Page 63 of 107 Days

There are many things Liz Cheney and I don’t agree on. But we agree on many fundamental principles. High on that list: free and fair elections, the rule of law, and the First Amendment.

And you can have respect for someone with whom you disagree.

There had been a debate in the campaign about where to put our time and resources. Should we focus on turning out our base, or should we give equal priority to talking to our opponent’s base?

At a strategy meeting in early August, Jen O’Malley Dillon advised that we really needed to bring Trump’s numbers down, since the universe of undecided voters had contracted. The time for persuasion, she said, was earlier in the cycle and had passed. People were going home to their base.

Time is the most valuable commodity in any campaign, especially in one as brief as ours.

I was glad to give some time to campaigning with Liz Cheney in the hope that we could reach those Republicans who believe, as we do, that fundamental principles of our democracy should never be partisan issues.

The amount of that time, however, was exaggerated by the media’s interest in our unlikely pairing.

We campaigned together for only one and a half days.

She started her speech that day in Ripon by proclaiming that she had been a Republican “even before Donald Trump started spray tanning.” She was frank about her conservative values: limited government, low taxes, strong defense, and that family, not government, is the most important structure in society.

Fidelity to the Constitution, she said, is “the most conservative of our conservative values.” She urged the audience “to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump.”

She said she had never voted for a Democrat, but that she would proudly vote for me.

“I know that she will be a president who will defend the rule of law. And I know that she will be a president who can inspire all of our children—and if I might say so, especially our little girls—to do great things,” she said.

“So help us right the ship of our democracy so that history will say of us, when our time of testing came, we did our duty and we prevailed because we loved our country more.”

After the election, I invited her to come to the vice president’s residence with her five children. I imagined her kids had the same fond feelings about the house where their grandfather lived for eight years as ours do.

Our security footprint was too big to go visiting, so family came to us, and the residence was the one place big enough for all of us to be together, casual and private. So casual that my baby nieces did not always appreciate that the art we had on loan from the Smithsonian was extremely valuable.

On a podium on the first floor, I had a large and gorgeous vase made by an acclaimed American artist. One day, to my complete dismay, I discovered Amara and Leela at the top of the stairs, bending over the banister, trying to see who could land a ball of socks in the vase the most times.

I imagine Liz Cheney’s kids have memories of similar antics.