In My Time - Dick Cheney [82]
AS LYNNE AND I talked more that night, we went over the choice between staying in the House of Representatives or leaving to become secretary of defense. As the whip I was the second-ranking Republican in the House. Bob Michel, a mentor and a man for whom I have tremendous respect, was the minority leader. There was a good chance that I would become the GOP leader myself if I stayed in the House, but that might be a long time away. I was a buffer of sorts between the Old Guard, personified by Michel, and the New Guard, the Young Turks, led by Newt Gingrich. As long as I was there, Bob was comfortable staying where he was, so as I looked ahead at the next four years, the choice boiled down to spending them as Bob’s understudy in the House or spending them as secretary of defense. As much as I loved the House and my time there, it really wasn’t a tough decision.
I had no way to predict the magnitude of the historic events we were about to live through—the liberation of Panama, the disintegration of the Soviet empire and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the defense of Saudi Arabia and the liberation of Kuwait in Desert Shield and Desert Storm—but issues of national security and defense were of great interest to me. In Congress I had served for four years on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, cosponsored the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which reorganized the Department of Defense, and been an active member of the Military Reform Caucus. I knew this would be a critically important job—and it also promised to be fascinating.
The prospect of being able to work for George H. W. Bush and with others such as Jim Baker and Brent Scowcroft, who were old friends and for whom I had a lot of respect, was also very appealing. I had to face the fact that if I went to the Pentagon my career in elective politics was probably over, but I was willing to accept that for the opportunity and high honor of leading the Department of Defense. I knew then what has been affirmed for me so many times in the two decades since—that the men and women of the U.S. military are among the finest Americans you will ever meet.
The next morning I called John Sununu and told him I was interested and wanted to take the next step. He arranged for me to meet privately with the president at noon. In order to keep the meeting a secret, Sununu asked me to come into the White House through the Diplomatic Entrance, which faces the South Lawn and doesn’t ordinarily have news cameras focused on it.
A little before twelve I walked through the Diplomatic Reception Room, turned left down the ground-floor hallway past the portraits of former first ladies, and got on the small elevator that goes up to the White House’s private quarters. At the top, one of the White House ushers met me and showed me to the Treaty Room, the president’s second-floor office, a room where the cabinet had met before the West Wing was built, but that since the early twentieth century has been a sitting room or private office. The room was dominated by The Peacemakers, a large painting of President Lincoln meeting with Generals Sherman and Grant and Admiral David Porter in 1865 aboard the River Queen, anchored off City Point, Virginia. I thought for a moment of my great-grandfather who served under General Sherman and named one of his sons for the famous Civil War leader. What would he have thought of his great-grandson there in the White House residence meeting with the president about leading the nation’s military?
As President Bush greeted me genially, I remembered when I’d first encountered him twenty years before. I’d been working for Congressman Bill Steiger of Wisconsin and