# In My Time ![rw-book-cover](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51NgI7WIWCL._SL200_.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Dick Cheney]] - Full Title: In My Time - Category: #books ## Highlights - I participated in staff meetings and learned a valuable lesson early on. I don’t remember the problem we were discussing, but I do recall that I saw the answer with crystal clarity and offered it right up, using a tone of some authority, as I remember. There was silence, then the group went on talking, eventually ending up with the solution I had proposed, though it was as if I’d never offered it. As I thought about what happened, I realized that it’s often better to listen than to speak, particularly if you are the junior person around. Moreover, when a group has a problem to solve, they usually need to grapple with it for a while. If you have a solution, wait until people are ready for it, and then present it in a cool and collected way that makes the answer to the problem be about the answer—and not about you. ([Location 662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=662)) - “If you get involved in politics,” he said, “you will not be taken seriously by political scientists.” That gave me a lot of pause, since I was pretty sure that real-world experience would be an asset whether I was doing research or in the classroom, but what did I know about how the academic world worked? ([Location 700](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=700)) - Thus in my first days I learned a valuable lesson about dealing with bureaucracies: There is always more than one copy. ([Location 906](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=906)) - One of the ideas the agency tried to nurture was for school vouchers that would introduce an element of competition into education. The fierce opposition from the teachers’ unions at the idea that we would even test such a program was instructive. People with entrenched interests often like the status quo. You can find good ideas but not necessarily be able to implement them. ([Location 996](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=996)) - One obstacle to bringing order to the White House in the early months was President Ford’s preferred model of White House organization, a design he described as the “spokes of the wheel” model, which was based on the way he had structured his congressional and committee staffs. The idea was to have eight or nine senior advisors each reporting directly to him, without any one having authority over the rest. It was a collegial style of doing business that had served him well for twenty-five years on the Hill as a representative from Michigan, and he assumed it would work in the White House. There was also a widespread belief that Watergate had been caused in part by Bob Haldeman’s domination of the White House staff, and Ford saw “spokes of the wheel” as a healthy break from the past. The problem was that it soon became clear it didn’t work. It took a while, but the president finally agreed that he needed someone on the staff who could wield real authority, a conclusion that all his successors have ratified. ([Location 1263](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=1263)) - With no political traction or public support, the WIN campaign was quietly abandoned. The buttons and “lick your plate clean” lived on only as inside jokes among the staff and the press. ([Location 1348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=1348)) - Rumsfeld and I had dinner one night at the Two Continents restaurant in the Hotel Washington with economist Art Laffer, a creative guy who certainly captured my imagination with a curve he drew on the back of my napkin. What it showed was that you can raise taxes only so high before people become disinclined to work. On the other hand, it’s possible to create incentive—and economic growth—with tax cuts. The Laffer Curve subsequently became one of the hallmarks of supply-side economics. I wish I had known how historic my napkin would become so that I could have saved it. ([Location 1365](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=1365)) - The main reason I wanted to keep a low profile was so that I could be an honest broker. If the chief of staff is out giving interviews every day and advocating a particular point of view, he loses credibility with those in the administration who disagree with him. Cabinet members begin looking for ways to go around the system instead of going through the process. They need to know that you’ll go to the president and present their views fairly and won’t tilt it to get a particular outcome. ([Location 1609](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=1609)) - I was pretty good at hiring and apparently not bad at firing, either, since I was so often given the responsibility. Along the way I had to relieve the White House social secretary, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, the agriculture secretary, Ford’s campaign manager, and a few others of their duties. My method was direct: no hints, cold shoulders, or slow, agonizing departures. Those were not good for anyone—neither the president nor the person being fired. ([Location 1628](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=1628)) - Having had a stake in both the Ford and George W. Bush campaigns, I’m struck by how much the map changed in the quarter century between them. For one thing, in ’76 the Democrats counted on and got the entire South, excluding only Virginia. Most of those states have rarely gone Democratic since. It was a race in which the Democrat took Texas and Missouri, the Republican took New Jersey and most of New England, and California was still reasonably solid Republican territory. The layout in 2000, when I found myself on the ticket, presented a different world. The lesson I draw is never to pay much heed to any talk of a party having a “lock” on one or another state or region. In the space of a generation, a political map can be practically inverted. When you hear any presidential election outcome described as “transformational,” altering the political world forever, you can put that analysis down as true and valid for exactly four years. ([Location 1790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=1790)) - I’ve always liked the late columnist David Broder’s ([Location 1876](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=1876)) - observation that Ford was exactly the kind of person Americans say they want in a president, but didn’t know it when they had him. ([Location 1877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=1877)) - I once traveled three hundred miles to attend a two-person coffee—and one of the two people was my local chairman who had organized the event. ([Location 1969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=1969)) - “Look, hard work never killed anybody. What takes a toll is spending your life doing something you don’t want to do.” ([Location 2055](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004KNWTPW&location=2055))