This is a partial transcript from the Nov. 9, 2004 edition of “Hannity & Colmes,” that was rebroadcast on Dec. 24, 2004, is has been edited for clarity.
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SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: And joining us now, the second lady of the United States. Good to see you, Mrs. Cheney. How are you?
SECOND LADY LYNNE CHENEY: I’m fine and it’s great to be here.
HANNITY: Thank you. I have a sense of peace and relaxation and this glow that has not gone away since Election Day. Congratulations.
CHENEY: It did turn out the way we hoped we would, all right.
HANNITY: Yeah, right, Alan?
ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: We can’t agree on everything.
HANNITY: First of all, this is the third now in a series. This new book you have, “When Washington Crossed the Delaware: A Wintertime Story for Young Patriots.” First of all, I love the illustrations in this book. It’s fantastic.
CHENEY: Peter Fiore is a wonderful painter and they’re all oil paintings in this book. He really had a hard job, because people have portrayed Washington crossing the Delaware in quite famous ways. But Peter’s illustrations are really fantastic.
HANNITY: This is a real passion for you, because you did “A is For Abigail,” was what, the first or the second?
CHENEY: “America: A Patriotic Primer” was the first.
HANNITY: That’s right, “Primer.”
CHENEY: Then “A for Abigail.” This book grew out of a story that I like to tell my grandchildren. This is a real Christmas story. Doesn’t seem like it, you know, Washington crossing the Delaware. But he started this campaign on Christmas night. And they turned the course of history by moving across the river, defeating the Hessians at Trenton, the British at Princeton. And in a way, you know, Washington gave a gift to all of us, the gift he gave all of his countrymen, the gift of hope that now they could win this great battle that they were engaged in.
HANNITY: And we’re still engaged in a lot of political battles now. And by the way, all of the money for this goes to charity.
CHENEY: That’s correct.
HANNITY: You pick different charities for the different books?
CHENEY: Most of them are associated with history in one way or another, everything from Rosie the Riveter Memorial in California, which is this great historic educational experience that they’re building to help people understand about women in World War II. To Mt. Vernon, to a little interpretive museum in my hometown in Wyoming, called the Trails Museum.
HANNITY: I see you pulled those Wyoming electoral votes over on our side, as you and your husband said.
So you go through this massive campaign and then all of a sudden it ends.
CHENEY: I know.
HANNITY: Because I had the honor of being out with you guys for a day. You guys kept an incredible schedule and pace up. What is it like when all of a sudden you stop?
CHENEY: My daughter Liz had a good description. She said, one day, you know, you’re plugged into the center of the most important event on the planet; the next day it’s over.
HANNITY: You bet.
CHENEY: You sort of have to look around and say, “Oh, OK. Now I better answer my mail.”
HANNITY: Which you weren’t doing up until that point?
CHENEY: Well, it’s so important that you kind of push aside a lot of the daily tasks that you have.
HANNITY: You have to. One of the most difficult days for me was Election Day.
CHENEY: Oh, wow.
HANNITY: I was on the radio 3:00 to 6:00 Eastern.
COLMES: A little tough on me too.
HANNITY: (UNINTELLIGIBLE). I was told at 2:30, with the original exit polls, that it was not looking good.
CHENEY: I know.
HANNITY: By 4:30, I’m on the air and I’m told we’re losing in a landslide.
CHENEY: That’s right.
HANNITY: You got the same information. What was that like for you? Bring us behind the scenes. How did the vice president react?
CHENEY: Well, we were on Air Force Two when I first got the information off the Internet and Dick was behind his headphones, he was listening to his iPod, and I thought, “I won’t tell him.”
But pretty soon somebody came in and told him. He was quite calm about it, because he didn’t think it was right.
HANNITY: He didn’t believe it?
CHENEY: No, the Pennsylvania numbers were especially out of whack, 19 points? I mean, that just doesn’t make sense. I felt terrible until maybe early evening when I began to have hope.
HANNITY: When they called Florida, was that the first…?
CHENEY: Well, calling Florida and then when Fox and NBC called Ohio — that was very big.
HANNITY: This actually is disturbing to me, because you begin to wonder, because they know when they released that information that it’s going to be made public, and it was, whether it could have an impact on people’s decision to vote. Now, on the radio at the time, my only instinct was, because we’re on in Ohio, we’re on in Pennsylvania, we’re on in Florida and in all 50 states, was to say, “You know, it may be very close, assume this election is going to be very close.”
CHENEY: And by the time you were saying that, we were back to the vice president’s house and I listened to you tell people to get out and vote and I really appreciated that. It was a good, positive response when I was feeling terrible.
COLMES: Congratulations, Mrs. Cheney, on your victory. I notice you’re wearing blue.
CHENEY: Condolences, Alan.
COLMES: Thank you very much. But look, we’re all Americans. You’re wearing blue because you’re in a blue state?
CHENEY: Here I am here in New York.
COLMES: The illustrations in this book are just phenomenal.
CHENEY: They’re wonderful.
COLMES: They really bring it to life.
CHENEY: Isn’t Peter good? I thought he did a wonderful job.
COLMES: This is a passion of yours, as Sean suggested. This is your third in a series. I guess there will be more where this came from.
CHENEY: Well, I want kids to understand how fascinating history is. And I think lots of times we fail to tell them the stories about heroes, and Washington was truly a hero. And they need to know how brave he was and how imaginative. I mean, here things were just going south. The British had kicked us out of New York, driven us across New Jersey. They were across this side of the Delaware. His troops had no shoes, many of them, they had no coats and so he decided to go on the offense. It was an amazing thing to do.
COLMES: We don’t think of Washington crossing the Delaware as a Christmas story, but it really did happen, as you pointed out, Christmas 1776. As I understand it, it’s a tradition in your home that you tell that story every Christmas.
CHENEY: I tell it to my grandchildren — that’s right.
COLMES: How did that get started?
CHENEY: I was looking for stories that had a turning point, you know, where history changed. And one of my favorites is about Joshua Chamberlain at Gettysburg. If he hadn’t held the left flank at Gettysburg, we might have lost that battle. Then I started thinking about this story and I realized that it had a seasonal aspect to it, because what Washington did, really, was give all his countrymen the gift of hope. They had not thought they could win and after these two battles they thought they would.
COLMES: Hope is on the way. No, wait a minute, that’s something else, that’s another campaign.
CHENEY: Oh, well.
COLMES: Do we need to find new ways to get this kind of information to young people? I know that you gear this toward people of a particular age.
CHENEY: Right, and I have been encouraging other people to write history for children. Part of the proceeds from this have gone to the James Madison Book Award, which every year goes to a really well-written book about history for children and young people.
What happens is textbooks are really dry. Textbooks are really dull. So kids get the idea history is dry and dull.
COLMES: You’ve said social studies can be very dull, right?
CHENEY: Well, social studies is sort of an awful idea, because it’s not really anything; it’s a little bit of everything.
COLMES: Do you miss before being second lady and going out and about and, you know, we were just talking about being here in New York. You must get recognized all the time. Is there a lack of freedom that you have?
CHENEY: Well, there’s a lack of spontaneity. You know, you can’t just open the front door and go to the bookstore. You have to make arrangements. But you get used to that.
COLMES: There are great bookstores here in New York City.
CHENEY: Oh, I know.
HANNITY: You can buy Alan’s liberal book. He has a great chapter, “Jesus Was a Liberal.”
COLMES: Jesus was a liberal.
HANNITY: You can read all about it.
COLMES: Sean is one of my great promoters of my book.
CHENEY: I like it. It’s great.
COLMES: Clearly you wanted to be in the White House again. I mean, there was no discussion about whether you would be part of the ticket again or not?
CHENEY: Listen, I think that this president has done such a magnificent job in the first four years, not only bringing the economy back to a state where we’re growing, the jobs report was just great — the most recent one. But what he is doing in terms of our response to the terrorist attack on us, what he is doing to make us safer, I think is really quite (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
COLMES: I have gotten a lot of e-mail from conservatives who said, “No, it’s incumbent upon the Democrats to do it.”
But do you feel it’s incumbent upon Republicans to reach out to us Democrats at this point?
CHENEY: I think one way to reach out is to talk about the history that we all share. We’re very lucky, each and everyone of us, to live in freedom, and it’s a good thing to remember that it’s not inevitable, that people had to fight for it in the beginning and just as we sit here, we have got brave Marines and soldiers fighting in Fallujah.
HANNITY: One of the funny stories you told me is about your grandkids when you’re out, especially more specifically…
CHENEY: Oh, we had so much fun with them.
HANNITY: When you’re on the bus.
CHENEY: Yes, well, the bus…
HANNITY: You know the story.
CHENEY: There’s the bus that we use and that the president uses. You can’t see in the windows at the side. You can only see in the window at the front. So I gave them a job and their job is to stand at the window at the front and wave. And the 4-year-old said to me, “Grandma, do you know what this means?”
And she turned her thumb down. I said, “What does that mean, Gracie?”
And she said, “That means they’re for John Kerry.”
HANNITY: That’s pretty good. That was the worst they got? But we won’t go there.
CHENEY: You know, we have one other funny thing. On Halloween, we had the kids with us and they all picked out Halloween costumes. And the 7-year-old picked out the Grim Reaper. She had this black hood and she had this death mask. And so we took them on stage with us — the two princesses and the Grim Reaper and I introduced her as John Kerry’s health plan.
HANNITY: That’s pretty good.
CHENEY: I thought it was hilarious. The audience loved it. I think it was The Los Angeles Times that took me to task for it.
HANNITY: Well, they got to get a sense of humor too. You were out on the stump, though. I had the great pleasure of spending the day with out on the campaign trail. I went to three cities with you. You are a part of the townhall meetings, you introduce your husband everywhere.
CHENEY: Involved in speechwriting and…
HANNITY: Very much so, and the whole family was.
CHENEY: That’s right.
HANNITY: Your daughters were involved…
CHENEY: My daughter Mary ran the VP operation.
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: … each ear had different phone signals coming in and computers all in front of her and she was active.
CHENEY: That’s right. She will probably get carpal tunnel syndrome, is that what you call it? The Blackberries are quite amazing.
HANNITY: I have got mine here.
CHENEY: I’ve got one too.
HANNITY: But it really was a family effort.
CHENEY: It was.
HANNITY: When you’re out there, do you sit there and maybe you turn to your husband and say, “Are we going to win?”
Do we worry about winning? Do you just focus on the day’s events? What’s going through your mind?
CHENEY: Well, you know, I think Dick was a lot better than I at just knowing that the thing to do is the best you can do every day. I did seek reassurance quite often.
HANNITY: You did?
CHENEY: From anybody who was nearby.
HANNITY: We’re going to win, right?
CHENEY: Yes, that’s right — tell me the good news. Oh, in fact, I had a rule: Only good news, please.
HANNITY: You did?
CHENEY: Unless I need to know the bad news, don’t bother.
HANNITY: But you read the papers every day?
CHENEY: Well, you know what I really did was I…
HANNITY: Watched Fox News and that’s it?
CHENEY: I searched the Internet obsessively, and of course, I did watch Fox News too. But I was kind of a nut for polling data and I think that’s why those exit polls had such a really negative impact on me.
HANNITY: As I have been watching now the analysis of this, it’s clear to me, and maybe you have a take on this, I don’t think Alan’s friends, — God bless them all — get it. I don’t think they really understand what this was about. This was a win with almost about five million more votes than Ronald Reagan had, which was the biggest victory in the history. It’s more votes than any other president in the history of the country and vice president. I don’t think they understand what happened.
CHENEY: You know, Dick spent a lot of time too. He did, I don’t know, 200 some events for Bush-Cheney, but he also did 70 plus events for people running for Congress and governorships. And it’s so important not to have a lonely victory. And that is also something that is really significant…
HANNITY: Very significant.
CHENEY: … is the fact that the president won and he increased the number of senators and congressmen.
COLMES: Why do you think you won?
CHENEY: Probably the fact that he is such a steadfast person, that people trusted him. That they suspected, they knew, when he said something, he meant it and that he (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
COLMES: Did it hurt you personally when your children came up in the debates, was that personally difficult for you?
CHENEY: Sure, it did. But you know, we’re moving on. We have moved on. And you too, Alan.
COLMES: We have all moved on. Actually, Democrats have to move on. What advice would you have for Democrats?
HANNITY: Become Republicans.
COLMES: He wants a one-party system in this country.
CHENEY: No, no, that’s really interesting. Because one of the things I sensed so strongly is that the people in the red — or people of red state mind really feel as though some of the elites that are traditionally identified as Democrats don’t respect them. They have disdain for them. And I think that really operated. You know, you didn’t hear people saying, “Oh, that Michael Moore, he thinks I’m not smart, he thinks I’m — or I just read an amazing letter by a novelist whose books I read, basically saying that people who voted for Bush were ignorant.”
You know, that’s not going to fly.
COLMES: But most mainstream Democrats don’t think that. I don’t think that. I don’t think Michael Moore represents mainstream Democrats.
CHENEY: OK, but your identification with him was really harmful. You know, I didn’t always know that as it was going along. I kept thinking, “Oh wow, here comes another big hit.”
But in the end, I think that the Democrats’ identification with the Michael Moores of the world…
COLMES: So you think the extreme elements in the Democratic Party is what hurt the party, but isn’t it part of the tactics of Republicans has been to try to take someone like Michael Moore and tie all the Democrats to him and say this is what the Democratic Party is, when it really isn’t?
CHENEY: Well, actually, I think what we tried to do — and sometimes I wondered if it was the right thing to do — we tried to ignore it. I don’t think that anybody in the campaign ever talked about Michael Moore. And I certainly felt some indignation about it at times, but it just seemed better not to call attention to it.
COLMES: Do you have really good, close Democratic friends?
CHENEY: Yes.
COLMES: I mean, people you associate with…
CHENEY: Do you want their names?
COLMES: Yes. And phone numbers, if possible. But I don’t know whether you socialize a lot in D.C. or if you have time to do that?
CHENEY: Well, you know, we have been in Washington off and on over a number of years. And so, you know, we have picked up friends along the way. I will tell you in the heat of a political campaign, maybe it’s kind of best not to go out to dinner with them for a while.
COLMES: Really?
CHENEY: But you know, now things will…
COLMES: The mashed potatoes get flung across the table?
CHENEY: No, but you know, you want so much to win. Both sides want so much to win, that it’s kind of hard to have a balanced and genial discussion, but now we will go back to real life.
COLMES: To having some Democratic friends again?
CHENEY: Not to having them again, but maybe having dinner again.
COLMES: I see.
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