Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [90]
As Ford filled us in on his decisions, he told us that he expected his friends “to give me hell” when we disagreed with him.5 I was deeply concerned about the approach he had just announced, and I found an early opportunity to tell him so. “Mr. President, you can’t argue with your position that if someone in the cabinet is doing a good job they shouldn’t be removed,” I said to him. “But let me argue it anyway.”
I told him it was tough to govern in the best of times and this was the worst of times. If he maintained what was seen as a discredited administration, the impression would be that it was business as usual in Washington, D.C. He needed to make enough changes fast so that all of those who stayed on would be seen as having been selected by him. All of those who left would be seen as leaving not because of any Watergate taint but simply because a new president wanted to bring in his own team.
“That’s interesting, Don,” Ford replied. He said he did want his own people, but he didn’t want to get rid of anyone currently at the White House except for reasons of performance.
I countered that I believed that in this unusual situation that was exactly the wrong approach. I urged him instead to sit people down and say that his decision to make a change was not a question of their performance, but that he needed his own personnel. Ford said he’d consider the idea but wasn’t about to make any changes soon.6
As for Al Haig, I thought both the President and Al would have been better served had Ford promptly announced that Haig would stay on for a brief transition period and then return to the military. The decision to keep Haig as chief of staff complicated both Haig’s and the transition team’s work. How could our group reach a decision that ran counter to the chief of staff’s? The situation also was a difficult one for Haig, since some of those who had worked for Ford on his vice presidential staff viewed Haig and his associates as “Nixon people” who might be making decisions not necessarily in the new President’s best interest. Some on Nixon’s staff, in turn, saw the Ford team as amateurs and, as such, time-consuming distractions. But Ford did not relent on this matter, either. I was quickly beginning to appreciate a quality of President Ford’s that I had not fully understood when we were in Congress. Once he made up his mind, he could be stubborn. This left our transition team little to do except work on administrative and lower-tier personnel issues.
One early and highly visible indication of Ford’s presidential decision making would be his nomination for vice president, the country’s third in two years. The nominee would have to be confirmed by both houses of a Democratic-controlled Congress. Ford consulted with people from both parties and I recommended that the selection be a figure well known to the public, to avoid any more unsettling surprises.7 Among the more serious contenders were George Herbert Walker Bush of Texas, then serving as the chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Nelson Rockefeller, the former governor of New York. Rockefeller was being strongly recommended by two of Ford’s most influential advisers, Mel Laird and Bryce Harlow. At Ford’s request, I was the third person asked to fill out the extensive paperwork required to be considered for his vice presidential nomination.
Bush had been appointed by President Nixon to serve as party chairman, which was his position at the height of the Watergate scandal. That had to have been one of the toughest jobs in Washington at the time, and I recalled that Nixon had once talked to me about the post. Now I was grateful I wasn