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We wanted to tell you about a new feature on Change.gov which lets you bring your ideas directly to the President.

It's called the Citizen's Briefing Book, and it's an online forum where you can share your ideas, and rate or offer comments on the ideas of others.

The best-rated ones will rise to the top, and after the Inauguration, we'll print them out and gather them into a binder like the ones the President receives every day from experts and advisors. If you participate, your idea could be included in the Citizen's Briefing Book to be delivered to President Obama.

Visit the Citizen's Briefing Book now and share your ideas:

Throughout this Transition, a truly inspiring number of citizens have gotten involved. We hope that you remain involved through the Inauguration and beyond.

We've tried very hard not to govern based on polls. That is to say, we haven't tailored our policies in order to appeal to polls.

…. I think the decisions we've had to make on things like terrorist surveillance, like on interrogation of detainees, Patriot Act and so forth, those steps we've had to take to guard against another attack have been controversial. And have been attacked robustly by our critics and our opponents. But that's not why we came to office, Jim….

MR. LEHRER: But, Mr. Vice President, people would say back to you, wait a minute, you govern in the present, not about what some historian is going to say 50 years from now. The idea, in a democratic society, of having a - the disapproval of an overwhelming majority of the American people - does that work?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: That's what elections are for, Jim. And as I say, we went out and stood for election and we reelected comfortably. But you cannot, in these circumstances especially, start worrying about the polls in terms of whether or not you're going to make these tough decisions. The easy thing to do is, well, let's not do terrorist surveillance, let's not have a robust interrogation program of these al-Qaida folks when we capture them, let's not take aggressive action to defend the nation, because then the New York Times will love us and we'll get editorials written about us all over the country and our numbers will go up in the polls.

That's not what we came to town to do; we came to town to make those tough decisions. And I think the president of the United States is the only one who can make those kinds of decisions. This president did it; I think he did it very well. I think he's been tough and aggressive when he needed to be, and been willing to take the political heat, which is more important, in my opinion, than being loved.

MR. LEHRER: More important than having the approval of the people who elected you?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, how do you want to go out and measure that? Do you want to go out and poll and say, gee, we aren't up to 70 percent yet, we'd better not make any tough decisions here? I mean, you cannot be driven by the polls. The polls change all the time; they're easily manipulated by whoever wants to ask those poll questions; they go up; they go down. You've got to steer a more steady course than that if you're going to be president of the United States in these circumstances. And that's what we did....

MR. LEHRER: So it doesn't trouble you at all to be leaving office next week with the overwhelming disapproval of the majority of the people, as measured by the polls? It doesn't bother you, personally?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don't buy that. No, first of all - I don't buy that. And I find, when I get out and talk with people, that that's not the unanimous view, as you would have it. Things that count for me, in terms of the people I want to make certain are with us are, for example, the American military - young men and women who serve, the folks who go out and put their lives on the line to carry out the policies we've decided upon….

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