[The New American Patriots Reader - Books For Today's New Patriot 19] • In My Time · A Personal and Political Memoir

Synopsis:

In his enlightening and provocative memoir—a stately page-turner with flashes of surprising humor, remarkable candor, and powerful resonance—former Vice President Dick Cheney takes readers through his experiences as family man, policymaker, businessman, and politician during years that shaped our collective history.

Eyewitness to events at the highest levels, Dick Cheney brings to life scenes from past and present: He chronicles his coming-of-age as a high school athlete in Casper, Wyoming, and courting homecoming queen Lynn Vincent, his future wife. He describes driving through the White House gates just hours after the 1974 resignation of Richard Nixon, to manage the Ford transition. He portrays his response to the national crisis of 9/11, when he conveyed orders from the White House bunker to shoot down a hijacked airliner if it would not divert. And he reveals how his political vision has endured through his extraordinary ascent to the heights of American public life as:

The youngest White House Chief of Staff, under President Gerald Ford

Congressman from Wyoming who worked closely with President Ronald Reagan

Secretary of defense under George H. W. Bush, overseeing the U.S. military during Operation Desert Storm and the resolution of the Cold War

CEO of the international Fortune 500 company Halliburton

The first U.S. vice president to serve out his term of office in the twenty-first century. Working with George W. Bush from the onset of the global war on terror, he was—and remains—an outspoken proponent of taking every step necessary to defend the nation.

Kirkus Reviews:

George W. Bush's vice president speaks--sort of. Cheney is a company man through and through, a servant of Republican functionaries from the time of LBJ to the recent past--if there is anything to be learned from this bloodless memoir, it is that. The author opens with the outrage of 9/11, in which one thought was foremost on his mind, apart from clearing the sky of planes: namely, "guaranteeing the continuity of a functioning United States government." In this, he writes, he was the essential element without which that continuity was unsustainable. Cheney's memoir is political to the extent that he plays the games of hardball politics with everyone he meets, and he makes sure to constantly remind readers of American supremacy and his centrality to it. Colin Powell was his ally until his taste for the war in Iraq weakened, whereupon it was clear to Cheney that Powell had to go. Ditto Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. Cheney's take on the world is clinical and even scholarly, much like that of Henry Kissinger (another figure whom Cheney does not seem to regard very highly). He is methodical but selective, as when he carefully accounts for his holdings in a certain corporation at the time of his vice presidency: "This was salary that I had already earned, so it was due to me whether the company was doing well or badly." The company, Halliburton, did well, of course, thanks to no-bid contracts in Iraq--but Cheney still professes irritation that anyone should doubt his clean hands, an irritation expressed by an infamous F-bomb on Capitol Hill ("It was probably not language I should have used on the Senate floor, but it was completely deserved"). The underlying point of the book is that Bush/Cheney were right in invading Iraq and waterboarding prisoners. Let the reader be the judge--until, that is, history decides on the matter.

Biography:

Dick Cheney was White House Chief of Staff under President Gerald Ford and Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush, overseeing America’s military during the 1991 Operation Desert Storm. Elected six times to the U.S. House of Representatives from Wyoming, he eventually became House Minority Whip. As the forty-sixth Vice President of the United States, he served two terms under President George W. Bush during the dawn of the Global War on Terror, playing a key role in events that have shaped history.