Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [172]
I’m sure Ford and Bush each intended the announcements of their secretaries of state to provide reassurance to the country and to the world. Still, I was concerned that Ford’s announcement made him seem as if he might be dependent on Kissinger, who was much better known. I wondered if Bush might have left a similar impression in the manner he had introduced his nominee for secretary of state. Stressing how impressed he was with Powell’s prominence and prestige, Bush may unintentionally have signaled that he not only wanted Powell, but needed him.
Powell inadvertently reinforced this impression, leading the New York Times to report that, “President-elect George W. Bush stood silently by as the general delivered a discourse on what is in store.”3 “Powell seemed to dominate the President-elect,” the Washington Post observed, “both physically and in the confidence he projected.”4 Columnist Thomas Friedman wrote, “[Powell] so towered over the President-elect, who let him answer every question on foreign policy, that it was impossible to imagine Mr. Bush ever challenging or overruling Mr. Powell on any issue.”5
This perceived personal dynamic between the President-elect and the Secretary-designate had the effect, intended or otherwise, of reinforcing a deeper institutional dynamic. Throughout the twentieth century, presidents of both political parties have expressed concern that the State Department at times was less than responsive to guidance from the nation’s elected leadership. The Foreign Service was so mistrusted by President Nixon that he and Henry Kissinger often worked around it. President Reagan, too, faced resistance from within the State Department—often in the form of press leaks that denigrated Reagan’s hard-line and often highly successful policies toward the Soviet Union.6
Over time, I observed that Powell’s relationship with President Bush had its own unique dynamic. Bush had an easygoing manner as a rule, but it was less so in his dealings with Powell. Powell was valued as an adviser and respected as a man of considerable accomplishments, but his department seemed to remain skeptical about President Bush and less than eager to implement his policies.
Some of Powell’s actions fostered an impression that he saw his service in the cabinet as a means of representing the State Department to the President as much as he saw it as representing the President at the State Department. On his first day as secretary of state, Powell announced to the career diplomats of the Foreign Service that he would be their man and representative at the White House.7 One longtime observer of the interagency process was Peter Rodman, who served with me in the Bush administration Defense Department as an assistant secretary of defense. In his excellent book, Presidential Command, he noted, “Where Henry Kissinger and James Baker had come into the building with a determination to impose political direction on the career service, Powell chose to embrace the organization.”8 Though I never saw any firsthand evidence of it in NSC meetings, journalists reported that Powell felt Bush was not sufficiently taking the State Department’s positions into account on issues from North Korea to Iran.9 But, of course, it was also for the State Department, like all executive branch departments and agencies, to take into account the President’s views as well. This is a delicate balance for all cabinet officers. As I was learning at the Pentagon, it was much safer to win support within the department by subordinating one’s views or the views of the President to career officials than to try to reorient an entire department in line with the President’s thinking and his national security priorities.
Powell’s approach was welcomed by career foreign service officers and the media. Journalists from time to time duly characterized the Secretary of State as something of a maverick in the Bush administration, a