Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [122]
I could feel we were gaining traction. The Ford administration proposed an increase in the defense budget for fiscal year 1977, and Congress appeared to be moving in our direction. While the increase was modest, it was a marked change from the earlier series of decreases, and it was the first increase in real terms in the U.S. defense budget in almost a decade.14 It was a reassuring achievement, especially for an administration that was under fire from all sides in an election year, and with the Congress controlled by the opposition party. The powerful facts we had marshaled and presented proved to be persuasive. Had President Ford been reelected, I have no doubt that our defense buildup would have continued. As it happened, however, after four years of the Carter administration’s inattention, it was left to Ronald Reagan to increase defense investments appreciably.
My situation as a new secretary at the Department of Defense was made more complicated because of the approaching presidential primary and general election campaign. I felt that a secretary of defense should not involve himself in domestic politics. That was easier said than done in a gripping and contentious primary challenge that hinged on national security issues.
Ronald Reagan declared his candidacy against the President two days after I was confirmed. Having become acquainted with California Governor Reagan when I was director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, I knew his campaign was not to be dismissed lightly. He was an effective executive, had an impressive talent for communication, an able staff led by Ed Meese and Judge Bill Clark, and was developing a growing list of influential supporters around the country.
At first, Reagan avoided direct attacks on Ford, focusing instead on the administration’s policies and, more specifically, on Henry Kissinger.15 Reagan took direct aim at the administration’s foreign policy by forcefully redefining “détente” as an American concession to, and accommodation of, the expansionist Soviet Union. As Reagan mounted his offensive, the term “détente” was becoming poisonous. To conservative critics the term encapsulated American fecklessness and a sense that America was a declining power in the world.
Well into the primary campaign, the President stubbornly kept using the term even when he knew it was hurting him politically. Ford eventually realized that his spirited defense of détente was not worth the damage it was causing his election chances. “[L]et me say very specifically that we are going to forget the use of the word détente,” he said. “The word is inconsequential. What happens in the negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union, what happens in the negotiations between the People’s Republic of China and the United States—those are the things that are of consequence.”16
The primary election season did not start out well for Governor Reagan. Written off by the Eastern establishment and short on funds, Reagan lost most of the early primaries. The Californian seemed to be headed for his last stand in the March 1976 North Carolina primary. Reagan seized on what initially had seemed a relatively obscure issue: the negotiations to turn over the Panama Canal to the Panamanian government. Reagan said, “[W]e bought it, we paid for it, it’s ours, and…we going to keep it!”17 The line drew loud applause, perhaps because it represented a reassertion of American will that many felt had gone missing since the fall of Saigon. The North Carolina results—Reagan beat the sitting president of his own party by six points—startled the political pundits and the Ford campaign team. And it soon put me in an awkward position.