In My Time - Dick Cheney [49]
Elliot Richardson, ambassador to the United Kingdom, was made secretary of commerce and later replaced in London by Counselor to the President Anne Armstrong. Rogers Morton, who had been secretary of commerce, became both a counselor to the president and Ford’s campaign manager.
The president clearly wanted Rumsfeld to replace Schlesinger at the Defense Department, but Don did not immediately agree. On the Sunday before the president was to announce the cabinet changes, he still had not heard back from Don. En route to Florida for a summit meeting with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, Ford called me up to his cabin on Air Force One. He told me to get Don on the phone and get him to agree to take the Defense job, which I did. I leaned pretty hard on Don to say yes, and he finally relented. Twenty-five years later, I would again find myself, on behalf of another president, urging Don Rumsfeld to serve as secretary of defense.
The next morning, as the president prepared to announce all of these changes to the press, he reviewed a stack of note cards with questions likely to come up, including one about the incoming chief of staff that somebody had slipped in for a laugh. It asked, “Mr. President, just who the hell is Richard Cheney?”
MY PROMOTION TO WHITE House chief of staff brought a minor flurry of media attention, but it didn’t last long and that was fine with me. I had come to know and like a lot of the reporters covering President Ford, and to this day I count some of them as friends. But I had never been much impressed by presidential aides who cultivated a high public profile, and I didn’t intend to become one of them. When the Secret Service assigned me the code name “Backseat,” I took it as a real compliment.
In the White House, the top staff guy is still a staff guy, which is why, when President Ford offered to attach cabinet status to my job, I turned it down. I also tried to turn down having a White House car and driver pick me up in the morning and take me home at night. I liked driving my VW Beetle, though it was missing a front fender since I had been clipped by a Mrs. Smith’s pie truck in one of the traffic circles that make driving in D.C. a real adventure. But Jack Marsh, the Ford White House’s wise man, convinced me that with the hours I was working and all I had to do, I should take advantage of the extra time I’d gain each day for work if I weren’t driving myself.
The main reason I wanted to keep a low profile was so that I could be an honest broker. If the chief of staff is out giving interviews every day and advocating a particular point of view, he loses credibility with those in the administration who disagree with him. Cabinet members begin looking for ways to go around the system instead of going through the process. They need to know that you’ll go to the president and present their views fairly and won’t tilt it to get a particular outcome.
By the time I became chief of staff, Ford was so used to having me around that there wasn’t much of a transition involved. I’ve sometimes wondered if he realized exactly how young I was when he put me in charge of his White House. One time when he felt that his son Jack, then in his early twenties, needed an adult talking-to, the president asked me to sit the young man down for a Dutch uncle session. He wanted me to share with Jack the wisdom of my years—overestimating, I think, how much I really had of either. Another time, I brought my folks into the Oval Office for a photo, and afterward the president went on and on about how remarkable it was that my father was in such fine shape for a man his age. I think he assumed Dad and Mom were senior citizens. I didn’t bother to tell him that they were both younger than he was.
I didn’t feel the need for a deputy of my own when I succeeded Rumsfeld, but I did hire some really smart assistants, including Jim Cavanaugh, Mike Duval, Terry O’Donnell, Jerry Jones, Jim Connor, and Red Cavaney. There was also a very young man who