Dick Cheney: The Spectator Interview
D..ICK THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR: This is not a very rhetorical or showy administration. One gets the sense that, if he could, the president would prefer to get his program through without...
...He founded it in 1967...
...So bingo, all of a sudden you had a heck of a problem because the cushion of 13 or 14 percent of surplus power disappeared...
...Instead of having the power source on top of the hole driving the entire shaft, we actually put the drill motor down the hole...
...But nuclear energy looks very attractive as we look out 20 years for how to meet our needs...
...TAS: Do you expect other states besides California to be having problems this summer...
...Les8 /2" x 11" - 207 pages son 2 - How to Get Started in the Mail-Order Business...
...There is also an "expanded" version...
...Getting those rates down is absolutely vital in that regard...
...Award-winning reporter Bill Sammon spent months on the campaign trail following the Gore campaign, and then spent the last 40 days in Florida tracking the post-election ordeal...
...It's only running at 50 percent of capacity now...
...One often gets the sense the administration doesn't make the best arguments for its programs...
...It wasn't done just for last quarter or next quarter...
...He'll be the one who makes decisions about exactly what areas he wants to emphasize and focus on...
...So there's an enormous savings there...
...It's vital for us not to allow that money to be gathered up and then spent and folded into the baseline for future federal spending...
...TAS: But by accepting static analysis of tax revenues, repeatedly, even proudly saying you want a $1.6 trillion, or now $1.3 trillion tax cut, in effect you are undermining the growth argument...
...They were wrong about Alar.They're clearly wrong about human activity causing global warming...
...They forced utilities to sell off all of their own generating capacity...
...It's been one of the safest industries in the history of the world...
...Halliburton, before I left, had fielded a brand-new technology...
...TAS: Should be nuclear...
...CHENEY: People have deep concerns about global warming and carbon-dioxide emissions and they are willing to look at technologies that offer a way around some of those problems...
...Bill Clinton wouldn't even submit it for formal ratification...
...They came up with a so-called deregulation scheme that really wasn't deregulation, but it involved caps on consumer prices...
...there was not an enormous fuss as a result of your saying this...
...So now all of a sudden buying on the spot market is the most expensive way to go...
...Well, he wasn't orried about carrying Wyoming...
...But with natural gas prices going up, all of a sudden nuclear is very attractive...
...Today from one site we can reach out eight to ten miles horizontally to develop various deposits...
...CHENEY: Well, 3D seismic technology is a big part of it...
...On the other hand, it should not have been much of a surprise...
...We've had a tendency in recent years to make decisions about energy questions and generating-facilities questions on a project-by-project basis...
...CHENEY: That may well be something we want to do later on, but what we have now is a package that does in fact do some very significant things...
...The policies Cheney favors revolve around a strong economy, a strong military, and a peaceful community life for the citizenry with less litigiousness and more freedom...
...TAS: How does that help...
...CHENEY: I think it's a false choice.And the advocates on both sides have a vested interest in projecting the false choice: "Either you're going to have energy or you're going to protect the environment...
...1,300 or 1,900 new 500-megawatt plants over the next 20 years, there are really only three ways to go: coal fire, gas fire, or nuclear...
...TAS: The important question, once again, is whether the administration will try to lead and educate...
...CHENEY: I disagree...
...There is no assumption of any increase in productivity.We project revenues to grow at a slower rate than the overall economy does, the exact opposite of recent expe- , rience...
...But he's been very, very effective on the tax issue...
...Until the mainstream press stops misreporting the news, we need Accuracy In Media Join AIM today and help us get hold of the truth...
...We have, because of Three Mile Island and so forth, gotten away from it...
...And now, here we are...
...CHENEY: ANWR is about 19 million acres, about the size of South Carolina...
...And then they put in place regulations that effectively prevented any power plants from being built in California for 15 years.Well, the economy grew by 28 percent and the demand for power grew by 24 percent...
...To my surprise...
...I think about my experience in the oil and gas business, where technology has done wonders over the course of the last 15 or 20 years.We've reduced the cost of find28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 0 Summer Reading Issue 2001 ing and producing a barrel of oil by about 70 percent in about 12 years...
...And then we've got cable elements to transmit electric power down-hole to that carbon-composite fiber...
...The Europeans were furious, or at least professed to be...
...It will prove to be invaluable to you in almost whatever activity you ultimately decide to engage in...
...They didn't tell you everything about THE MCVEIGH EXECUTION DELAY Accuracy In Media did...
...At Any Cost is the inside story of exactly how Al Gore dragged a one-day presidential election into a five-week ordeal and nearly pulled off the largest act of political larceny ever in American politics...
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...Wyoming...
...Is that right...
...It's one of the oldest mail-order compao~ nies in the United States...
...u mean I wasn't selected for y sex appeal...
...There have been some compromises but we're going to have the biggest tax cut in a generation...
...No trace of them at all...
...CHENEY: But we've been very conservative in our estimates...
...But he said, "No, I'm going to do it...
...You may return the Volume for full refund (except shipping/insurance) within 30 days...
...TAS: It did seem like the choice of a man who was sure he was going to get elected anyway...
...He jokes about his health, which cannot be that bad...
...Why not do something for capital gains...
...I'm not opposed to capital gains tax cuts, but this was the package that made sense over the long haul...
...It's just that he stood up and spoke the truth without wrapping it up in a nice diplomatic bundle...
...I think the president deserves great credit, first of all, for having decided he wanted to run with the cornerstone of his campaign being cutting taxes...
...In his 7-volume work, How to Build a Great Fortune in Mail Order, he gives a complete course , o.n how to get started in this fascinating business, how to prosper in it, and how to build a great fortune in it...
...Get Rich in Mail Order XO t (a 7-volume course) Volume I just $19.95* erardo Joffe is president of Haverhills...
...But that's usually the way it's presented...
...Then we figured out how to do 3D seismic and all of a sudden we get a much better picture of what's underground...
...TAS: There is not much evidence the environmentalists will accept even that minimum proposition-that we need more electric power to sustain growth...
...To order Volume I, please give order code Y146a for the "regular" ($19.95) or Y146b for the "expanded" ($39.95) version...
...The course is a virtual college education...
...Plus, in the wintertime, you build ice roads that are gone in the summertime...
...advance books division of jomira/advance 470 Third St., #211, San Francisco, CA 94107 Order by toll-free pion:(0)6027 r(atet)bea:(1 3670 without having to leave a huge footTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR N Summer Reading Issue 2001 29 ed" ($39.95) version...
...Add to that concerns about global warming from carbon-dioxide emissions, and nuclear makes even more sense because there are no greenhouse gases from nuclear...
...Certainly the purposes of the tax cut could have been more clearly articulated...
...Volume I (207 pages) covers the following important topVo ume I ics: Lesson 1 - What the Mail-Order Business Is All About...
...TAS: How...
...CHENEY: Should be...
...Don't delay, send in your tax deductible contribution today...
...The Southeast...
...Having abandoned the growth argument, it became almost impossible to sustain reductions in the top rates...
...DICK CHENEY: You mean I wasn't selected for my sex appeal...
...He was consistent about that all the way through...
...Even back during the thenm in Republicans a relaxed way...
...We have used conservative economic forecasts based on a conservative model in terms of how the tax cut will affect the economy...
...And it's important to provide incentives for people long-term who want to work hard and produce more and save more...
...Read on and you shall see...
...We've started to review all the science...
...We have also gotten much better at figuring out how to get at what we find...
...The Senate rejected it 95-zip...
...Why not be more aggressive on behalf of investors and entrepreneurs, the economic activists who really drive the economy...
...One gets the sense that, if he could, the president would prefer to get his program through without anyone even noticing, rather than Reagan-like, rallying the country to his views...
...We can accept only Visa/MasterCard for this offer (no checks, please...
...working at 1600 Yc Pennsylvania Avenue never convey the feeling that dangerous m "vested interests" are vying out there beyond the Beltway...
...That's pretty good work, and there wasn't anybody else except George W. Bush who laid that out with leadership...
...He talks about the various constituencies favoring and opposing administration policy with familiarity and no sense of anxiety...
...I regularly get beaten on the handball court by a guy with similar heart irregularities...
...CHENEY: Now you can go into an old field with three men and a laptop computer and reach out and develop these small deposits that simply weren't rich enough to support a whole separate structure with its own vertically drilled well...
...We've had in a whole range of experts on whether there is global warming, what it means, what's the cause of it...
...According to the polls, the country did not care...
...The old seismic search technology was basically two-dimensional...
...You can argue that we should have used this argument or that argument...
...And you can steer it in dramatically precise ways...
...Technology has done wonders to improve our capacity to do both...
...We shouldn't be doing that...
...So a whole bunch of what might have been wise decisions on the case-bycase basis turned into a train wreck, system-wide...
...There are other pieces of it that are important-the marriage penalty, and the death tax, and so forth--but the heart of it is rate reduction and collapsing five brackets into four brackets...
...We'll add shipping/insurance charge of $4.95 (plus sales tax for California delivery...
...NewYork's got a potential problem...
...TAS: That's admirable...
...When you do that, it's easy to find a lot of reasons not to build a particular project or lay a pipeline or build a generating facility...
...Well, it's already happening.There are now companies out there buying up nuclear plants because it's a good investment...
...I don't find a kind of deep emotional "hell, no" kind of approach that we would have seen 20 years ago on this issue...
...Please give account number and expiration date...
...We've got reasonable licensing procedures now, and proven and improving technology, and a great safety record, and I think with all those three in place then the economics are going to drive it...
...Hogwash...
...It's just wrong to give people the idea the only way you can develop ANWR is the way the East Texas field was developed in the 1920s...
...CHENEY: First of all, you have to start by pointing these facts out, to make sure people understand that even with increased efficiency-and we get more efficient all the time--you still need to build a lot of additional electric plants if you're going to have the kind of economic growth most of us expect and want over the next 20 years...
...Instead of the drill pipe being steel and weighing thousands of tons, it is actually buoyant underground...
...He is an engineer and a e ovao Harvard MBA...
...The administration did not make Florida recount, the advice I got on talk shows and everyplace was, "Well, obviously you're got to give up on the tax cut because you had such a close election...
...It's very hard to find much of a trace that man's ever been there...
...It takes rates down across the board...
...CHENEY: Pleasantly surprised...
...Not anymore...
...Lesson 4 - Some First Thoughts About Mail-Order Merchandise...
...That's what I ran on...
...They were wrong about DDT...
...I think there's probably a big adjustment for our European friends after eight years of Bill Clinton...
...TAS: The administration really stood tall on the Kyoto global warming treaty...
...leadership...
...CHENEY:Well, I guess I was more surprised by the Washington Post story shortly thereafter saying nuclear power may be coming back...
...Shocked a lot of people when the president just said no...
...He wanted somebody that would add to the experience base...
...You may return the Volume for full refund (except shipping/insurance) within 30 days...
...Texas is in good shape, for example...
...My own personal view is that we need to have a public debate about this...
...TAS: It sounds like you are planning to concede the global warming point as a lever for getting people to accept nukes...
...It shows up a lot of different ways...
...They've got to get used to George Bush...
...They didn't tell you about THE MEDIA'S ROLE IN THE RACE RIOTS Accuracy In Media did...
...He wanted somebody to help govern once we got here...
...The question is whether it's a result of centuries-long natural cycles or whether man's activity over the last 50 or 60 years has contributed to it...
...TAS: Pleasantly surprised...
...We thought using conservative estimates was the right thing to do too Summer Reading Issue 2001 25 make clear to people that what we're talking about here is giving back some of the surplus because government taxed more than it should...
...That's how I got elected...
...There are also two important appendixes: A - Components and Structure of a Mail-Order Offer...
...That's what he got when he asked me to come on board, and that's the way he's operated since we got here...
...CHENEY: Well, our job first and foremost is to give a set of recommendations to the president, lay out what we think the nature of the problem is, and then ideas on how to confront it...
...26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR- Summer Reading Issue 2001 ~Anslwr -~-~~WW~ We think accuracy means telling the whole truth...
...Will the utilities be willing to invest in nuclear power as an alternative to gas or coal fire facilities given the price of gas and some of these other concerns and considerations...
...TAS: How would that sort of thing help in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska...
...CHENEY: They'll get over it...
...They didn't tell you about THE NEW YORK TIMES DISTORTING THE ISSUE OF MISSLE DEFENSE Accuracy In Media did...
...Hogwash...
...We can accept only Visa/MasterCard for this offer (no checks, please...
...TAS: You went on "Meet the Press" and said that we needed to build 65 to 90 power plants a year for the next 20 years...
...Instead of using steel drill pipes, we used carbon-composite fiber...
...We have nuclear technology that works...
...It's what I believe in...
...CHENEY: There will be some slopover, possibly into the Northwest...
...TAS: Nevertheless, with the slow phase-in of the rate cuts and nothing for capital gains, the parts of the tax cut that will have the biggest impact on growth will not come until during what could be 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 0 Summer Reading Issue 2001 the next Democratic administration...
...CHENEY: Well, he didn't ask me to sign on because he was worried about carrying the growth argument very forcefully, which is the only real justification for cutting the top rates...
...Then those of us who work for him have to go out and try to make it happen...
...CHENEY: We've got a whole separate task force working on the global warming question, and the president's put together a team that I sit on...
...We do have some problems we need to solve, like the waste problem...
...Lesson 3 - How to Organize Your Mail-Order Business...
...And I think it was beneficial from a standpoint of U.S...
...My WV impression is that Republicans are comfortable governing if not as comfortable as Democrats at politicking...
...But if we need somewhere around Either you're going to have energy or protect the environment...
...With this kind of technology the surface impact would only involve about 2,000 acres, because we've gotten so good at being able to reach out underground and develop these deposits print on the surface...
...Does his choice of you as a running mate also reflect this preference for a below-the-radar-screen political style...
...You drill fewer dry wells...
...And instead of taking off the price caps a year or two ago when it might have made sense and been bearable, they postponed the pain as long as possible...
...When he first approached me about being his running mate I said I'd rather not...
...All of the wisdom he gotincluding from a lot of the people that now make the same criticism-was that he could not win on tax cuts...
...Even if you do not plan to go into the mail-order business, you will benefit greatly by the insights and revelations on advertising, marketing, merchandising, consumer motivation, customer service, business planning, pricing strategies, financial projections, financial analysis and ratios, and so much more...
...TAS: What are you going to have to do politically to make nuclear flourish...
...Please give account number and expiration date...
...It costs $39.95 and includes a Workbook with all of the exhibits and a 3Cassette Audio-Tape Set for studying at leisure while you drive...
...It is highly recommended...
...That's what we've got to do...
...It used to be that if you had a deposit of oil, you had to put a structure on the ground right over it and then drill straight down and pump it dry...
...You create gravel pads for your surface facilities, but the impact is minimal...
...Hell, no...
...There seems to be no doubt that there is global warming going on...
...And now they've had to take the price caps off anyway, at the same time they bankrupted the biggest utility in the state...
...TAS: There has never been an administration that had a coherent, strategic plan for meeting both environmental concerns-which are pretty universal in America-and supplying the energy for economic growth...
...A lot of regions of the country are in pretty good shape...
...His pleasingly orotund voice rolls out facts and policies prodigiously...
...And you said that some of them were going to have to be nuclear...
...The environmentalists have gotten a political free ride for decades...
...The jury's still out...
...But there is a downside to this quiet style...
...Then he asked me to help him find somebody and all through that search he always placed a greater emphasis on governance than on winning the election...
...Plus the Alaska pipeline is already there so all you have to do is bring whatever product you get out of ANWR and plug it in at Prudhoe Bay and run it down the pipeline...
...Were you surprised...
...He's a very straight-speaking, tell-it-like-it-is kind of a guy...
...B - Your Chances for Success in the Mail-Order Business...
...We'll add shipping/insurance charge of $4.95 (plus sales tax for California delivery...
...No administration has ever stood up to them, though they are in fact almost always wrong...
...We all know it's not going to work...
...advance books division of jomira/advance 470 Third St., #211, San Francisco, CA 94107 Order by toll-free pion:(0)6027 r(atet)bea:(1 3670 without having to leave a huge footTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR N Summer Reading Issue 2001 29...
...L. S This course may lead you to a great future...
...Gas has been the preferred option because it's relatively clean-burning...
...They were certainly wrong about how much electricity California would need and about the possibility of getting that electricity from the so-called soft path...
...Looking out over the next ten years without the tax cut we knew we were going to collect more revenue than we need.That's a mistake...
...Nuclear power makes a lot of sense...
...I think the country's come a long way, and I think we can have an intelligent, informed debate about it...
...California is a good example of a situation in which they did several things simultaneously wrong...
...Vice President Cheney, sitting in his yellow-walled office with flowers and portraits all about, is an easy man to interview...
...He said, "Absolutely not...
...They prohibited the utilities from buying--entering into long-term contracts with producers-so they were required to buy on the spot energy market...
...Because if, long term, the tax cut does not pay for itself, at least in part, that means the tax cut is not causing any growth...
Vol. 34 • July 2001 • No. 6
