"Live" with TAE.(The American Enterprise interview with Dick and Lynne Cheney)(Interview)

THEY'RE ONE OF WASHINGTON'S MOST ACCOMPLISHED AND VISIBLE POLITICAL COUPLES. YET, AMIDST THE WHIRL, THEY'VE MANAGED TO CARVE OUT BALANCED LIVES AND A DEVOTED MARRIAGE. MEET THE REAL PEOPLE MOVING INTO THE VICE PRESIDENT'S MANSION.

Dick and Lynne Cheney began dating at Natrona County High in Casper, Wyoming, where she was the homecoming queen and he the football team co-captain. Lynne was an outstanding student, and Dick was good enough to win a full scholarship to Yale.

While his wife-to-be streaked through college and graduate school, Dick Cheney dropped out of college and went to work installing powerlines across the West. To win his girl, though, he soon went back to school, where he shone--completing most of a doctoral degree before being wooed into politics.

Dick Cheney's first patron in Washington was Donald Rumsfeld, whom he succeeded as Ford White House chief of staff at the tender age of 34. Cheney then went on to six terms as a congressman from Wyoming. George Bush the elder named him Secretary of Defense in 1989, where he won fame for his role in the Gulf War (while continuing to do the family shopping and errands each week). Cheney next entered the private sector to run the Halliburton corporation, an oil giant. Then he was named George W. Bush's running mate.

Meanwhile, wife Lynne was teaching college English, working as a magazine editor, writing or co-authoring five books of fiction and non-fiction (including one with her husband), co-hosting CNN's "Crossfire Sunday," and serving an unprecedented two terms as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities during the Reagan administration. Mrs. Cheney will set another precedent by continuing her work as an author, from her position at the American Enterprise Institute, while serving as Second Lady.

TAE senior editor Scott Walter caught up with the busy couple at their home in McLean, Virginia.

TAE: Mrs. Cheney, the essayist Florence King once wrote that when she sees your husband on TV, she starts to smell witch hazel and thinks of her father shaving in front of the mirror in the 1950s. Why do you think your husband gives people this impression of paternal solidity and very unpolitician-like dependability?