Gerald R. Ford: An Honorable Life

Chapter 10 - Conflicted

158 Chapter 10 Conflicted Ford liked his new job at first. Always comfortable with his fortune in life, his sunny outlook and buoyant spirits were lifted even higher by his election to the Vice Presidency. He was grateful that he had come into the office by such a commanding majority of his colleagues. To him, if to nobody else, it was the equivalent of an electoral landslide. In accepting the nomination two months before, he had hoped the honor would be in recognition of his service to the country; and so it had turned out to be. His hopes were high.“I thought I had been selected for two reasons: One, I would be most easily confirmed, and that was proven. Two, I was sure that the President thought that my nomination going through so easily, showing my popularity on the Hill, that I could be very helpful in Congress’ relations with the White House. So did I.” Ford’s new job also brought a gift of freedom. For the first time in a quarter century, he had time to do what he chose to do. No longer ruled by a House schedule set by the Democratic majority, he could decide for himself how to invest his days and hours. Time, he had discovered in law school, was his most precious resource, to be used most carefully. Now he could set his pace and priorities. The first priority: national security. As international affairs and military readiness had prompted him to make his first bid for public office, now—­ some twenty-­ six years later—­ he was delighted to be on the inside for information and decisions. In the guarded basement sanctum of the White House where the National Security Council (NSC) met, he listened attentively to Kissinger and his experts, to CIA Director William Colby, to the Joint Chiefs, to the President. When asked, he offered Congress ’ viewpoint of international problems and proposals. Conflicted 159 Determined to keep up-­ to-­ date on international developments, Ford called for regular one-­ on-­ one briefings by Kissinger or Scowcroft on the trouble spots of the world. Kissinger had been Ford’s friend and mentor for a decade; Scowcroft swiftly became a new friend and, in time, a lifelong confidant. “He was thin and spare, and an intellectual,” Ford said. “He was a West Point graduate and had taught there. I knew he was a Mormon, didn’t smoke or drink. He was all business. He would come in with a list of things he thought we should talk about and go through them factually and briskly. He had a fantastic memory, of both military and diplomatic history.” Ford concluded that Scowcroft matched Kissinger in brains but not in ego. For an update on national-­ security issues, Ford arranged a breakfast meeting at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary James Schlesinger—­ not as a courtesy call, but as a working session. With a list of twelve tough questions about military procurement and planning he had written out early that morning, Ford brought himself up-­ to-­ date on the state of weapons and forces. Schlesinger, he concluded, knew military concept and theory but was too arrogant to listen to the Members of Congress who, after all, controlled the money for Defense. Ford’s new job also gave him time to examine and study one of his specialties: the Federal budget. Twelve years on Appropriations had implanted in him a strong and continuing interest in the functioning of the vast and complex machinery of the Federal government. Then and thereafter, he had been one of the few persons—­ inside or outside of government—­ who actually read the entire Federal budget. More important , he actually understood the import of the numbers and commentary . So Vice President Ford called in Roy Ash, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and his deputy, Fred Malek, to learn the details of actual and projected spending. To Ford’s dismay, the next budget, for fiscal 1975, would soar to $300 billion—­ a huge amount for its time—­ and the deficit was projected at $6 billion. Ford had always been a learner, a reader, a listener. He realized that his new status as Vice President offered unlimited opportunities to learn, and he was eager to take advantage of every opportunity. He pored over a catalog OMB’s four associate directors had put together for him that identified the most important problems the nation faced, and the status of each. He visited the...