Best-Tellers List
After learning a few weeks ago that Dick Cheney had signed a contract to write a memoir about his long career in government and industry, we challenged readers to propose a first paragraph for the former veep's book. Culling the several hundred entries was, needless to say, a torturous process. Today we present some of our favorite renditions.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

I rack my brain whenever I search for the first sentence of anything I am composing. This thoughtful approach guided me as I sought a way to begin this memoir. I showed what I had written to Lynne. She immediately drew a big delete mark through my first two words and admonished me to get rid of "I rack." I replied, "I did."

-- Marla Peterson, Knoxville, Tenn.

On January 30, 1941, I entered the world a purple-faced, screaming baby. Some would have you believe that this is how I have existed ever since -- or at the very least during my years of public service. The truth is, I am much less evil and much more competent than most would give me credit for; after all, I have found success as a father, husband, CEO, chief of staff, congressman, cabinet member, and vice president of the United States. The insults so often hurled in my direction are actually ill-disguised contempt for the American system that was the vessel of my achievements. I am Richard Bruce Cheney, and this is my side of the story.

-- Paul Perrin, Silver Spring

Call me Dick. Some years ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having gained wealth beyond belief from Halliburton, and nothing in particular to interest me any longer, except domination of the Government by the Vice Presidency -- I thought I would join my soon-to-be Captain, George W. Bush, in his world incursion against all things "un-American" and "un-capitalistic." I knew that I had made the right decision and gained the eternal gratitude of the nation by the way people spoke my first name with such vigor and enthusiasm since 2001.

-- James A. Beckman, Tampa

No one can know what it felt like to be in charge that day -- when in the sunlight of that not yet crisp September morning we changed as a country and in a very real way we entered adulthood. There was an exhilaration I felt born from a smoldering Pentagon and from the ruins of the World Trade Center, an excitement created from adversity heightened exponentially. Everything I have done in my public life over the last forty years has led me, I believe, inexorably to that terrific September morning. To be in charge was to drink from the cup of quiet rage on that monumental day. And everything in my life has led me to be in charge.

-- Tony Cormier, New York

Check Off To-Do List Highlighted Accomplishments: Get W. elected Prez with help of James Baker via Florida & SCOTUS (Scalia & Token). Keep Dubya in line as VP. (promise to Bush-41). Hanging chads; my brilliant idea! Gravitas. Teach Dubya new catch words: Nukeular, rocket surgeon, Great Deciderer, strateegery, mission accomplished, brainificate. Pick goofy Secret Service nickname: Angler, Shootist, Deadeye, Darth. REALITY TV explosion. Ignore and manipulate Intel on Osama bin Laden & Trade Center bombings. Blame it on CIA for prelude to War to spike oil prices. Scooter & CIA do dirty work, then blame it ALL on Rummie. Blame recession on the Clintons & Al Gore. Undisclosed secret location: Fakeout -- Rec room in my basement.

-- Mark H. Young, Alexandria

Words can hurt every bit as much as physical abuse. I should know. Throughout my vice presidency I was painted by opponents as a warmonger who controlled the President's every move. They said that I usurped power from Congress, lied to the public about the threat from Iraq, gleefully greenlighted torture of suspected terrorists, and trampled on the Constitution. Yes, I bear the scars of many malicious words. The purpose of this memoir is to set the record straight: In fact, I have the heart of a liberal. It's in a jar on my desk.

-- Chris Hanson, Washington

Like Ronald Reagan, I felt called to saddle my horse and ride east. History has taught us that it takes men of determination, homespun salt of the earth values and superhuman drive to respond when our nation is sorely tested. I am proud to be numbered in their small ranks. Whether you call it providential, as I do, or just plain luck, but what this country needed during a time that would try every man's soul was a couple of cowboys, men of the West. We molded our concept of president on the model of a small town sheriff* whose courage, strength of character and total power to mete out justice tamed the West. No eastern city slicker poring over legalese, no liberal dandy peeking from behind a barrel when fists start flying -- no! Just a couple of Western lawmen who fortuitously rode into town and set things right. Let me now begin this amazing saga with an account of my unpretentious beginnings in the hardscrabble Western frontier of Wyoming. So hold on to your chair and get ready for one hell of a ride.

* See Page 1,250 for an extensive bibliography on famous Western marshals and suggested video library from Turner Classic Movies.

-- Bill Tunney, Grantsville, Md.

As I put these words to paper, I reflect on our eight years in office and can rest assured that my dear friend George W. and I were motivated first and foremost by the welfare and safety of our citizens. We kept the nation safe in spite of unrelenting challenges to our security that only very few truly know. In time, those challenges and what we really did to meet them will become known. In the meantime, W and I will have to endure the slings and arrows from the unknowing. I am sure that now and then we will be ridiculed by the liberal media and made to look foolish by their gimmicks and games. I am in particular anticipating some of those Adam Clymer-type major [expletives] at the Washington Post or NY Times to come up with clever, smarmy ways to keep the hits coming. Let them have their misplaced hero worship for a man who will bankrupt the nation and make us exceedingly vulnerable to our enemies abroad with his mistaken notion that you can embrace vipers. Let the media have their fun. In the end, we will have the last laugh.

-- Robert E. Klein, Gainesville, Va.

Unaccustomed as I am to the truth . . .

-- R. Deierlein, White Plains, N.Y.

Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa! As for the rest? Mere history. Let the retelling begin.

-- Pete Weitzel, Washington

Monica Lewinsky arrived at my office at 8 a.m. I decided to do her parents a favor and try and find her a job in Washington. I'd been told she was an attractive young woman and personable. A young man on my staff even told me that when she tilted the beret on her head at an angle and gave you a look, she was very fetching. When Monica arrived wearing that beret and I caught my first glimpse of her, I had to agree. That immediately got me to thinking. Karl Rove had his ideas to take over the White House, but they were crude and juvenile. What popped into my head was more subtle. Let's see if we can make it easier for President Clinton to mess up in a way that would cost the Democrats the next election. After all, Clinton was a notorious ladies' man and could pretty much write his own downhill script. Let's see if we can get Monica into the White House and then let nature take its course. So I decided to make a couple of phone calls. The next day she had her interview at the White House. I made her promise two things: to wear her beret to the interview and to keep our meeting a secret. She agreed.

-- Larry Gordon, Falls Church

The day that the planes hit the tower, I could not help but be carried back to the first time my mother helped me eat the heart of a bear. I must have been three or four at the time, and my mother had leapt on the bear and rendered it unconscious with several blows from a large rock. It was a grizzly. I was fondling my favorite Perazzi Brescia over/under 28-gauge shotgun when she came in under the rock where we lived at the time and said to me, "Dick. It's time for you to learn what it means to be a man." I put aside my gun and followed her out into the bright light, and there was the bear, its head misshapen from her many blows. She handed me a bone knife that she had fashioned herself from the antler of a prehistoric elk, and commanded me to penetrate the animal with it, just below the throat. I whimpered. I had never killed anything larger than a man before. She slapped me with a bloody hand, then closed her hand around mine and the knife. Together we raised our arms and plunged the knife through the bear's sternum. It gave a muffled cry as rivers of blood coursed from it. With her skillful, four-inch claws, my mother parted the ribcage of the beast and removed the still-beating heart. "Take," she said. "Eat." And that day, as the planes crashed, I thought of that knife plunging into the bear. I remembered the lesson of the flavor of its still-warm blood on my lips, and I knew that we would have to rip the still-beating heart out of the beast who had done this to us, and eat it, or we would not be men.

-- Stephen Stark, Springfield

The mission was simple, put America back on its footing as a leader for peace and prosperity. The Bush administration had inherited a crumbling nation under the stench of mismanagement and immorality of the Clinton presidency. Conservative values had taken a horrendous beating and our country was moving heedlessly into chaos. There was little time to attain a semblance of world superiority, and we plunged headfirst into an agenda, despite acknowledging it likely would not receive national acceptance, of restoring worldwide respect for this land we love so dear.

-- Drexel B. Ball, Orangeburg, S.C.

Jan. 20, 2001: Things to do. 1) Convince W that he can really, really be a Jedi knight, if he is loyal & always listens to the Jedi master.

-- Joe Bartl, Toronto and Kandahar

Well, I appear to have gotten away with most of it.

-- Steve Chandler

In the beginning I created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And my Spirit moved upon the face of the waters. And I said, "Let there be light": and there was light.

-- Stephan Spitzer, Brookeville

I wish to apologize for the following quote that caused an illegal war: "We found the weapons of mass destruction."

-- Carl Calo, Rockville

George W. Bush was exactly the right man to be Governor of Texas. The perfect fit stopped there. He didn't like Washington and Washington didn't like him. He brought to the presidency the true-believer faith of a redeemed soul and the confidence of a man who overcame personal dissolution. It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough for the linen liberals who never saw a diner in their lives. And it wasn't enough for Washington where false outrage so often outsells sincere courage. George Bush is back in Texas. Someday soon history will follow him there to write his name large on a monument to the steadfast.

-- Jim Stasny, Falls Church

My bad.

-- Susan Wenger, Montgomery Village

From my desk in the White House, I watched the Twin Towers collapse on September 11th, 2001. I watched the Pentagon smoldering with flames. From that moment, I knew that I would be the punishment of God. If they committed great sins upon my country, God would send a punishment like me upon them. I was transformed by that moment: my greatest ambition was to scatter my enemies, to drive them into caves, to see their cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love them shrouded in tears, and to gather into my prisons their wives and daughters. In this memoir of my greatest years of public service, I hope to give you my anger, that it may abound, until all enemy noncombatants have been vanquished.

-- J.P. Antona, Tampa

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-- George Plesko, Sharon, Mass.

I'm gonna tell the complete, unabridged story of my life, and I am saying from the start that I was always right. I was born right, right from the start. I always got it right even if nobody else did. Regardless of popular opinion, which I consider worthless, I always was, am, and will be right. As any [expletive] fool knows, might makes right, and I've had plenty of might. That makes me mighty right. Now for the details:

-- Patricia Collier, Annapolis

January 20, 2009. My helicopter passes over New Carrollton on the way to Andrews AFB. I study the tapestry below. My eye catches something, both remarkable and disturbing. A citizen is watching my helicopter and smoking a cigar. As we pass overhead, he raises his arm and offers me the international sign of disrespect.

-- Jim Sheets, Burtonsville

Were you there? In the room? At the table? Hearing what the leaders of the free world, myself and President Bush, were hearing? Were you briefed by the NSA, CIA, FBI, ATF, NORAD, the Joint Chiefs, the State Department, Scotland Yard, Mossad, Interpol, and Poppy Bush? What's that you say? You weren't? If you weren't there, in the room, at the table, rubbing elbows with the freely elected guardians of all that we as Americans hold dear, then your job as a patriot is to SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP.

-- James R. Heckel, Sparta, N.J.

My old friend, Bob Dole, suggested this book could be a bestseller if I would limit it to the amusing things that happened to me in my many years in public service. I have given it great thought, so I shall begin by telling you some of the jokes we told in the White House war room when we started bombing Iraq.

-- Wes Pedersen, Chevy Chase

Today I write to you using a Dixon Ticonderoga soft pencil. Why? Because I hope to get every last bit of carbon out into the atmosphere while I still breathe. In fact, I'm smoking a cigarette right now and running my car for no good reason at all. That is my determination and thus begins my story.

-- Robert Eckert, Issaquah, Wash.

History is often like peeling an onion. What seems apparent in a glance is often changed dramatically as subsequent layers are stripped away and things unseen come to the light of truth. So it is that we've come to this point in glancing back at the culmination of a life of service from the boy raised in Casper who dated and later married the homecoming queen, "flunked out" of Yale yet rose to the pinnacle of power in Washington, and is now content to watch life glide by from the porch of my home on the Eastern Shore. How history judges us, absent the typical Washington knee jerk, will be determined more by the final outcome of what we accomplished than in seeking to define the nuances -- in much the same way it is fruitless to determine the difference between Scotch and ice in a highball glass.

-- Randy Groves, Washington

New Year's Eve, 2006. Saddam Hussein had been hanged the day before, and for some reason, I was feeling a little down. As I picked at the disgusting breakfast of scrambled egg whites and poached herring that the cardiologists prescribed, my mood didn't improve even when Lynne came in and handed me a package. "From Paul," she said. "He needlepointed it for you over the holiday." I wasn't sure that I could take another homemade Wolfowitz gift, but when I unwrapped this one, I changed my mind. It was a framed sampler, as usual, but the message he had stitched in red, white and blue thread was just the boost my morale needed: "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lard." Even if he couldn't spell, Paul understood what it was all about. Too few did.

-- Alfred Friendly Jr., Washington