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266 Chapter 16 Managing On September 27, 1974, Rumsfeld assumed the complex and exacting responsibility of managing Ford’s White House. What they found, his deputy Cheney said, was chaos: decisions were being made impromptu or not at all; lines of authority were tangled; scheduling was haphazard. “The President would be in an NSC meeting on Soviet arms control and fifty Legionnaires would show up from Grand Rapids for their appointment with him,” Cheney said. Briskly, confidently, Rumsfeld immediately took control over the President’s schedule, the flow of documents going to his desk for information or decision, and personnel. For Rumsfeld, as for every White House Chief of Staff, the responsibilities are manifold: He must impose and maintain order. He must save the President’s time. He must make choices—­ inform the President of what he needs to know, spare him from problems that do not require his immediate attention. He decides who needs to see the President, and when, and for how long. He serves as the honest broker between conflicting departments and individuals . On every major issue and initiative and problem, the Chief of Staff makes certain that all Cabinet Members and senior White House staff with a stake in that issue have an opportunity to state their views, for or against, to the President before he makes a decision. The Chief of Staff oversees press operations, speech writing, Congressional relations . He shepherds staff egos. When there is a vacancy in the Cabinet or other high office, the Chief of Staff presents the names of prospects, with carefully researched background information and qualifications, for the President’s decision. He must, when he believes the President is about to make a mistake, have the self-­ confidence and courage to tell Managing 267 him so—­ diplomatically and constructively. He must put aside, at least while he serves, any political ambition he harbors for himself. His loyalty must be, and must appear to be, first and foremost to the President, and to his success in the office. From his first day in the Ford White House, Rumsfeld recognized he confronted a serious situation. “Jerry Ford had begun as an instant President,” Rumsfeld said. “He took over an existing organization that had suited Richard Nixon not as President of the U.S. but Nixon in the heat of Watergate, which was a vastly different organization—­ in arrangement, authority, and focus—­ than the one that normally ran a White House.” Change was imperative, doubly so: change from Nixon’s shaky structure for self-­ preservation; change from Ford’s centripetal legislative habits. As a first step in bringing order into White House operations, Rumsfeld knew he had to convince the President to turn away from his Congressional ways. Ford accepted that; from childhood, he had always responded to good coaching. He had followed the instructions of Scoutmaster Kindel, of Coach Gettings at South High, of Coach Kipke at Michigan, of Coach Pond at Yale, of Commander Atwood on the bridge of the USS Monterey in the Pacific. On the House floor he had been coached by a crusty but wise mentor, John Taber. In the White House, Ford’s management coach would be Donald Rumsfeld. Good coaching emphasizes basics: to the executive, it is delegating. “We tried like the dickens to get the President to delegate responsibility to the Cabinet, to his Vice President, to his senior staff, to his counsel, to his press secretary,” Rumsfeld said.“He saw that he wouldn’t be a good President if he didn’t have strong Cabinet officers who had the authority to speak for him and to work the Hill for him and to talk to the world for him. So he would need to strengthen them by supporting them and communicating with them directly, and keep other people out of their business. And that’s not easy.” “Second, he had to have priorities, decide what was important. Everybody in the world would want to see him, and he couldn’t do that. There are only so many hours in the day. What he needed was a disciplined staff system, where everybody who needs to see him gets to see him, but only on a professional basis and at times that make sense. So that other people know what’s going on, if the Attorney General needs to see him, his counsel Phil Buchen ought to be there. If it’s legislation, Jack Marsh and the other legislative people need to be there. If the...

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