MR. COSTA: Good afternoon, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I'm Bob Costa, a national political reporter at The Washington Post.
Dr. Cheney, welcome to Washington Post Live.
DR. CHENEY: Pleasure to be here. Thanks for asking me.
MR. COSTA: I'm glad we're both broadcasting this afternoon from undisclosed locations, both of us in Virginia, in that great state.
And it is a special state in American history, and your book takes us into that, because you look at President Washington, just down the road from me here, his home in Mt. Vernon; Thomas Jefferson; James Madison; and James Monroe. And you write about how they all grew up within 60 miles of each other.
And one thing that stood out to me in your book was that, because they grew up in the same region, around the same time, they had some of the same teachers who came from the same area, Scotland, teachers who appreciated the Scottish enlightenment.
How important is it when you're trying to understand America to understand that our Founding Fathers were taught by teachers who embraced the Scottish enlightenment and maybe even were from Scotland?
DR. CHENEY: Well, I think it's an important concept because it helps understand the enthusiastic intellectual times in which they lived. The enlightenment, and the Scottish enlightenment, in particular, pointed out that using reason, mankind could create better and better societies, societies which could contribute to human happiness. So, knowing that they had those ideas in their hearts and in their souls and that tracing back the lineage to the Scottish enlightenment and all those wonderful professors from Edinburgh who decided to come to Virginia to teach--understanding all that adds depth to our understanding of them.
MR. COSTA: Why did some of those teachers from the University of Edinburgh come to Virginia to teach the children of the elite in Virginia? It seems like such a happenstance development, perhaps, but so critical to the idea of America and the ideas that founded the country.
DR. CHENEY: Well, I think as often happens with professors, the absence of jobs in one place encouraged them to seek employment in another. And Virginia had long emphasized very fine education for the sons of the elite. And so, that's where the teachers from Edenborough fit in. They founded schools, they founded academies that became very important to the fathers, mothers of these men as they thought about how they should be educated.
MR. COSTA: Who is considered the smartest Virginian of that group, who really embraced the ideas, the teachings of the time?
DR. CHENEY: Well, Madison was the most probing scholar. He was the best studied. He understood in a deep way the history that he thought his fellow Virginians should look to in order to build a better society. He was worried about constitutions. He thought about them from the time he was in college. He wrote about--he wrote to a friend, "Can you tell me about the constitution of your state?" And then, as the years progressed, and the Revolution happened, and there was a new nation to found, he began to research even more deeply so that he knew the history of constitutions and was the perfect person to lead the Constitutional Convention, not formally; Washington led it formally, but Madison was the intellectual leader.
MR. COSTA: Until your book, I had never really thought about the regional importance of how people learned and how our Founding Fathers developed their ideas. Beyond Virginia in this Virginia school of thought informed by the Scottish enlightenment, were there any other regions that really informed the founding of the country? What made Virginia different than, say, New England at the time, or Philadelphia?
DR. CHENEY: Well, there were certainly fine schools in New England, and John Adams profited from them.
Virginia, and the reason I chose to write this book, was unique in having these men so close together. And I think that their proximity influenced them. They lifted each other up. They helped one another when things went bad. And they quarreled. I love this part, because people don't know it, and it's always fun to tell people that, you know, life then was not a bowl of cherries. There were great conflicts going on. And I think those conflicts, those arguments, those quarrels, made them better statesmen. They sharpened their wits on those quarrels, on those disputes, and that was one of the ways in which they changed one other's lives.
MR. COSTA: And you look at the election of 1800 and your point just now about how rough-and-tumble things were then, a lot of people today say, "Oh, wow, this election feels like it was the most important, ever." But it was dark at times back in 1800. They fought, it was politically charged, acrimony. Are there any lessons from 1800 or other elections at the time to help us understand today's political divide?
DR. CHENEY: Well, you know, it's hard to take a direct lesson from the past, but I do think one bit of instruction comes from the fact that we made it through. The election of 1800, as you mentioned, ended up pitting Aaron Burr against Thomas Jefferson and it became so bitter after it was thrown into the House of Representatives that there was talk of people arming in Pennsylvania and in Maryland. It was very, very contentious and threatening to national unity. So, I think knowing that happened and somehow, we managed, we came through, is a theme that we can hold onto.
MR. COSTA: You mentioned how they had their quarrels, Dr. Cheney, particularly George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. I didn't understand the depth of their break until I read your book. It seems like they didn't even speak for years.
DR. CHENEY: Well, I'm not sure that they did speak. The break occurred over the founding--the funding, the founding, the approval of the Jay Treaty. And both Jefferson and Madison were furious at the way this had happened. Madison had been Washington's right-hand man as he was president. Madison was in the House, but he wrote Washington's inaugural address; he wrote the House's reply to the inaugural address; the president's reply to the Senate for their address to him. And he was right there, but as the Jay Treaty was ratified, he and Washington got into a quarrel about the right of the House of Representatives to participate in treaty making. And that ended it. They seldom were in contact after that.
Washington once wrote to Madison after that and said, "Is it okay if I move the Congress to another location?" And Madison said, "No," and Washington didn't.
Now, as far as Jefferson was concerned, I think the fact that he was Washington's Secretary of State at the same time that he was plotting about creating a political party may have irritated Washington no small amount, but the feeling was mutual. Jefferson deliberately, I think most scholars agree, did not attend Washington's funeral. And the bitterness was so great that when Jefferson visited Martha Washington after the general's death, she told Abigail Adams that it was one of the worst days of her life, that the only worse one was when her husband had died.
So, the animosities were not on the surface; they ran very deep.
MR. COSTA: So, these Virginians, as we've discussed, were advocates of liberty. They learned about the Scottish enlightenment, yet they also held people in slavery. So, who among them, if any of them, acknowledged the contradictions at the center of their own lives?
DR. CHENEY: Well, they all did. Jefferson perhaps most. Some of the words he used are engraved inside the Jefferson Memorial. He called it a sin against God, a stain on Virginia.
They all hated slavery. Madison, in his younger days, tried to find a way to live without slavery. He tried a little land speculation with Monroe, but it didn't work. They couldn't support themselves. And in the end, they all realized that they couldn't achieve the total emancipation that justice required.
So, that was on the one hand. They lived in contradiction, because on the other hand there were in a place and time where a new nation was to be created and they had within them studied and internalized the enlightenment ideas of freedom, justice, and equality. So, they created a new nation upon which those ideals were crucial, they were the foundation for the new nation.
So, yes, they lived in contradiction. They held slaves, but they also built a nation that had noble ideas and ideals at its base.
MR. COSTA: One thing that struck me reading the book is how important geography and someone's region is to informing how they think, what they've learned, who their teachers were. And I wondered, they all grew up in Virginia, within 60 miles of each other, but as just an observer, a reader of history, I did wonder, can you imagine if they grew up within 60 miles of New York City, instead. And to the slavery point, I wonder if Virginia, as much as it blessed them in a way with Scottish enlightenment thinking, it almost cursed them because they come out of this culture that has slavery at the center of the economy.
DR. CHENEY: That's a very good way to put it. Virginia was a double-edged sword for all of them. It's important, I think, that we stress the ideals in which they fully believed, thought they could not live fully up to them--that we stress those ideals, because I think sometimes, today especially, that we overlook that part and we say, "Ah, they were slaveholders."
The District of Columbia, as you probably know, the Mayor recently had a commission to decide what to do with monuments that honor slaveholders. And therefore, the suggestion was, well, we either need to have big descriptions of what was wrong with these men, or we need to move these monuments. Don't give them such a central place in the capital city. Well, this caused, needless to say, and I'm glad to report, great consternation, but it shows this emphasis, as does the tearing down of the statues, on demeaning slaveholders, which should be demeaned, but of not understanding the complexities of human life and the complexities of these men.
MR. COSTA: You are former Chair of the National Endowment of the Humanities, and to talk about complexities, where do you draw the line, Dr. Cheney? If you don't want to bring down the statues of the Founding Fathers who held slaves, what about Confederate leaders? Where should the line be drawn, in your own personal opinion?
DR. CHENEY: Well, I think, first of all, it all must happen in an orderly way. We can't just wake up one morning or head out one evening with the idea that we're going to tear down statues. It does need to happen in an orderly way.
I personally don't mourn the statues of Confederate officers, general, soldiers, whatever. I don't lament their being moved. These men were--well, to put it bluntly, they were traitors to the country and to the Constitution. And while we should know about them, there's no reason to celebrate them in our national life by having them decorate our landscape. Beyond that, though, it is very hard for me to understand--some of the statues that have been torn down were not of slaveholders. Poor Junípero Serra who was a friar and who established posts along the coasts of California and helped the Native American population, his statues have come down. I've noticed there has been desecration of the Virgin Mary statue here in Washington. So, you know, it's gotten completely out of hand.
MR. COSTA: What is your view on The New York Times 1619 Project on slavery in American history? Should it be taught and used in American schools?
DR. CHENEY: I haven't seen the curriculum and, you know, so maybe they cleaned it up a little before they designed this program for teaching. But I was just struck, from the very beginning, the 1619 Project opens with words very similar to these, "From the beginning, our country's ideals were lies." Now, no. You know, at the beginning, our country's ideals were freedom and justice and equality. Those weren't lies; they were ideals. And we may not have lived up to them. We haven't lived up fully to them, yet, but those are so important to remember, and the 1619 Project dismisses them out of hand in its first paragraph.
MR. COSTA: According to The Washington Post, our own reporting at the paper last month, Nikole Hannah Jones, the creator of that project, said she never intended to suggest, quote, "Every single colonist was driven to preserve slavery." It also should be noted The Times ran a clarification in March, adding that slavery was a motivator for, quote, "some of the colonists."
Any response to that?
DR. CHENEY: Well, there was a scholarly outcry, five very respected scholars--it could have been more, but I believe it was five, including Gordon Wood, whom I think of as the dean of historians these days, particularly objected to the idea expressed in the 1619 Project that slavery was the cause of the Revolution.
And finally, after having been beaten about the ears, the 1619 Project affixed that so it no longer declares slavery to be the cause of the American Revolution. There has been scholarly dissent, and that's a very good thing.
MR. COSTA: One other point about your book, it's not just about the Scottish enlightenment, it's also about religion, and religion factors into this discussion of Virginia. How did these Virginians overlap and perhaps differentiate on faith, both publicly and privately, as they founded this nation?
DR. CHENEY: Well, I think first of all you have to follow the thread that goes through the book about freedom of religion. Madison, a truly amazing man, I have to say, at a very young age, made an objection when the Constitution of Virginia was being written. It said that all religion should be tolerated. And to Madison, that meant that there was some state entity out there that could approve or disapprove of religion, perhaps not act upon their disapproval, because all men would be tolerated. But in his belief, and he changed the statute so that this became the message, "All men should have freedom to worship as they see fit." Such an important concept.
One scholar whom I've admired, writes that it was, "a hinge of history" when that concept broke through. It's not just that everybody should be tolerated in their religion; everybody should be free. So, that was a theme that Madison and Jefferson really picked up all of their lives.
Jefferson talked about it as intellectual freedom, too, that there's no need for anybody to dictate to anyone else how they should believe. And he wrote eloquently about that.
Madison helped Jefferson get the statute of religious freedom passed which, again, affirmed our individual rights to believe as we wish and think as we wish. And he regarded that as a high achievement, to have, I think, as he put it this way: to have freed the human mind forever. What a lovely thought and it was not just lovely; it was transformational.
So, that's how I talk about religion in The Virginian Dynasty.
MR. COSTA: And your book connects to today. There have always been tensions since the start in America between the state and individual freedom, liberty, and where the line should be drawn, if ever.
And that brings me to the pandemic. You and Vice President Cheney have been in Virginia during this tough period for the whole country--your daughter, Congresswoman Liz Cheney, a member of Republican leadership, tweeted in June, quote, "Dick Cheney says wear a mask." Do you believe that President Trump should take his advice a little bit more?
DR. CHENEY: Well, you know, I do notice that citizens are taking this thing in hand themselves. In my little short drive today, I didn't see anybody without a mask. People are making up their minds that mask-wearing is good, whatever may be happening in the president's rallies. So, I think the people do take this in hand. I do think we mislead them some when we say masks don't matter, because they do matter.
So, yes, there have always been fights about what to do about pandemics. The particular fight in the 18th century, 19th century was about smallpox. And a method of inoculation was discovered. So, you could get inoculated with a light case of smallpox and thereby avoid getting a very severe case.
At one point, the city fathers of Boston decided that there was something evil about inoculation and that no one should have it, it was interfering with the will of God. Moreover, it might set forth a smallpox emergency with everyone catching it.
A few years later, smallpox was so, so ravaging Boston and New England, that the city fathers in Boston said, "Okay, we are going to have"--I don't know, I call it an inoculation holiday. Everyone can come into Boston if they get there before July 12th and be inoculated. This is in 1776.
Abigail Adams was one of those who took advantage of this, and she took her whole family to be inoculated. It was a good thing to do. You know, I guess what they achieved was something like herd immunity, but not for long. A few years later they were again lamenting, lamenting that smallpox was sweeping the city. So, they tried resolutions to this catastrophe, not dissimilar to some we're discussing today.
MR. COSTA: You've been at the center of the conservative movement in America for decades. Do you still consider yourself a conservative and a Republican?
DR. CHENEY: Yes.
MR. COSTA: Are you supporting President Trump's reelection?
DR. CHENEY: Well, I'm not here to be a pundit, but I will tell you that I've been reading a lot of the pundits that you know and what has seemed to be a certain Biden victory now seems very much--the election seems to have closed. And I sense those people in media and probably in my circle of friends who might have been counting on a Biden victory are no longer so sure.
However much the president's rallies, that message that many of us don't like about not wearing masks and going to large gatherings, I think they are very effective. And people watching them on television, I don't think, are into the COVID mode of thinking. They're just into this energetic way of thinking about politics. And the president seems strong and, you know, Joe Biden just hasn't. So, I don't mean to be pundit, those are just my observations.
MR. COSTA: No, those are fair observations, Dr. Cheney. But is it fair to say that, personally, you and Vice President Cheney will keep your vote private this time around?
DR. CHENEY: Well, I do think that, you know, votes are supposed to be private, so if that's what you prefer, then you certainly have a right to do it.
MR. COSTA: So, no--no yes or no on President Trump and whether you back him for reelection.
DR. CHENEY: Well, no yes or no on my vote.
MR. COSTA: Fair enough, I respect that, but I needed to press a little bit as a reporter there. Where do you think this Republican Party goes? I remember your time as an activist and a conservative, and then National Endowment. Does the Republican Party move back toward the Reagan era that you shaped and the Bush/Cheney era, or do you think it moves more towards nationalism and populism, not--based on your own experience, but also as a historian?
DR. CHENEY: You know, I think we can't overlook the election of 2016, which confounded many, many people, myself included. I was very surprised at the outcome. But what the president saw--and he was not president yet, of course, was this feeling by so many Americans in the middle, lower class that they were left out, that no one cared for their concerns, that no one paid any attention to them, that the world got ruled from the East and West Coast, and I think that idea will have to be important to the Republican Party moving forward, whether the president wins or not. That idea is something that will stay with us. I guess that sounds a little populist, I'm not sure. It's just concern, it's just compassion for people who--you know, people on the East and West Coast, they refer to where these people live as "flyover land." Well, you know, I guess I'm in flyover land being from Wyoming, and no one there appreciates the federal government mandating whether or not they can have a water hole for their cows, or whether or not they can pick up wood--not to use, but just to get out of the way--on land controlled by the federal government. These are not things that are appreciated and I think Republicans never appreciated them, but the president has underscored that.
MR. COSTA: One final thing, Dr. Cheney, history, as your book shows, historians centuries from now will always be weighing in and with different perspectives and new looks at what's happened before.
You, yourself, are a figure of history as former Second Lady of the United States. We've all had a lot of time to watch movies during this pandemic. Have you any assessment of Amy Adams' portrayal of you in Vice?
DR. CHENEY: Well, you know, I thought Vice was very cartoonish. I mean, it wasn't--maybe it tried to make a political statement but you couldn't understand it because everything was so confused.
I didn't like the movie. But I have said that being played by Amy Adams wasn't half bad. So, there is that. And you have to laugh about things like this that happen to you when you're a public figure.
Also, when I heard that Christian Bale was going to play Dick, I thought, "Oh, wow." Now, he didn't play Dick as handsome as Dick really is but, you know, it's just an amusing thing to find yourself lampooned on the screen.
MR. COSTA: We all can't have Amy Adams and Christian Bale play us in films, so you have that, Dr. Cheney, and this new book. Thanks for joining us this afternoon for a conversation about it, and a little politics, because you have a little political side, as well, even as you're a historian and a writer.
DR. CHENEY: Yeah, but I'm not a pundit.
MR. COSTA: I know you're not a pundit, but you've lived a political life from time to time.
DR. CHENEY: Yes, yes.
MR. COSTA: Thank you, Dr. Cheney.
DR. CHENEY: Well, thanks for having me. It was a good conversation, and I appreciate your asking me to do this.
MR. COSTA: Thank you.
DR. CHENEY: Thanks.
MR. COSTA: And thank you all for joining us today. I appreciate you tuning in. It's always interesting to hear from people who have been in power, who have seen it up close, but have also done things in their career on their own, irrespective of their own roles in American political life. So, enjoyed talking to Dr. Cheney.
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