Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [147]
In November, Joyce and I were invited to be with Dick and Lynne in Austin, Texas, for the election returns. By then I had lived through a good number of very close elections. The 1958 congressional campaign I managed was lost by an eyelash. In the 1960 presidential election, the balloting had seesawed all night between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Eight years later Nixon had barely defeated Hubert Humphrey, and in 1976 we didn’t know if Ford had won or lost until the next morning. But the 2000 presidential election night lasted for more than a month, and it only lurched to a conclusion on December 12, 2000, when George W. Bush officially became the president-elect.
I certainly was supportive of the new President and Vice President, but at sixty-eight years old I thought at most I might help out on a part-time basis if asked, as I had with President Reagan. I was engaged with a variety of activities, including serving on the boards of the RAND Corporation and the National Park Foundation, as well as on several corporate boards. In December 2000 alone I attended six different board meetings in New York, Chicago, California, and Zurich, and was traveling periodically to Washington for government commission meetings. Joyce and I had agreed I would pare down some of my business activities over the next year and spend most of my time at our home in Taos, New Mexico, where our family tended to gather. “We are moving into our rural period,” Joyce confidently announced to friends at our fiftieth high school reunion earlier in 2000.
As the Bush transition kicked into gear, I was still serving as chairman of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization. We were examining how our patchwork of national security institutions dealt with issues in space—bringing me full circle to the issue I had first dealt with as a new member of Congress back in 1963, serving on the space committee.
I was at a meeting of the Space Commission in Washington in late December when Cheney called me. He told me he wanted to get together and that he preferred our meeting to be confidential; he would send a car and driver to bring me to the Madison Hotel downtown, where Cheney and the President-elect were meeting with people being considered for senior administration positions. I was taken into the hotel through the basement so that I would not encounter reporters or hotel staff.11
I assumed Cheney wanted my thoughts on candidates being considered for various national security positions. But as we started to talk, I realized Dick was wondering if I would consider coming into the administration. He asked my views about two posts—CIA director and secretary of defense—saying the President-elect felt both were in need of attention, and that reforming them would be a priority for the administration. Cheney told me that Bush had not yet made decisions on who would lead either department. He had in mind several candidates for each post, and my name was on both lists.
After discussing the two departments, Cheney asked, “Don, if the situation is right and that’s where the President-elect finally comes out, do you think you would be willing to take on a full-time assignment?”
That idea had not occurred to me before our conversation. I said I would have to think about it and talk to Joyce.
“Fair enough,” Dick said. “Think about it, and if things develop, we’ll want you to talk to the President-elect.”
Later that evening, Cheney, trying to reach me, telephoned Joyce. She told Dick what she had told me: She would be up for whatever I might decide to do. When Cheney called me again, he said, “Don, I talked to the President-elect, and he’d like to meet with you down in Austin on Friday.