This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 11, 2010 - For years, many Americans have wondered how George W. Bush's presidency -- and his decision to go to war in Iraq -- might have been different if a less hawkish and conservative Republican than Dick Cheney had been his vice president.
In his new book, "Decision Points," Bush reveals that in 2000 he seriously considered offering the running-mate slot on his presidential ticket to former Missouri Sen. John C. Danforth -- a relatively moderate Republican known for taking principled stands on issues. "I thought seriously about offering the job to Danforth," Bush writes, implying that he ranked at or near the top of the finalists.
But Bush's book and Danforth's own recollections differ somewhat on the discussions that ultimately led to the selection of Cheney, who had initially asked not to be considered as the running mate but agreed to lead Bush's v.p. search committee and the "vetting process" on each candidate.
For one, the book makes it clear that Bush already had made up his mind by the time he and Cheney met with Danforth and his wife, Sally, in Chicago on July 18, 2000, to discuss whether Danforth should be on the Bush ticket. "My positive impressions of Jack were confirmed" during the "relaxed, three-hour visit" with the Danforths, Bush recalls. "But I had decided on Dick."
That comes as news to Danforth, who told the Beacon in an interview Wednesday that "I don't know when that [Cheney] decision was made, or whether it was made before we went to Chicago, or what it was all about." Danforth recalls sending the documents required of potential running mates to Cheney and then having a change of heart weeks before the final Chicago meeting.
"I called them up and said, 'I've thought about it, and I really don't want to do it,'" Danforth said. "Then-Gov. Bush called me and said 'Are you sure?' and I said, 'I really don't want to do it.' And then I started getting phone calls from some mutual friends of Gov. Bush and me and I said, 'Well, I'll rethink it.'"
Finally, in July, "they flew Sally and me up to Chicago, where Bush was making a speech, on a Halliburton plane," Danforth recalls. [Cheney was then chief executive of the Halliburton oil services company.] "We had a long meeting with [Bush and Cheney] and I ended up saying to them, 'I really don't want to do this. But if you want me to, I'll do it.' That was how I put it."
Later, Bush called Danforth and told him that he had chosen Cheney. Asked this week if he was surprised by the Cheney pick, Danforth said: "I really didn't know what to think of it, to tell you the truth. It was very hard -- and still is very hard -- for me to figure out what all that was about." Danforth said the vice presidency was not "something that I was pining for. ... Was it something that Sally wanted me to do? No, she really did not. That was very much on my mind."
In his book, Bush says Danforth had impressed him among the nine "finalists" for running mate, which originally did not list Cheney but included nine former or current governors and U.S. senators. Bush describes Danforth as "honest, ethical and forthright. ... His voting record over three terms in the Senate was solid. He had earned my respect with his defense of Clarence Thomas during the Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 1991. He was a principled conservative who could also appeal across party lines. As a dividend, he might help carry Missouri, which could be a key battleground state."
But, in the end, Bush writes, "I found myself returning again and again to Dick Cheney" for a vice presidential candidate. The book reports that Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush, favored Cheney, but political director Karl Rove argued strongly against the choice, mainly for political reasons. Bush says that, even though he had pretty much made up his mind already, Cheney "insisted that I meet with Jack Danforth [in Chicago] before I finalized my decision."
Ironically, another former U.S. senator from Missouri -- the late Democrat Thomas F. Eagleton of St. Louis -- had figured in Bush's decision to strengthen his vice presidential vetting process, which he says "provides voters with a window into a [presidential] candidate's decision-making style." Bush writes: "I remembered the vice presidential horror story of my youth," Bush writes, "when the Democratic nominee picked Tom Eagleton to be his running mate, only to learn later that Eagleton had suffered several nervous breakdowns and undergone electroshock therapy. I was determined not to repeat that mistake, which is one reason I chose someone as careful and deliberate as Dick Cheney to run the vetting process."
And, of course, Cheney's vetting process led to his own selection as vice president.
Danforth -- who had been a friend of Eagleton's when they both represented Missouri in the U.S. Senate -- says he has no regrets about not becoming the vice presidential candidate. "I never had the ambition to be president or vice president. It's too much. It's too pre-emptive," he says. "If you're ever the president, that's all you are for the rest of your life."