It’s hard to even imagine a time before I believed that Dick Chney was evil incarnate, but such a time did exist. Prior to Cheney being named as Bush’s running mate, I just didn’t have many strong feelings about him. I knew him almost exclusively from a few appearances I saw him make on CNN as Defense Secretary during the Persian Gulf War. I knew that he had been a congressman from Wyoming and that he was pretty conservative, but I was unfamiliar with the particulars of his record. I had no clue that he had served as Gerald Ford’s chief of staff.
When Bush picked him as his running mate, I did think that he would add some substance to his administration. I thought the same about Colin Powell. I basically saw those picks as a way for Poppy Bush to assure that his son had some experienced guidance on foreign policy because it was quite obvious that Dubya had little knowledge of and even less curiosity about international affairs.
On the morning of 9/11, I returned to my desk at the Sarnoff Corporation and found a small hoard of people waiting for me because they knew I was a political junkie and they wanted to know what it all meant and what was going to happen. I wanted to be comforting. So, I told them the truth as I saw it. I said that it was incredibly unfortunate that this attack had occurred while Texas oilmen were in control of our government. But, I said, they were the only government we had, and we would have to hope that they would act with wisdom. If I had had a clearer picture at that time of Dick Cheney’s true nature, I never would have offered any hope at all.
