Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [96]
I also followed the advice I had given President Ford earlier, when he assumed the presidency, by promptly bringing in some new faces to work with the talent that was already there. One of them, of course, was not all that new to me. By this time, Cheney and I had worked together in three different assignments—the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Cost of Living Council, and the Nixon White House. But our time in the Ford White House would prove to be our most challenging yet.
Echoing my practice with Cheney, I encouraged every senior staff member to find a deputy they could trust, who could help take some of the load off them, and, if possible, over time become interchangeable with them. This made some uncomfortable. Many in senior roles prefer to guard their access to the president and are reluctant to give authority to a deputy. I thought we all needed to remind ourselves that none of us were indispensable.
When I asked Dick to serve as my top assistant (he would later become deputy chief of staff ), he reminded me about a couple of arrests he had had for drinking and driving after he got out of college and was working on power lines in Wyoming. The arrests had come up in his FBI background check when he came to work for me in the Nixon administration in 1969, and after discussing them with him, I had hired him anyway. Dick pointed out that serving as my assistant in the Ford White House would be a far more visible position. He did not want the President or me to be surprised when the clearance process turned up his arrests again, and said he’d understand if either Ford or I thought it might prove an impediment to his being hired. Shortly thereafter I briefed the President on the issue.
“Do you think this is the guy you need for the job?” Ford asked.
“I do,” I replied.
“Then bring him aboard,” Ford said. That settled that.
Throughout the hectic months that followed, Dick helped to make a nearly impossible job often enjoyable. Our back-and-forth banter was our way of getting through the difficult and hectic times. No assignment was too small if it eased the burden on the President. We weren’t always saving the world. Indeed, one early problem that Dick and I were involved with was trying to find a way to keep the sun off Ford’s neck when he was working in the Oval Office. It took days for the proper curtain to be found.7
On the first occasion that I scheduled Cheney to substitute for me on a trip with the President, I dictated a note to Cheney joking, “I perjured myself and told [the President] that Cheney was a tremendously able guy in whom I had complete confidence.”8 Ford and Cheney had different personalities, and at first I was not sure how they would gel. The President was a gregarious sort who liked to smoke a pipe and tell stories. Cheney was cerebral; on trips he was perfectly happy reading a book or, more likely, a series of work-related memos. When the two of them returned I asked the President how the trip had gone. “Dick is great!” Ford replied. He admired Cheney’s businesslike manner. “He comes in, he’s got ten items to cover, he covers them and he leaves.”9 I was pleased that the two seemed to get on so well, because I was hoping Cheney not only would be able to take more of the burden off of me, but also might eventually replace me.
Cheney and I agreed that we needed to tighten the ship for the administration to be successful. We couldn’t afford a sluggish