Defending his staunchly conservative voting record in Congress on the eve of the Republican National Convention, GOP vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney said Sunday he would be willing to reverse himself on controversial votes he cast more than a decade ago against gun control, Head Start and the Equal Rights Amendment.
Persistent questions about the record of Cheney, the running mate of Texas Gov. George W. Bush, marked a rare and perhaps temporary moment of discord in what has been a surprisingly unified and harmonious buildup to Bush’s formal presidential nomination at the convention that opens here Monday.
Even the much-publicized protests were marked by an earnest, almost polite tone by protesters and police, though that might change Monday when demonstrators plan to march without city permits and tensions are expected to rise.
As happy Republicans clad in colorful patriotic garb marched off to parties and festivities across Philadelphia, Bush’s principal rival for the nomination, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was booed at a “shadow convention” of disaffected independent voters for his vigorous defense of the Texas governor. McCain pledged to enthusiastically campaign for Bush and later in the day asked Republican convention delegates pledged to him to do the same.
Bush has ordered his party to stage a convention with an emphatically positive cast, marked by almost no attacks on Democrats and instead an emphasis on Bush as a “different kind of Republican.” Bush campaign advisers say the governor has such solid support from party regulars hungry to retake the White House that he will use the convention to try to reach out to independents and even Democrats.
Each night is meant to build up to Bush’s acceptance speech on Thursday night, an address even Republicans say could be very important to his quest for the presidency. Former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the 1996 GOP nominee, said on ABC’s “This Week” that Bush must prove in the speech that he is “ready” to be president.
Hoping to undermine Bush’s effort, Democrats are seizing on Cheney’s voting record when he served in the House in the 1980s. On Sunday, the Democratic National Committee launched an ad campaign in 15 states that cites Cheney’s votes against funding for school lunch programs, Head Start and the Clean Water Act.
President Clinton joined the Democrats’ criticism during a fundraising speech in Chicago for the Democratic National Committee. Clinton highlighted Cheney’s vote against a House resolution advocating freedom for South Africa’s then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela. “That takes your breath away,” Clinton said.
The president also urged his party to be more aggressive in pointing out differences with Bush and the GOP. He accused Republicans of being disingenuous, “speaking in very soothing and reassuring ways about compassion and harmony and inclusion.”
During interviews on five different Sunday television talk shows, Cheney was challenged repeatedly to defend his congressional record. The former Wyoming congressman said that sometimes his votes were based on disagreements he had over procedural matters, and he said that times have changed in ways that might make him look at the same issues differently today.
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“I haven’t changed my position,” Cheney said on CBS’s “Face The Nation” program. “I might find a couple I would do differently.”
Cheney said Democrats were trying to focus on votes he cast years ago. “The fact of the matter is, the forward-looking team in this campaign will be the Bush-Cheney team.”
Still, he was peppered with questions about some of the more controversial votes, including one in 1985 against legislation on a ban on so-called cop-killer bullets and plastic weapons. Cheney said that vote was cast in part because of the procedural rules under which the legislation was offered. But he added on NBC’s “Meet The Press” program, “I had very strong feelings and still do under the 2nd Amendment” concerning the right to bear arms.
Now, he said, “if I had a clean vote, I would authorize money to ban cop-killer bullets and weapons.”
Cheney also said he now supports maintaining the federal Education Department, funding for Head Start and an equal rights amendment if it carried a provision that women could not be drafted into the military.
On “This Week,” Cheney defended a vote in 1986 against a resolution that called for U.S. recognition of the African National Congress, negotiations between the white-minority apartheid government in South Africa and the black-majority opposition, and freedom for Mandela, who led the ANC.
“The ANC was then viewed as a terrorist organization,” Cheney said. He hailed Mandela as a “great man.”
“He deserves an enormous amount of credit for the transformation of South Africa,” Cheney said. ” But I don’t have any problems at all with the vote I cast 20 years ago.”
Later, in a speech to the Wyoming delegation as part of a ceremony to welcome him to Philadelphia, Cheney, a pillar of the Washington Establishment, adopted the posture of an outsider. He spoke of spending the “last five years out in the real world.”
“If you look back at Washington, you scratch your head and ask yourself, `What the hell are they doing back there?'” said Cheney, the chief executive of Halliburton Co. in Dallas since 1995.
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll released Sunday indicated that Bush was already enjoying a lift in popularity as he held an 11-point lead over his Democratic challenger, Vice President Al Gore. At the same time, the poll signaled there was substantial public concern about Cheney’s voting record and his ties to the oil industry.
Campaigning in Ohio, Bush strongly defended Cheney, offering him as a “solid” leader of “integrity” who would serve as a partner in a Bush White House. The Bush campaign is calculating that Cheney’s moderate manner and his widely praised service as secretary of defense during the Persian Gulf war will more than blunt the attacks on his voting record. Bush is scheduled to arrive in Philadelphia on Wednesday.
The themes for his nominating convention should be well set by then. In a distinct departure from previous GOP conventions, Bush has ordered partisans to essentially shelve their criticism of Democrats in favor of projecting an optimistic, inclusive face to the American people.
On Monday night, Bush’s wife, Laura, and former Gen. Colin Powell, an iconic figure to many Americans, are scheduled to address the convention. The next night, McCain and Bush’s foreign policy adviser, Condoleeza Rice, have featured speaking slots.
The broader roster of speakers is weighted heavily toward “real people” instead of politicians, with each selected to reinforce Bush’s message of being a different, more compassionate and inclusive kind of Republican. And though the lineup of faces that will appear on television is reflective of the diversity in the country, with many minorities, especially Hispanics, it is hardly representative of the convention delegates, a group that is about 83 percent white.
With the party seemingly firmly united, the only other concerns for the Bush campaign are demonstrators who have arrived by the thousands here. Most protesters are being kept as far from the convention site as legally possible. About 6,000 activists that are part of an umbrella organization called Unity 2000 marched peacefully Sunday along a route near the convention site. The group comprises the same mix of union members, opponents of globalism and environmentalists that made headlines with protests in Seattle last year and Washington earlier this year.
“We want people to know that they are going to have every opportunity to say what they want to say, no matter what words they want to use,” said Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney, riding his bicycle alongside the demonstrators Sunday. “We’re fair, we’re equitable, but we’re also prepared to keep everyone safe.”