Barber Conable of New York, ranking Republican on Ways and Means and one of the most respected members of the House, called me to his office and suggested I reconsider. Not many members got an invitation to join the Wednesday Group, he said, and it was a “dumb move” on my part to reject it. He said as a conservative I would automatically get to know all the conservatives in the GOP caucus. Joining the Wednesday Group would give me a chance to know and understand the liberal Republicans. He was right and I joined. It was a good thing to do, and because of it I had support from the moderate camp as well as conservatives as I moved up in the leadership ranks.
From my earliest days in the House I was involved with various outside groups, including think tanks and academic institutes, that took a scholarly, analytical, and bipartisan approach to the House’s past and present. I was invited by senior Democrat Dick Bolling, the chairman of the powerful Rules Committee and an old ally of Speaker Tip O’Neill, to join a small breakfast group he occasionally summoned. Bolling was one of the most brilliant historians and tacticians in the history of the House, and every time I was around him I learned something new and important. Among the others in his group were Dick Gephardt and Steny Hoyer.
I was also invited to join a small group that was being assembled at the American Enterprise Institute by scholars Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann. They chose seven freshmen, four Republicans and three Democrats, and every few months would invite us to sit down over dinner and talk on a background basis about everything we were seeing and doing. In the monograph that was subsequently published, called Congress Off the Record: The Candid Analyses of Seven Members, we were not identified. Today the discerning (and dedicated) may be able to put the names Cheney, Gingrich, Martin Sabo, and Geraldine Ferraro to some of the sentiments on those pages.
I participated in several events sponsored by the Aspen Institute, which ran seminars for congressmen and senators as well as two annual retreats. Lynne and I enjoyed a few midwinter days of great conversation and food at sunny places such as Bermuda and Round Hill in Jamaica. It was at Round Hill that I met Condoleezza Rice for the first time. She was at Stanford and had been invited to lead a seminar on Soviet military policy.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies, which was then connected with Georgetown University, used to hold an annual retreat at Williamsburg, Virginia. That was where I met Sam Nunn, a Democratic senator from Georgia, who would later head the committee that considered my nomination to be secretary of defense.
During my time in the House, I also participated in continuity-of-government exercises. They dealt with contingency responses to an attack on the United States that decapitated our government. What were our plans if both the president