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Lynne Cheney: Witty, Articulate, and Successful
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19325 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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6 / 1991 |
3,264 Words |
| Author
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Jeanne Viner Bell
Jeanne Viner Bell is president of the American Newswomen's
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Lynne Cheney is the first chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities to have served more than one term. These days, she and her husband, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, are spoken of as Washington's most powerful "power couple" next to the Bushes. The Cheneys don't particularly see themselves as a "power couple," however.
Lynne Cheney identifies with the humanities. Speaking of the war in the Middle East, she remarked recently that one of her friends had called her when the conflict was over. "He said I should look at Shakespeare's Henry V, act 3, scene 8, in which the triumph at Agincourt is detailed. That battle, like this war, was so amazing in terms of the losses on the winning side being low, and in terms of the kind of national spirit that came from it. That was a nice reminder that history has resonance and echoes for us today."
Novelist and Teacher
Before heading NEH, Lynne Cheney wrote novels. Her Executive Privilege, a story of political intrigue in Washington, was published in 1979. Sisters, a historical novel set in the West--the Cheneys are from Wyoming--came out in 1981. She taught literature at George Washington University and worked for Maryland Public Television's Inside Washington, brainstorming guest ideas and scripting programs. She then became a senior editor at Washingtonian magazine, where she wrote two regular columns, one on books and the other on Washington history. She simultaneously coauthored a history of the House of Representatives, Kings of the Hill, with her husband, then a representative from Wyoming.
At Washingtonian, she shared an office with political analyst Vic Gold, then in the early stages of planning The Body Politic, a satirical novel. Gold took novelist Cheney into his confidence. "Some people are witty because they tell funny jokes. Lynne's outlook is witty--she is a serious person who's sensitive to the satirical aspects of society. She sees the humor in the ponderous and hypocritical aspects of government or the media. I shared my plot ideas with her, knowing that most of the writers I knew wouldn't be able to handle them. She loved the first few chapters, and we became collaborators. We ended up writing the whole book together. Some of the break-up lines, the extremely funny ones, are hers."
The story is of a married American vice president who dies while having an affair with a famous journalist, which creates a scandal that is covered up. Various Washington institutions,
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