Liz Cheney, for years a leading and outspoken Republican Congresswoman, came to Boston College on October 29 with a message that has resonated loudly during the presidential campaign: “If you had told me a few short years ago that I would do something I did today, which was to tweet out a thank you to Barbara Bush for endorsing Kamala Harris, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
In the hour-long conversation with Odette Lienau, the Marianne D. Short, Esq., Dean of Boston College Law School, Cheney, who has actively campaigned for the Democratic Vice President, said she fell out of favor with Republican colleagues after the January 6 riots on the US Capitol.
As vice chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack, Cheney’s vote to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in the insurrection led to party blowback and personal threats.
She has stood her ground, she said, on the belief that elected officials’ obligation is to prioritize the rule of law over political self-interest.
“One just has to look at where we are today to realize that what we should have done [was] what the Constitution calls for,” Cheney said. There is no question, she added, that a president who mobilizes a mob to assault the Capitol to stop the constitutional process of electoral votes has done an impeachable offense.
Sponsored by the Council for Women of Boston College, the colloquium drew an overflow crowd, whom Cheney also engaged with her observations about being a woman in a leadership role, particularly during high-stakes situations like an impeachment or a presidential campaign.
Having grown up in a political family—her father is former Vice President Dick Cheney—Cheney said her parents never conveyed that there were limits to what she and her sister could do because they were women.
“I always assumed that what was important was to work as hard as possible, to outwork everybody else, to just be the very best and not spend a lot of time thinking about sexism or any other bigotry that might be out there,” she said. “When I did feel it was…when the house Republicans after January 6…were making motions to remove me from my leadership position.”
One colleague’s sexist remark, in particular, stood out, she said. “In front of the whole room, he said, ‘When I saw that you voted to impeach…it felt just like…I was playing in the biggest football game of my life. And I walked on the field and I saw my girlfriend in the opposing stands.’”
Despite the personal consequences, Cheney replied optimistically in answer to a question from Dean Lienau about the nation’s future. Because the country’s political descent has been relatively brief, Cheney said she believes that it also can be fixed in a relatively short period of time.
To make her point, Cheney quoted a line from Vice President Harris’s pop star supporter Taylor Swift’s song “Change”: “They might be bigger, but we’re faster and never scared.”
Photograph by Reba Saldanha
Read more about the colloquium in BC’s student newspaper, The Heights.