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By Root 1931 0

than the magnificent but very formal Oval Office. President Nixon had used a spacious private hideaway in the Old Executive Office Building. But why, Rumsfeld and I argued, trudge all the way over there when the perfect space was only a few steps away through a convenient connecting door? Ford quickly warmed to the idea. All that remained was to decide who would break the news to Hartmann, and Ford accepted our recommendation that, while either of us could do it, only he could make it stick. And that is how the problem was solved. When the president of the United States asks if you wouldn’t mind making room for him, the only answer is the one Bob gave. He vacated what is arguably the second most prime piece of real estate in the Western Hemisphere as quickly and efficiently as he had commandeered it. And by any measure it was a very soft landing, just down the hall into the spacious office between Rumsfeld and Kissinger. A few years later, Bob Hartmann’s new digs became the West Wing office of the vice president, and it has remained so ever since.

Hartmann’s move marked an immediate improvement in the functioning of the staff system that Rumsfeld and I were trying to put into place. We now had better control over the paper flow and the foot traffic. Now the only way for staff to enter the Oval Office was through the main door, where all visitors would be met by Nell Yates, who had served in the White House since Eisenhower, and by Terry O’Donnell, the president’s personal aide, who reported to me and to Rumsfeld. Ford instantly recognized the smoother-running operation, although he continued to maintain a modified separate track for aides like Mildred and Bob. In fact, until the end of his term, he kept a separate box on the credenza behind his desk for materials they brought to him. He had spent twenty-five years looking after the interests of Michigan’s 5th Congressional District, and he never shook the habit even when bigger things came along. The practice was an understandable and even admirable example of his loyalty.

BEFORE DON AND I had moved into the chief of staff suite in the West Wing, the president had presided over an economic summit to discuss ways of combating inflation, which was now running at 12 percent. The program that came out of it involved a surcharge and budget cuts, but little is remembered about them because Bob Hartmann and his staff persuaded the president that he needed some sort of special appeal to capture the attention of the American people and enlist them in the struggle to hold down the cost of living. They created a theme and gave it a slogan, “Whip Inflation Now,” which provided the acronym WIN, emblazoned on campaign-style buttons that we were all expected to wear—up to and including the president himself. More WIN buttons were ordered in anticipation of the campaign’s rollout in a televised address to a joint session of Congress.

On October 7, a week after Rumsfeld and I arrived and the day before the president was to launch the WIN program, Alan Greenspan, our new chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, came to me to express his deep concern. I took him to see Don, who, never faint of heart, urged the president to postpone his trip to Capitol Hill.

The last-minute intervention didn’t succeed, and twenty-four hours later, wearing his WIN button on his lapel, the president delivered the speech naming inflation as “public enemy number one” and calling for a tax surcharge combined with a cut in federal spending and government services. That would be strong medicine at any time. But administering it without even the slightest sugarcoating less than a month before the midterm elections—when every congressman and one-third of the senators in the audience would be submitting themselves to the voters—was just asking for trouble.

The press and the Democrats fastened on the packaging and dismissed the whole thing as half-baked and PR-driven. The president was offended, and instead of retooling the presentation and getting rid of the buttons, he doubled down a few days later at the