In My Time - Dick Cheney [37]
A week or so after the pardon, I was in Florida on a business trip when I got a call from Rumsfeld. Once again the president had asked him to come back from Europe, and once again he wanted to meet with me before he went to the White House. On Saturday night, September 21, we met in his room at the Key Bridge Marriott, just across the Potomac River from Georgetown, and he said he believed President Ford was going to ask him to be White House chief of staff. If he took the post—and given the serious disarray at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that was a big if—he wanted to know whether I would agree to sign on with him. I said I would. When he called me the next morning, he had accepted the job and asked me to be his deputy.
A week later, on Sunday, September 29, I met President Ford for the first time.
With President Ford during one of our daily sessions in the Oval Office (Official White House Photo/David Kennerly)
Rumsfeld had a meeting at the White House, so I went with him to look around the chief of staff’s West Wing suite in preparation for moving in. I remember being particularly fascinated with the desk that Nixon’s chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, had designed especially to meet his needs. It was enormous, covering an entire wall, and it was an electronic masterpiece that included the ability to record office conversations. The phones were all equipped with “cutout” buttons that permitted a secretary or an aide to pick up an extension and listen in without the outside party hearing any telltale clicks.
When Don came back from his meeting in the Oval Office, he brought the president with him. Ford was extremely pleasant and gracious, which I knew took some effort because he was clearly preoccupied with the condition of his wife, Betty, who had undergone surgery for breast cancer the day before. What I remember most about that first encounter was how quickly and completely Jerry Ford accepted me. I was thirty-three years old, just six years out of graduate school, with a résumé that wouldn’t necessarily rise to the top of anyone’s pile. All I really had going for me was the good opinion of Don Rumsfeld.
In the Oval Office on April 28, 1975, with President Ford and Don Rumsfeld, two men who changed my life. (Official White House Photo/David Kenner)
And suddenly I had the confidence of the president of the United States. At the time I felt very lucky and grateful to them both, and the feeling has never changed.
When Don and I started work on Monday morning, it was clear that the task at hand was enormous. We made a preliminary decision not to get bogged down in any of the projects that were already under way or any of the turf wars or personnel problems that were beginning to reach critical mass in the West Wing. Our job was to concentrate on laying the groundwork for future efforts by reorganizing and staffing the White House. It was obvious that many of the carryover Nixon people needed to go so that we could put a fresh face on the new administration.
Jerry Ford was very different from Richard Nixon—to put it mildly—and it was important that the administration reflect the man it served. At the same time it was important not to be indiscriminate, unfair, or vindictive. Nixon had attracted many able and exceptional men and women, and it would be unfair to them and a disservice to the country to make them suffer from guilt by association. One of them, speechwriter and communications expert Pat Buchanan, chose to quit, and we were sorry to lose him. Others like Red Cavaney, Jerry Jones, and Terry O’Donnell agreed to stay on in key posts. The point was to make decisions on individuals and on the merits. After all, if everyone who had worked for Nixon were to be automatically terminated, Don and I would have to be among the first to go.
We knew that many of the new people coming on with Ford had little or no experience in the executive branch,