I was in the audience at Dick Cheney's coming-out party at the Bakersfield Business Conference in California this weekend, his first big public appearance since undergoing major heart surgery in July. The former vice president has lost a great deal of weight, maybe 30 pounds, looks gaunt and walks with a cane.

After he and his wife, Lynne, settled into armchairs on the stage, he told the crowd that he couldn't have made it without her, largely because she served as his nurse and negotiator with the medical community. "I know how to ask the hard questions," she said, as she proceeded to interview her husband about their life together and the memoir he is writing with her help.

Of the presidents he served, he noted that each confronted a situation he didn't expect. For George W. Bush, it was 9/11; for George H.W. Bush, it was Desert Storm; and for Gerald Ford, it was the mere fact of becoming president, Cheney said, a line that perhaps unintentionally drew laughs. Cheney was only 34 when Ford named him chief of staff, and he doesn't think Ford understood how young he was. When Cheney brought his parents into the Oval Office, Ford kept commenting on how well-preserved the senior Cheney was, apparently not realizing he was older than his chief of staff's father.

The Cheneys are celebrating their 46th wedding anniversary, and their well-scripted exchanges included a story about how their big yellow Labrador, who was named Dave for no particular reason, disrupted a meeting with the president and top aides at Camp David by chasing President Bush's dog, Barney, who yipped and yapped at people and sometimes bit. "Dave thought Barney was an evil squirrel and went after him," Lynne explained. The vice president ended the chase by handing a sweet roll to Dave, and they thought the crisis had passed. But when they returned to their cabin, there was a knock on the door and they were informed that until further notice, Dave was barred from Laurel Cabin, which is the main meeting hall at Camp David.

The Bakersfield conference is like the Aspen Ideas Festival or Woodstock for conservatives. Headliners included Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Karl Rove and Sarah Palin as the wrap-up speaker. Three thousand American flags dotted the fairgrounds in honor of the 9/11 victims, a symbol of how much the GOP defines itself around 9/11. Lynn Cheney asked her husband to describe what it was like in the White House that day, which he did as the crowd of several thousand listened attentively. He related how the Secret Service grabbed him by the back of his belt and shirt collar to propel him through a tunnel and into the President's Emergency Operations Center under the White House. He talked about issuing the order to shoot down one of the hijacked planes, not realizing at first that it was the hero passengers on Flight 93 who had crashed the plane. He recalled how he and Lynn had later flown from the South Lawn in a helicopter, the only time someone other than the president had done that. Everyone was concerned about the threat level, and the country's two top elected officials had to be kept apart in the event of another attack.

Three o'clock in the morning is worry time, Lynne said. "What do you worry about?" This was the question Cheney was waiting for, and he answered without hesitation, "That terrorists could end up in our big cities armed with nuclear weapons . . . When you're dealing with someone who wants to die for Allah, then a nuclear weapon is not a deterrent, it's an incentive." Unless I missed something, I didn't hear Cheney once utter the word Iraq or Afghanistan.

Mitt Romney gave an effective speech on American exceptionalism when it comes to the economy, and he managed to connect his experience as the CEO of the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City with 9/11. He recalled how he asked the U.S. gold medal winner in ice skating, a young Hispanic man, what his most moving moment was during the games. He said it was carrying in the American flag that had flown at Ground Zero. He thought the stadium would erupt in cheers, but he was greeted instead with a reverent silence that brought tears to his eyes, as it did to Romney's upon hearing the story, he said. Romney comes across as a capable competitor who can more than hold his ground on economic issues, and he got a rousing welcome from this conservative crowd, which seemed more interested in bread-and-butter concerns than paeans to social issues.

Sarah Palin swept in at the end of the day in her trademark red jacket to speak for "the little guy" who may not earn $200,000 -- but is smart enough to know that people who do create jobs. She warned politicians that the Tea Party is here to stay, and speaking for its followers, declared, "We don't want pandering coming out of Washington; the agenda has got to be bold." She took aim at Republicans who are "hoping the Tea Party will go away so the GOP can slink back to the status quo." She urged conservatives to think of 2010 and 2012 as one, with 2010 a time to "rebuke, reject, and repeal," and 2012 a time to "renew options, revive the free market, and restore constitutional limits." The crowd loved it, as she closed with a tribute to President Reagan and the "shining city" that he invoked as president.

I was one of a few token liberals, along with Donna Brazile and Bob Beckel, invited to give a talk (for a fee) in a smaller tent while the faithful, thousands of them, gathered to hear the Republican stars. I was scheduled against Rudy Giuliani and then Laura Bush, and needless to say I didn't get a big audience. The local Fox news that evening pointed out that people like me and Donna Brazile were there to offer another perspective, but weren't the main draw, which was an understatement. The attendees were almost uniformly white, older and conservative, and filled with the energy of a political season in which they could emerge the winners. The high point of my day was the pistachio nut ice cream that I enjoyed as I listened to California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, one of the GOP's Young Guns, explain how the Republicans, if they win the House majority, will require a congressional vote before any additional costly regulation on business could be imposed.