Fifteen years ago, she told me we had no common ground. I disagreed. This week she endorsed Kamala Harris, and she has my gratitude.
Liz Cheney, former US representative from Wyoming, speaks in Atlanta at an event honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
(Paras Griffin / Getty Images)
Once upon a time, Liz Cheney told me we had no common ground. None. We were appearing on CNN with Campbell Brown in June 2009, in a segment then called “The Great Debate.” (It was not.) I was there to defend President Obama’s decision to close the Guantánamo prison; Cheney was against it. (Spoiler alert: It’s still open.)
I got the better of it, because I told the truth: Former president George W. Bush had himself promised to close it. Cheney insisted I was wrong.
“Liz, the top military leaders of our country want Guantánamo closed. President Bush…gave a speech where he said he would close it, and he would bring people home and try them here,” I attempted.
“No, I’m sorry,” Cheney came back. “He did not say he would bring terrorists onto the homeland. Joan, no, he didn’t say that.”
But he did. Bush said in June 2006: “I’d like to end Guantánamo. I’d like it to be over with. One of the things we will do is we’ll send people back to their home countries.… There are some who need to be tried in US courts. They’re cold-blooded killers.… And yet, we believe there ought to be a way forward in a court of law.”
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Before a commercial break, Brown asked us to think about whether we could find common ground, a regular feature of “The Great Debate.”
“Campbell, I just don’t think there is,” Cheney replied. As an approval-seeking weirdo, I disagreed. “First of all, we both love and admire our fathers. Second of all, I believe we both really and truly want to keep America safe.”
It was one of the strangest TV segments I’ve ever been part of, and I debated Bill O’Reilly.
Fifteen years later, Liz Cheney proved me right, when she endorsed Kamala Harris for president on Wednesday night.
I found her endorsement strangely moving. I try not to hate anyone—as I told a onetime political adversary who claimed I hated her candidate, “I don’t hate him. I don’t hate anyone—well, except Hitler.” But I might have hated Liz Cheney a little. She stood for many things I don’t believe in. Especially her father, Dick Cheney’s defense of torture. (But maybe I’m lucky my beloved father didn’t believe in torture, or else I would too.)
But I have to say: Liz Cheney has sacrificed more, personally, than I have to advance the truth about Donald Trump, once she got it. Yes, she voted for him twice, and she voted against his first impeachment. But January 6 broke her. And while it seemed to break other Republicans, like House minority leader Mitch McConnell and the cowardly Kevin McCarthy (eventually to be a very ephemeral House speaker), they swerved back into their Trump-obedient lanes and ignored the damage he did, and continues to do, to our democracy. She voted for his second impeachment, related to January 6. She joined the bipartisan January 6 commission.
And she paid for all of that with her Wyoming House seat, which was a longtime goal of hers, and of her father. People said she could be the first female president (many people have thought that would have to be a Republican). Now she’s putting her muscle behind Kamala Harris’s being the person to break that glass ceiling.
I wrote earlier this week that the most cowardly Republicans are those allegedly “whispering” that they hope Trump loses, while publicly endorsing him. The next most timid are those who say they won’t vote for him, but won’t vote for Harris either. (I see you, former Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey. Why?)
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I admire all the Never Trumpers who’ve come over to our side, whether they’ve left the Republican Party or merely endorsed Harris. But at this moment, I especially admire Liz Cheney. Her endorsement was conservative, and well thought through:
“I don’t believe that we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states,” Cheney said Wednesday at Duke University. “As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this. And because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”
So many people, over the last two presidential election cycles, have made write-in votes. Bush says he left the presidential ballot blank in 2016, and he wrote in former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in 2020. Yeah, that really helped, dude. Let’s hope Liz Cheney helps him do the actual right thing this time around.
I believe that Liz Cheney is the kind of no-bullshit Republican who can create a permission structure for other Republicans to make this choice: not just not to vote for Trump but to vote for Harris, which matters more. I’d love to believe that her political odyssey has led her to agree with me/us more than I know, but I don’t need that. I respect her courage for doing this. I’ll be trying to track her down on the campaign trail, where she says she’ll be.
Liz, I told you we could find common ground. Let’s have a cup of coffee. Or even a beer?
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Onwards,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation
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