Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [146]
I found him to be unlike the picture the press was drawing of him as uncurious and something of a slacker. He asked serious questions, was self-confident, and had a command of the important issues. Decidedly down-to-earth, with no inclination to formality, his demeanor was different from his father’s somewhat patrician manner. Sometimes, as I’d learn over the years, George W. Bush would have his feet up on his desk and be chewing an unlit cigar. He pointed out that he’d grown up in Midland, Texas. He had a toughness, and he told me that he stood apart from “that Eastern establishment.”8 I left our 1999 meeting impressed.
After the disappointment of the Dole campaign, politics didn’t tug on me as it once had, but national security issues did. I wasn’t formally advising Bush, but at Rice’s invitation I offered occasional thoughts.
Once, in a letter to Josh Bolten, who was then serving as the policy director for the Bush campaign, I offered some thoughts on national security. I warned against the idea of a “graduated response”—sending small numbers of troops and then escalating that number over time. “‘Graduated response’ didn’t work in Vietnam for President Johnson,” I observed. “If the U.S. is going to get into a fight, it is worth winning, and we should hit hard up front. Hoping for a measured, antiseptic war (immaculate coercion) to be successful,” I cautioned, “is the hope only of the unschooled.”9
I was slow to endorse anyone for the presidency in 2000. A complicating factor for me was that early on I had two friends in the race, Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Dole, so I preferred to stay out of the Republican primary battle.
There was, however, one presidential candidate running that year who I was quick to support: New Jersey senator Bill Bradley was waging an uphill campaign against Vice President Al Gore for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Having invited Bradley thirty years earlier to work with me at the Office of Economic Opportunity, my interest in his career had continued. When he announced his campaign against Gore, I sent him a contribution. I believed the thoughtful and honorable Bradley would make a considerably better president than Gore, whom I saw as lecturing and wooden. And so my first presidential campaign contribution in 2000 was to a Democrat, although I let Bradley know that I would not be with him in November.
Throughout the early part of the year I watched Bush with interest as he racked up primary victories, knocking out each of his rivals, including Senator John McCain of Arizona, a man with a hair-trigger temper and a propensity to fashion and shift his positions to appeal to the media. In May 2000, after the primaries were over, I joined a number of former national security officials at an event to endorse Bush. In attendance were Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, as well as Colin Powell and others. Together, we stood behind Governor Bush as he announced his plans for reducing the size of America’s nuclear missile arsenal while deploying a missile defense system. The decisions about how to accomplish his objectives, Bush said, would fall to his secretary of defense.10
Unlike many presidential nominees, Bush selected an excellent running mate. He made a reasoned, sober choice of a well-known figure who might not offer him much near-term political advantage but who would be both a source of sound counsel and well prepared to assume the presidency if necessary. It was a surprise when Dick Cheney’s name was announced—and in this case a pleasant surprise. Cheney was no longer my young assistant but the respected candidate who Joyce and I hoped would become the next vice president of the United States.
At Cheney’s request, I traveled to Danville, Kentucky, in October 2000 to attend the debate between the contending