Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [128]
I felt terrible about the election loss—for a friend and a fine leader. I had no doubt that Ford would have proven to be a superb president in the next four years if he’d been elected. His margin of defeat was so narrow that almost anything might have changed the outcome. I couldn’t help but wonder what might have been if he had made a fresh start when he first came in with visible high-level personnel changes that would have established a distinctive Ford presidency in the public’s mind, or if Ford had selected someone other than Rockefeller as vice president, or if the Nixon pardon had been handled differently. Or what if he had achieved a politically expedient SALT agreement with the Soviets? Or if he had avoided the mistake about Soviet domination of Eastern Europe in the debate? But that was not how Gerald Ford thought. He looked forward, not back.
On November 5, 1976, three days after the election, Ford held a cabinet meeting. “I don’t want any eulogies,” he said. “We had a good team, and I was proud of you.” Ford said we had an obligation to the American people to carry on the same efforts until his last day in office, on January 20, 1977. After about thirty minutes, the meeting ended with a round of warm applause.10
Gerald Ford could be proud of his tenure as president, brief though it was, for many reasons. He was an honest, open, hardworking statesman who had the qualities the nation desperately needed to exorcise the ghosts of Watergate and Vietnam. He was a steady commander in chief during the Cold War who pushed for greater defense investment. The presidency as an institution was in jeopardy after Nixon’s resignation, and Ford had righted the foundering ship of state. Backlash over the Watergate scandal might have resulted in hasty, unwise restrictions on executive powers that could have had lasting adverse repercussions for our country, but President Ford prevented that from happening. He preserved the integrity of the office and handed it intact to his successor.
As saddened as I was over Ford’s loss, I was more troubled by the man who would replace him. Jimmy Carter, a one-term governor from Georgia, would become president of the United States. On November 22, 1976, President-elect Carter asked to meet with me at Blair House, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, to brief him and his national security team on defense matters.11 Although I believed Carter was an intelligent man, and one who cared about the country, I worried that he seemed not well prepared for the presidency.
At our meeting, the Georgia governor was pleasant, and I saw a few flashes of his famous grin. He opened our meeting with a list of items he wanted to discuss, including the budget, decisions pending at the Defense Department, and an assessment of the military balance and trends.12 Throughout the meeting Carter relied on notations on a piece of paper in front of him. There was little extemporaneous give-and-take.
At one point Carter asked a question about how he would know a ship was moved once he ordered it. It struck me as unusual in that this was a man who had graduated from the Naval Academy. I explained the process of issuing an order to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs who would then pass it down through the relevant commands and then down to captain of the ship. He asked again, “But how can you be sure it actually has moved?” I told him the first time it doesn’t move, you fire those responsible. It was a strange exchange, suggesting a president focused more on details than strategy. It also seemed to signal someone with reservations about the military.
After the meeting, I told my staff that the President-elect was going into the