In My Time - Dick Cheney [136]
On May 10 I had dinner with the governor in Austin to go over the information we had gathered on the first set of prospective candidates. I brought two copies of the binder that contained background information on each. I handed one copy to the governor and kept the other for myself, so I could walk him through it. We had not written down the most sensitive material, so I briefed the governor on it orally. Before we began this first session, I told Governor Bush that what we were about to discuss was highly sensitive, and we had to ensure complete confidentiality. Of course, he agreed, and at the end of each of our meetings to discuss the candidates, he would hand his copy of the briefing book back to me.
Two people not on our list were Colin Powell and John McCain. Both had made it clear that they weren’t interested. One candidate who spent a short time on the real list was Don Rumsfeld. Not long after I took on the assignment of managing the selection process, I placed a call to Don and said, “I’m pulling together a list of potential VP candidates, and I’d like to put your name on it. You don’t have to say yes, but if you don’t say anything, I’m going to put your name on the list.” There was silence on the other end of the phone line, so I added Don’s name and left him in a position where he could truthfully say he had not asked to be on the list.
His name didn’t stay on long, though, and we never went through the vetting with him, because it was pretty clear early in the next session I had with the governor that a Rumsfeld vice presidency just wasn’t in the cards. Some in the Bush camp had long believed that back in 1975 Rumsfeld maneuvered George H. W. Bush into the job of CIA director as a way of taking him out of the political arena and precluding him from running as Ford’s vice president in 1976. I knew the truth, which was that Democratic senators, in return for Bush’s confirmation as CIA director, had required a pledge in writing from President Ford that he wouldn’t choose Bush as his running mate in 1976. In fact, George H. W. Bush wanted to be CIA director. I remembered being in the Oval Office when he urged Ford to sign the letter sealing the deal.
One night over dinner in the Governor’s Mansion I went through this history with Governor Bush, not because I was pushing him to include Rumsfeld on the ticket but because I wanted him to know the facts as I’d seen them. I told him I was personally convinced that his father’s going to the CIA had nothing to do with Rumsfeld. Indeed, if you had to single out one person as responsible, you might point to Elliot Richardson, who had been Ford’s first choice for the CIA post. Over the years, Richardson had irritated a number of people, including Henry Kissinger, and it was that kind of resistance to the Richardson choice that led President Ford to move on to nominating George H. W. Bush for the CIA. Governor Bush didn’t say a negative word about Rumsfeld, and of course a few months later he picked him to be secretary of defense. But he made it pretty clear that as far as the vice presidency was concerned Rumsfeld wasn’t going to be an option.
Over the course of the next few weeks, the governor and I had numerous meetings and phone calls to review the progress of the search for his running mate. He said to me more than once, “Dick, you’re the solution to my problem.” I chose to take the comment as an indication that I needed to redouble my efforts to come up with a candidate.