In My Time by Dick Cheney Page B

reins to Frank Carlucci and left OEO. In his nineteen months there, he had imposed management criteria and intellectual standards, ending programs that were failing and encouraging those that showed promise with the ideaof eventually spinning them off. He kept the agency going and succeeded in getting it reauthorized, while he and the team around him tried mightily to carry out the president’s charge “to ask new questions and find new answers.” One of the ideas the agency tried to nurture was for school vouchers that would introduce an element of competition into education. The fierce opposition from the teachers’ unions at the idea that we would even test such a program was instructive. People with entrenched interests often like the status quo. You can find good ideas but not necessarily be able to implement them.
    At OEO I also learned about the unintended consequences of government intervention in the marketplace. I remember, for example, one OEO proposal that promised to help migrant workers by moving them from Florida to South Carolina and teaching them to grow azaleas. It sounded great until someone asked how many azalea growers there already were in South Carolina and how many azalea growers South Carolina could realistically support. The answer was that the market was already operating efficiently and at full capacity. The proposed plan could have wiped out the entire azalea industry in the state.
    We had more success with a program in Alaska that Rumsfeld and I inspected personally. We flew in a chartered Aero Commander, a twin-engine plane, to the village of Tanana, on the Yukon River, where native Alaskans had abundant salmon catches but no markets. With a grant from OEO, the fishermen of Tanana and several other villages were able to take advantage of a growing demand for salmon in Japan, delivering their catches to a factory ship, where the fish were quick-frozen and then shipped.
    As our twin-engine plane took off from the gravel strip at Tanana, there was a loud bang, and we found ourselves without the engine on the left wing. Our pilot, a fellow in his twenties, didn’t want to try for Nome, where we were supposed to spend the night, but he was sure we could make it to Kotzebue, above the Arctic Circle. I’ve had many a hairy plane ride since, but our one-engine flight that day over miles of Alaskan wilderness still stands out in my memory.
    __________
    ONCE RUMSFELD LEFT OEO, we spent all day at the White House, where he was being tapped for domestic policy advice and used as a troubleshooter on specific projects. My life was somewhat more orderly, but I still missed dinner at home most nights, including on one particularly memorable evening, when Lynne had arranged a celebration for my thirtieth birthday. Although OEO was in the past, a crisis there on January 30, 1971, over the legal services program in California, drew me back in and delayed most of the guests whom Lynne had invited. People who were supposed to arrive at 7:00 p.m. began dribbling in around 10:30 p.m. Lynne responded to the mass tardiness by publicly declaring that her days as a Washington hostess were definitely over. It was a line that got a lot of laughs, since, as our friends knew well, she did not place hostessing high on her list of priorities.
    Lynne had nearly finished her dissertation, an accomplishment that reflected her incredible drive and focus. Our family had grown. Mary Claire was born on March 14, 1969, and, like her sister, she was good-natured, beautiful, and smart. But now we had two young children and I was working long hours. Especially during these early years, I operated on the assumption that the more time you put in, the better you were doing in meeting your responsibilities and achieving your potential. I hadn’t figured out it was important to pace yourself and accept that sometimes less produces more.
    My being gone so much wasn’t ideal, but as Lynne and I discussed our options, we both had the