The violent storm caused a series of fires that threatened to engulf the ship. Amid the chaos of flame, winds, and seas, the fleet’s admiral, William Halsey, advised the Monterey’s captain to abandon ship. But the crew instead embarked on a desperate effort to save their carrier. For seven punishing hours, working on a bucking ship in 100-knot winds, Lieutenant Ford led a fire brigade to fight the blazes. When the typhoon finally passed, the Third Fleet had lost 3 destroyers, 150 aircraft, and almost 800 men. But the USS Monterey and all but one of its crew survived.2 In the years that followed many people would underestimate the genial, even-keeled Jerry Ford, but those on the Monterey that day would not be counted among them.
The surviving but battered Monterey became the aircraft carrier on which Navy pilots in training at Pensacola, Florida, made their first carrier landings. Hundreds of naval aviators landed on that ship over the years, and on June 5, 1955, I was one of them. It means something to me that the aircraft carrier I first landed on as a fledgling naval aviator was the same ship whose history was intertwined with a man I came to admire and respect.
My connection to Ford began with one aircraft carrier and ended five decades later with another. In 2006, when I was serving as secretary of defense, the Navy decided to name its newest aircraft carrier the USS Gerald R. Ford. The great ship was the first in a class of America’s largest and most capable carriers, a fitting tribute to a fine officer who had given so much of his life to the service of his country. In late November that year, Joyce and I decided to fly to Rancho Mirage, California, to see President Ford. By then, almost immobile, he wasn’t able to get up to greet us—but when he heard my voice at the door he called out, “Rummy!” with much of the enthusiasm and strength he’d always had. I had brought along USS Gerald R. Ford baseball caps and an artist’s rendition of the new carrier. His response was typical—humble and proud.
I reflect with great pleasure on our decades-long voyage from the USS Monterey to the USS Gerald R. Ford. In the interim President Ford and I would serve together on another type of vessel—the ship of state—in the wake of a quite different kind of storm.
CHAPTER 11
Restoring Trust
“Trust leaves on horseback but returns on foot.”
—As quoted in Rumsfeld’s Rules
Roughly two hours after President Nixon made his emotional departure from the White House on August 9, 1974, I touched down at Dulles International Airport just outside of Washington, D.C., having flown from Europe in haste at then Vice President Ford’s behest.
I was met at the gate by Dick Cheney, whom I had asked to be available to give me a hand and bring me up-to-date. Also present was an assistant from Ford’s vice presidential office. He carried a sealed envelope from Bill Scranton and Tom Whitehead, informing me that Ford had appointed me chairman of his transition. The letter suggested that I come at once to the presidential transition office in the Old Executive Office Building.1
It seemed natural that as a longtime member of the Congress, Ford would first turn to friends and associates from the House to help him as he proceeded to put things in order. Still, I had no idea what my role would be as Ford’s transition chairman. There was no precedent for what Ford was facing: taking over a corroded presidency in the middle of a term, after having never been elected either president or vice president. I likened his situation to stepping into the cockpit to pilot a large, damaged aircraft at thirty thousand feet and being expected to take it to its destination and land it safely.
Ford’s circumstance would inevitably have posed unique burdens. But that was the least of his problems. With all that the country had gone through over the prior decade—bitterness and division caused by Vietnam and Watergate, the resignations of Vice President Agnew and then President Nixon, political assassinations, bombings, student protests, sit-ins, the rise of the drug counterculture, the youth revolt, militant organizations, anarchists—it was not certain that the country would hold together. There was an ugliness in the air, a cynicism, that was worse than any I’d experienced before in my life. And the challenges of leading the nation had fallen to a man who never desired the job, had no mandate from the voters, and was burdened by the suspicion that came with being Richard Nixon’s handpicked successor.
Less than two hours earlier, as my plane was making its initial descent to Washington, Ford had taken the oath of office and famously assured the country that its “long national nightmare” was over. But in fact it was not over, least of all for him. From Gerald Ford’s first day as president to his last, the shadow of Richard M. Nixon clung stubbornly to the White House. The Watergate investigation continued. An unprecedented criminal trial of the former president—a “trial of the century”—loomed. Every statement that came out of the White House was scrutinized, questioned, and doubted. That the country managed to become steady amid all this is a lasting tribute to Gerald Ford as a leader and as a human being.
When I arrived at the White House that afternoon, I barely had time to exchange greetings with the other members of the transition team before we were called to the Cabinet Room to meet with the new President. The contrast between Ford and his predecessor was notable. Ford was open, down-to-earth, and comfortable with himself, joking with his staff that the Marine Corps band didn’t have to play “Hail to the Chief” when he entered the room. The rousing University of Michigan fight song would suffice.2 If the new President came across as something of a Boy Scout, he did so honestly. Indeed, he was the first and only Eagle Scout to serve as president of the United States.
Even as he found the responsibilities of global leadership dropped unexpectedly into his lap, Ford looked untroubled and upbeat. “Good to see you, Rummy!” he greeted me.3
“Hello, Mr. President,” I responded. It was the first time I’d addressed a friend by that title.
Though it was a relief to see Ford seemingly so comfortable with his new responsibilities, tensions promptly became apparent. Ford found himself between two distinct factions in the White House: his own small vice presidential staff, most of whom were counseling him to make a clean break from the previous administration, and the large Nixon staff still in the White House, few of whom were urging Ford to make major changes. Ford faced a choice between reassuring the country and the world that there would be continuity and the markedly different choice of moving sharply from the discredited Nixon administration to a fresh and new Ford administration untainted by the Watergate scandal. Ford leaned heavily toward the continuity camp. In fact, the President advised us in his first meeting with our transition team that he already had made several decisions in that regard, some of which to me seemed not to have been fully thought through.
The night before he took office, for instance, he went out on the front lawn of his home in Alexandria, Virginia, to announce that Henry Kissinger would remain in his dual roles as secretary of state and national security adviser.4 Though I am sure Ford believed the announcement would be reassuring to the world—and I have no doubt that it was—the timing left an impression that the soon-to-be President felt he needed Kissinger so urgently that he couldn’t wait until he was sworn in to make the announcement. It made the President seem dependent on his prominent secretary of state.
The next day, at the President’s first meeting with our transition team, he told us that he would not be asking for the resignations of anyone in the Nixon cabinet or White House staff. He was concerned that anyone he asked to leave might be thought to have some link to the Watergate scandal. Kindness was a defining trait of Ford’s life. He didn’t want to put the stigma of Watergate on anyone unfairly. He had also decided that he would keep Al Haig on as White House chief of staff. So within hours of becoming president, Ford indicated that he planned to keep the Nixon administration intact—Nixon’s cabinet and those of his advisers not facing criminal charges.
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 deepl
y 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’t there. Bush offered an image of an energetic and athletic fifty-year-old with a pedigree. But his association with Nixon and the Watergate scandal, coupled with the fact that he was an untested national candidate, were drawbacks. Bush left no doubt that he wanted the vice presidency, however, and, unlike the other possible candidates, he set up a high-powered “war room” in a nearby hotel to promote his candidacy.8
Rockefeller had broader name recognition as a two-time presidential contender and a scion of one of the most prominent and wealthiest families in America. His celebrity offered a sizable advantage, but he had his problems as well. There would be an exhaustive examination of his personal finances were he to be nominated for the vice presidency, and no one was quite sure what members of Congress might find.9 Rockefeller also had to deal with a news story claiming he had an illegal slush fund for dirty tricks against the Democrats.10 Far more problematic for Rockefeller was the strongly negative feelings he engendered among conservatives in the Republican Party who viewed him with suspicion and dislike.
It was an honor to be considered, but I did not take the suggestion that I was a vice presidential contender all that seriously. Given that Ford was from Michigan and I was from neighboring Illinois, selecting me didn’t make much sense politically, and I was less well-known than Bush or Rockefeller. I had already informed Ford that I was eager to return to Brussels.
The President told me that he was determined to announce the selection in his own way.11 He felt rather embarrassed about the way the Nixon team had handled his nomination, with a big production in the East Room and widespread speculation about who might emerge from behind the curtain with Nixon—speculation that the Nixon staff seemed to encourage. Ford did not indulge in such high drama.
Eleven days after taking office, President Ford announced his selection of Rockefeller at a small gathering in the Oval Office.12 He had gone with a well-known figure, again seeking to offer reassurance to the American people. Rockefeller “showed his usual self-assurance,” as one reporter put it, and his remarks suggested that he expected to undertake more duties than other vice presidents had in the past.13
That same morning Ford explained his selection of Rockefeller to me.14 At the time I thought Rockefeller was probably a reasonable choice. I expected Rocky to be an energetic and helpful addition to the administration. “[T]here was general agreement,” one newspaper noted, “that the conservative new President from the Middle West had broadened his base of support and increased his chances for being elected in his own right in 1976, if he runs, by choosing a moderate Easterner with considerable influence and resources.”15 The nomination of Rockefeller, another paper remarked, made for a ticket “that only an economic disaster can defeat in 1976.”16
Just before announcing his selection, Ford placed a call to San Clemente, California. He wanted to give Nixon the courtesy of hearing the news first.17 Reaching out to the former President was a typically gracious thing for Ford to do. But if I had known Ford was planning to call Nixon, for whom Ford repeatedly expressed sympathy and admiration, I would have advised against it.18 I didn’t think it was in Ford’s interest to put himself in the position of seeming to need Nixon’s blessing on his choice. Though Ford’s overture to Nixon did not get much attention, in retrospect it might have served as an early sign of the difficulties Ford was about to create in regard to his fallen predecessor.
As I prepared to return to my NATO post in Brussels, I was worried about the new administration. I was so concerned that I hand carried a memo the transition team prepared on the topic of personnel to the President. We urged Ford to build visibly what would be seen as his own team. Noting that the failure to do so was the very mistake that Lady Bird Johnson believed LBJ made after succeeding John F. Kennedy, we warned, “Without full attention by you to personnel matters, there will not be a true Ford presidency.”19 My worry was that Ford’s presidency would be seen not as his, but as a Nixon-Ford presidency.
Ford did want to distance himself from what was seen as the imperial presidency of Richard Nixon, but instead of changing personnel, he attempted to change the White House’s management structure. Ford attributed the misjudgments in Watergate to having everything filtered to the President through his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman. My view was different. I believed the problems that plagued Nixon’s administration were not caused by how decisions were made but by the decisions themselves. The chief of staff system was reasonably efficient and had been developed in the Eisenhower administration, which did not come to the same unfortunate end as Nixon’s. To change the perception of an insular White House and a rigid “Berlin Wall,” Ford settled on what he called the “spokes-of-the-wheel” approach. To this day, I shudder at the phra
se. The idea was that a large number of his staff and cabinet—the spokes—would report directly to him—the hub—instead of having a chief of staff coordinate the process.
However laudable the intent, the spokes-of-the-wheel approach was an unworkable way of managing the modern White House. Ford enjoyed interaction and give-and-take with a wide and varied group of people, and that was helpful, but this organization approach essentially allowed any senior staff or cabinet official to walk into the Oval Office at any time to discuss any subject. Many would end up leaving such a meeting with what they sincerely believed to be presidential authorization but without the necessary coordination with other White House staff or cabinet members who had responsibilities in the matters discussed with the President. An open door policy could work for a member of Congress, or even for a vice president whose staff is small, but a president has too many demands on his time to listen to every staff member’s suggestions, wade through every disagreement, and then ensure that the relevant personnel are involved, or at least informed.
With Ford having done little to settle the differences that were already growing between the Ford and Nixon camps in the White House, I expected the difficulties to be plentiful. I knew that a dysfunctional White House such as the one that was evolving would be a dangerous place.
But this advice, like a number of the recommendations of our transition team, was too late. And at least for a while it seemed that there was no need for the President to do anything different from what he was doing. He was liked by the press, by members of Congress, and by the public. A headline in Newsweek magazine summed up the prevailing conventional wisdom with the words: “the sun is shining again.”20 Ford became president on August 9, and his honeymoon reached its apex on September 1, 1974, when a Gallup poll gave him an approval rating of more than 70 percent. It was as if the country had taken a look at the honest, open Ford and breathed a sigh of relief. No more distrust, no more suspicions. That proved short-lived.
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