Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [98]
Kissinger vehemently opposed the meeting. He felt the symbolism of the President meeting with Solzhenitsyn could set back U.S.-Soviet relations, which he was trying to bolster in the lead-up to a meeting in Helsinki scheduled for the following month. Kissinger was even reported to have characterized Solzhenitsyn as a “threat to world peace.”15
Cheney and I urged Ford to meet with the Soviet dissident.16 Cheney put together a memo stating the reasons. “[T]he decision not to see Solzhenitsyn is totally out of character for the President,” Cheney pointed out. “More than any President in recent memory, he’s the man who’s willing to see anyone, talk to anyone and listen to anyone’s views, no matter how much they may differ from his own.” I was impressed with the memo. Up to that point Cheney had dealt mainly with domestic issues, but now he was engaged with foreign policy as well.
At first Ford sided with his secretary of state, as was his tendency on foreign policy matters. Kissinger, of course, was not trying to hurt Ford. He was providing his advice as a secretary of state. He wasn’t a politician. Nor was he as tough on the Soviets as some others in the administration. And because Ford only rarely consulted with the obvious counterpoint to Kissinger—Secretary of Defense Schlesinger—the President often heard only one set of views.
Ford’s refusal to meet the most famous dissident in the world led to an outcry that extended well beyond the conservative movement. Realizing his mistake, Ford belatedly agreed to the meeting. But Solzhenitsyn at that point declined the invitation, embarrassing the White House even further. Political columnists Rowland Evans and Bob Novak chronicled the damage in a column in the Washington Post titled, “Snubbing Solzhenitsyn.” They blamed the public relations debacle on a “lack of informed political consultation, gross insensitivity, equivocal explanations, [and] just plain bad manners.”17 It was hard to disagree with that assessment.
Another ongoing challenge to the proper functioning of the White House was Ford’s chief speechwriter and former chief of staff, Bob Hartmann. The President knew Hartmann had not adjusted well to his new role—or, more important, to Ford’s.18 As one of the few wholly Ford people on the White House staff, Hartmann had been a loyal friend to the President for a number of years. Ford didn’t want to upset him. That gave Hartmann, still serving as Ford’s chief speechwriter and political adviser, the space to continue to operate pretty much how he wanted, leading to frustrations among the others on the staff. Hartmann, who had seen his influence diminished in nearly every other area, guarded most speeches as matters that were between only the President and him, even though they required meticulous coordination and review by relevant senior administration officials.
Working with Hartmann, the President embarked on a program called Whip inflation Now or WIN. inflation hovered at above 10 percent. The price of gas had jumped sharply, from thirty-nine cents a gallon in 1973 to fifty-three cents in 1974. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had lost a third of its value. The American people clearly wanted something to be done about the economy, and Ford decided to take action. The idea behind WIN was to treat the nation’s economic woes like an enemy and to spark a public campaign to help defeat it, with bumper stickers and lapel pins.
The President decided to introduce his new economic proposal to the public in a televised address to Congress in early October 1974. The final draft of the speech arrived in my office four hours before the President was to deliver it. As I skimmed the text, I found it unimpressive.19 The speech urged Americans to make up “a list of ten ways to fight inflation